Chapter 42
Estella had been balanced on a knife’s edge for a full two weeks before the end came rushing up to meet her. On waking that morning, she’d had no idea that the night she’d been preparing for since she was twelve years old had finally arrived.
It started with a phone call. Estella knew exactly who was on the other end of the line before she even looked at the screen.
The phone was reserved for just this purpose, carried around with her in every handbag or coat pocket, charged at her bedside night after night, waiting in silent stillness for so long that when the ringtone finally arrived, it erupted like a bomb.
“Bruna,” she said, standing upright in her living room, the hair on the back of her neck rising like hackles.
She glanced quickly at the time. Five fifty-seven p.m. She grabbed her other phone and immediately sent a one-word text.
For a moment, all she could hear down the line was breathing, harsh and rapid, air grating past the phone like the elegant older Florelli matriarch was running.
“It’s done,” Bruna gasped out, her voice thready and weak. Estella tried not to panic. She couldn’t tell if the catch in Bruna’s voice was horror, grief or elation.
“Grazie,” she whispered in shock. “Grazie, Zia.” Just before Estella ended the call, Bruna’s ragged voice pulled her back.
“Estella,” the elderly woman choked. “She didn’t deserve it, your mother. None of them ever do.”
Estella’s ears were ringing, the blood draining from her face until she was almost sick.
She’d never sought this apology, knowing she would hurl it back in their faces with double the violence if it ever came.
Bruna had lived her entire life in the seat of Florelli power; she held the guilt and dishonour in every line of her face.
And yet, as Bruna’s words reached Estella’s ears, she felt them charge through her body like power, like love. Finally, they were on the same side.
“Let’s call this amends,” Estella heard herself offer, like a farewell olive branch, against the crackle and rustle on the other end of the phone: the sound of Bruna fleeing her home, her family, her life.
She ended the call, cutting off the sound of Bruna’s weeping. She hoped that tonight, she too, had Bruna’s brutal steel in her blood.
There were already sirens blaring when she hit the street.
They’d rehearsed this moment, over and over, so her body moved without thought.
Her car stayed neatly parked in her garage while Estella vanished into the fading evening light, out the back gate of her garden, into the laneway behind, and finally into the streets.
She was dressed down: no nonsense, baseball cap, ponytail, and sunglasses, even as the daylight died.
If anyone noticed her, she didn’t catch their second glance.
Fifteen minutes later, along the main road she got into a plain silver sedan with stolen plates. Florence indicated, merging into the evening traffic as politely as if they simply had dinner reservations. Estella’s heart raced at terrifying speed but her mind felt disturbingly clear.
“I need you far away,” she said to Florence, connecting her tongue to her brain with effort. “If I don’t come out of this—”
“You will,” Florence said serenely, her hands firm on the steering wheel.
“If I don’t come out of this, you’re the entirety of plan b. You know this right?”
“I do. But, as you know, plan b won’t work if you’re not there. There’s no two ways about it, kid.”
Estella hissed in her breath. “I want you to assure me, that if after tonight I’m dead or in jail—”
“I’ll fucking kill you again myself if either of those things happen,” Florence warned her.
“Don’t fuck with me, Estella. I’m not promising you shit so you can pretend to yourself you’re going down in a blaze of glory.
If you’re going down tonight, it’s with a job only half done. So make good choices.”
Estella didn’t enjoy pep talks or goodbyes, so she got out at the set of lights without a word or a glance back, one block from the destination, her face neatly averted as a row of police cars screamed in the other direction.
She ducked down a side street and then another.
Everything here smelled of money: the large leafy trees lining both sides of the street; the lush lawns behind beautiful wrought iron fences; the massive, stately homes.
All of these houses belonged to the wealthy; did any of these riches come without a cost to someone else? Was anyone here truly innocent?
With that, she stopped outside the largest, most magnificent home on the street.
There were lights on, blazing across the lower floor, but still she knew perfectly well that right now the occupants were gone.
In a hurry, in fact. The imposing gates across the driveway were closed, the little light above the security intercom glowing dimly in the dusk.
