Chapter 2
2
Max
You’d have to be clinically out of your mind, signed off by at least three expert medical professionals, to voluntarily participate in something like this. But no one would ever accuse Max Conrad of being in her right mind. Especially not since June two years ago.
The bidding was up into quadruple digits, the two girls in the front row still raising their hands as if they were starving mothers fighting for the last drop of medicine for their sick children rather than an hour with the defending champion of the Australian Sleaze-Ball Cup.
For the billionth time this evening, Max wondered where the auction money was actually going.
A new yacht for Luca Barbarani?
A G-Wagon for the cut-throat, heartless lawyer Antonella? Trying to hide her nepo-baby upbringing behind the facade of social justice?
Or was there a chance the only semi-human among them, Francesca, was raising money for one of her environmental causes? Though she was likely only motivated to save the world out of guilt about her unearned childhood privilege. And looking around at all the contraband plastic straws floating in glasses of gin, Max could see there was nothing environmentally friendly about this auction.
She didn’t know much about the eldest son, Tomaso, except that he was a pretentious, wine-swirling dick (hell, these people probably DID swirl wine with their dicks) and had most likely organised this whole event along with their father – Giovanni – as a tax write-off.
But it was too late. She couldn’t help it if the money was funding a federal anti-abortion campaign or a new coal mine on sacred land. There was no other way into the gated Barbarani Estate, and no time, not with the ticking clock that had taken up residence in her heart, taking over its beats like a cuckoo bird.
‘Eight thousand, four hundred ... Do we have eight thousand, five—?’
‘Nine thousand!’ screamed a woman with a long red braid, sitting at the front of the room.
‘Nine thousand?’
On stage, Luca Barbarani was adjusting his cuff links, which twinkled like fat diamonds. They probably were diamonds, Max realised. Even she could admit he was sickeningly gorgeous in the black suit that fit his sculpted body like armour: a disinterested Adonis surveying the mortals below him. He picked some lint or glitter from his shoulder, flicking it onto the stage. Max was surprised there wasn’t a Barbarani worker hired to do that for him. Apparently not in the job description of the giant sexist oaf? She’d been watching the guy throughout the auction, determined to work out his function (besides disappearing women into cars) and had come to the conclusion, by the way he kept to the darkness, and the ridge of the gun holster she’d felt brush her hip when he lifted the drunk girl from her, that he must be some sort of bodyguard. But clearly not a very good one. He’d left Luca alone for at least five minutes while he delivered the drunk barely-adult to the handsome Porsche driver. Maybe Max should have demanded she ride in the car too, to make sure the woman did get home. But then she would never have made it back here in time for this .
‘Nine thousand, one hundred!’ The second bidder, with a halo of brown curls, raised her hand, her eyes wide and desperate.
The red-haired girl tapped furiously at her phone, sweat glittering on her freckled forehead. ‘Nine thousand, two hundred,’ she said in an evaporating breath, suggesting either it was her last bid or the person on the other end of the phone had just told her you can’t sell your eggs in Australia. Almost over now.
‘Nine thousand, five hundred!’ the other woman yelled to raucous applause. Her smug grin said it all – she had this in the bag.
The auctioneer wiped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Nine thousand, five hundred dollars, for one hour with Luca Barbarani, going once, going twice—’
‘Ten thousand,’ Max declared, trying not to imagine the faces of all the people who’d donated to the poor little orphan girl whose parents had been hit by a drunk driver on Toodyay Road. She’d spent the first part of the pity cash on her Bachelor of Laws and her bike. And now the rest on a toll fee to get into the Barbarani property.
Guilt dropped like an anchor.
The girl with the curls looked at her like Max had stabbed her in the throat. The redhead gave a dejected sniffle.
‘Ten thousand ...?’ The auctioneer looked at Luca.
The Barbarani boy shrugged, ten thousand dollars clearly about as life-changing as finding a single gold coin in his suit pocket.
‘Going once ...’
Curly girl was frantically whispering to the guy standing beside her, who was shaking his head.
‘Going twice ...’
A tall, broad figure emerged from the shadows by the bottom of the stage. Max’s heart ran to the back of her ribcage.
‘And SOLD to ...?’
‘Maxella Conrad.’ Her legs were like ramen noodles as she ascended the stairs. Thankfully, the raucous, defeated crowd drowned out the inconsequential sound of her name. She hadn’t been recognised. Not by the auctioneer or the Barbarani boy either. She allowed herself one tiny exhale.
Luca was looking up now, his face passive and nonchalant, but there was something murky in his green eyes as they roved her body. What she’d whispered to him earlier, probably.