She didn’t touch it. Instead, she reached out to the slender passenger gate set into the other end of the garden fence.
As she’d expected, it only looked locked, swinging open on silent hinges at the touch of her hand.
She walked up the darkening stone path alongside the lushly tended gardens that belonged to the most corrupt criminal in Melbourne city, his beautiful flowering moonlight grevilleas, his blooming roses, his collection of tree ferns growing in the shadows below the eaves of his luxurious home.
She let her fingers trail along the glossy leaves, then reached out and snapped one of the long slender fern fronds in her wake.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted to burn this place to the ground.
Estella turned the corner around the back of the stone mansion, her feet crunching against the stones. She pulled out her gun but held it loosely at her side. It was merely a precaution. All going well, she’d meet no resistance tonight.
“Hello?” came the tentative voice from the shadows and Estella’s hand tightened on her weapon.
If she and Florence had failed, if this was a trap, this was the moment it would all fall apart.
She stilled, waiting, and the figure stepped a little closer.
Normally, security lights would flood out over this part of the courtyard with surgical precision, but tonight it remained covered by twilight.
“It’s me,” Estella confirmed. She waited for a hail of bullets or for hidden henchmen to arrive from the shadows, pinning her to the stones.
But nothing happened. The figure was before her.
A young woman — no, a girl, in fact — her hands shaking, but her face determined.
The youngest granddaughter of the man of the house: Luciano Florelli.
“Alessia,” she greeted the girl. She knew, from Bruna, that she was still just seventeen.
The risks of involving her were high, but she was the best security Estella had; Bruna would not put her at risk.
“This way,” Alessia whispered. She led Estella in through the back door of her grandfather’s home.
Estella tried not to be sick. They’d entered via the elaborate open plan kitchen, where everything gleamed in marble, gold fixtures and vast surfaces, the remains of Luciano and Bruna’s dinner still sitting half-eaten on the expansive solid-wood table.
An elderly couple’s last meal together, forever unfinished.
Everything smacked of luxury, of decadence, the rotten stink of the way they’d earned their money.
A huge oil painting of the couple — younger and extremely flattering — loomed over the opulent living room.
Estella averted her eyes. She couldn’t lose her calm, right here in the heart of enemy territory.
Alessia glanced behind her, pale in the bright light, as if assuring herself that Estella was still there, and led her down the opulent hall. At the end, she opened a doorway and started down a flight of stairs into the basement.
Estella, heart in her throat, followed the girl, her fingers slippery against the cold metal of the gun.
“It’s down here,” Alessia said. Her voice remained a whisper, even though the house was empty. Estella could see the terror in the tremble of her jaw, but still, she met Estella’s gaze head on.
They were standing in a home office. It looked bizarrely normal.
An average sized walnut desk, a basic leather office chair, a pile of printer paper, and the entire reason Estella was here: a standard, mid-level, basic desktop computer.
Estella jiggled the mouse and the screen lit up.
The profile that came up wasn’t even hiding. It simply said: Luciano Florelli.
“Can you unlock it?” she asked, and the girl nodded. She leaned past Estella and typed in the password. Welcome, came the message and the profile opened to show the standard desktop set up.
“My birthdate,” the girl told her. Her voice cracked.
The favoured grandchild, committing the ultimate betrayal.
Estella had no time to comfort her. She sat down in the chair and scanned the screen.
It was covered in folders. This could take weeks.
They had, at most, an hour. She opened the browser and scanned the history.
Luciano had been reading the right-wing tabloids and googling garden furniture.
She swore, under her breath. “No,” Alessia said. “It’s here you want to go.”
She leaned in over Estella’s shoulder and navigated to a folder titled Family Holiday and a subfolder titled Bali 2009 Archived.
Inside was a series of Word documents. She opened one and inside was a web address.
Double clicking on it brought up a browser Estella had never heard of, and she’d heard a lot.
“How?” she asked, and Alessia’s thin shoulder shrugged.
“I watch him,” she said simply. “Nonno doesn’t notice, if it’s me.”