‘ Enchante ,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘I’m meant to kiss you on the cheek. Will you allow it? It’s part of my father’s personal brand of humiliation.’
‘I—’ Her hands were shaking. ‘Who is it meant to humiliate?’
‘Me,’ Luca said as though that was obvious.
‘Okay,’ Max said. ‘Just on the cheek though.’
‘Of course.’ The youngest Barbarani bent down and pressed his lips gently against her hot, sweaty skin. Max caught a whiff of cigarettes and concentrated liquor she couldn’t name – probably because it cost as much as her old Harley. The flash of the auctioneer’s phone camera blinded her momentarily and when her eyes could focus again, she found herself face-to-face with the giant oaf.
‘Luca,’ he said, not looking at Max, ‘that girl with the second highest bid – she’s the Premier’s daughter. Probably more what you ...’
‘Marcella won fair and square,’ Luca said, patting Max on the shoulder like she was a doddery old woman he’d just helped cross the street. She was surprised he’d got the first and last consonants in her name right.
‘Luca,’ the giant said again, more forcefully, ‘can I speak to you privately?’
‘You’re the Fixer, Grey, not my keeper. She’s coming home with us.’
What the hell was a Fixer?
Grey. She mused over the name. Fitting perhaps, for someone whose job seemed to be to keep to the shadows, to stay in the murky grey of the Barbaranis’ lives.
The giant’s jaw twitched. ‘Coming home? That’s not part of the deal.’
‘Father never specified where the hour of my time was to occur.’
‘Luca, he didn’t mean bring them back to the estate.’
‘You wouldn’t deny me this one would you, Grey?’ he asked, a wicked grin transforming his face into an entirely new dimension of handsome.
‘Deny you what ?’ Grey hissed. ‘Pissing off your dad or taking her to bed?’
Max tried to ignore his tone, which made it sound as though she was a ravenous three-headed hell-hound that survived exclusively on Italian penises.
‘What’s the saying?’ Luca pressed his forefinger and thumb into his forehead with an exaggerated squint. ‘Two birds, one ... bone? Stone?’
Grey pinched the bridge of his nose. Max wished there was a way onto the estate that did not involve either of these men.
‘Here,’ Luca said. He held a black matte box in front of Grey.
‘I don’t need a gift,’ Grey said, his eyes flickering briefly to the box like it was a severed hand.
‘Is this or is this not your night off?’ Luca raised an eyebrow.
‘This isn’t a nine-to-five office job I clock in and out of every day,’ Grey replied.
‘Unless’—Luca twisted his ring round his finger—‘we all die.’ His gaze flickered to Max.
‘Exactly,’ Grey said, taking the box, hopefully missing the exchange between her and Luca. ‘ Then , I’ll take a vacation.’
Max tracked his expression as he lifted the lid suspiciously on the box, like it was a scab he wasn’t sure had healed properly. Nothing – she couldn’t read him.
‘It’s a watch,’ Luca said.
‘I have a watch.’ Grey closed the lid like it had tried to bite him.
‘But this is a watch that doesn’t make you look like a grumpy, middle-aged Ben-10,’ Luca said, ‘and you’ll always remember tonight whenever you look at it.’ To indicate what he meant by ‘tonight’, Luca pulled Max into a one-armed hug.
Grey’s face changed right back to its factory setting of homicidal.
Unfortunately, the auctioneer chose that moment to call Luca over, and Max was left under the sweltering lights of the stage and the equally boiling anger of the Barbarani ‘Fixer’.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he hissed, his body blocking her from the phone cameras of the crowd, desperate to get half their forehead in a selfie with Luca.
‘Do you want me to forward you a YouTube video on basic economics for kids?’ Max asked.
‘What did you say to Luca, back there in the hall?’
Max had never understood the expression if looks could kill until now. A weight dropped through her abdomen at the protectiveness he clearly felt for the baby Barbarani. It reminded Max of that snake handler who slept next to his python every night until it ate him.
‘I told him that I hope he knows a good carpenter,’ she whispered, ‘because I’m going to break his fucking bed tonight.’
For some reason she wanted to see that cold, stone face crack.
A muscle twitched in the Fixer’s jaw, his eyes darkening. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.
‘Is that a challenge?’ She tipped her chin up.
‘I’ll make a note that you’ve admitted to premeditated destruction of property,’ he hissed, ‘but I don’t believe that’s what you said to Luca.’
She winked at him. Winked! Her face was glitching, her hardware spiralling into terminal malfunction. When had she ended up so close to him? Thankfully she was saved from the humiliation of existing when a large, warm hand claimed her waist.
‘Come, bella ,’ Luca Barbarani drawled. ‘Time to show you the family jewels.’