Chapter 17
17
Max
‘A minute of your time, Ms Conrad?’
The last time she’d heard that voice, the world had been different. A bomb hadn’t gone off. Greyson hadn’t shown her some part of him he clearly wished she’d died instead of witnessing.
‘Of course.’ Max followed Vittoria Barbarani around the garage where Grey was now inside discussing matters with Jett that she obviously didn’t have the clearance for. Or maybe they were doing whatever it was guys do inside garages together (marvel at mufflers, polish exhaust pipes, watch motorbike porn?).
Although she owned this garage and the rest of the property, Vittoria looked like a doll that had been tossed carelessly into a Barbie Dreamworld she clearly was not manufactured for. Her tangerine kitten heels sank unevenly into the spongy tracks down the immaculately curated driveway, and her black waves of hair, held hostage by tiny silver pins, were breaking free in the afternoon wind. She was barely taller than Max, not that that was a massive feat. She looked most like Luca, with a hint of Frankie in the nose and Nella’s chin. Her posture was all Tomaso.
Vittoria lit a cigarette as she led Max away from the garage to a slight crest where the Barbarani vineyards sprawled out before them, the winter vines strung to the trellises like skeletal prisoners crucified for unspeakable crimes. Max didn’t really smoke anymore, but it was a point of interest that Vittoria didn’t offer her one.
‘How did you know there was a bomb in the backpack?’ she asked directly.
Max shouldn’t be surprised. Vittoria didn’t strike her as the type of woman who had the patience for small talk. Or maybe it was a language barrier – her accent was thicker than Giovanni’s, and Max was sure she’d read somewhere in Kingsley’s articles that Vittoria met Giovanni in Italy, not Australia.
She’d braced for these questions, but she didn’t expect them to come from Vittoria. And now she was on the spot. Grey’s points about the bomb not being Skinner’s style and the connection with Poppy Raven’s death were itching at her. She didn’t want to second-guess herself, or Libby, but Grey had that annoyingly rational air about him. Everything about him was meticulously suspicious – of everyone and everything. She knew it was paining him that he hadn’t recognised the backpack for what it was; it seemed like he prided himself on always being one step ahead of everyone. How could she answer Vittoria in a way that didn’t make Grey seem inadequate?
And at what point had she started to care about not making Greyson Hawke seem inadequate?
Lord help her.
‘It was obviously out of place,’ Max said. ‘I’m trained to recognise these things. I’ve done a stint as an airport security guard, so lone backpacks are my bread and butter.’
Vittoria’s expression gave away nothing. She pressed her lips together, blowing out a thin wisp of smoke. ‘You saved us all.’
‘I did my job.’
‘Your job.’ She ran her tongue over her teeth. Checking for lipstick or a primal canine display of dominance? ‘That Greyson hired you for?’
Sweat prickled between Max’s shoulder blades. ‘That’s right.’
‘You realise you are under contract with the Barbarani family when you conduct business on this property, not Greyson?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Good.’ She tucked a stray curl behind her ear. ‘Because what I’m about to show you is for your eyes only. Not Greyson’s. You are my employee, Ms Conrad.’
Max’s throat went dry as Jackie’s voice breathed down her spine.
‘You can’t tell. You’re my friend in this house, Max, not a cop. You’re my friend and you will not tell anyone.’
Well, she hadn’t told anyone. She’d let her gun and the scar on her jaw do that for her. And she’d lost everything.
But this situation was completely different. Grey was not her friend. He was not her anything. She didn’t owe him loyalty or trust or anything that she’d given Jackie. So why did Vittoria’s demand of secrecy make her feel like her stomach was rotting from the inside? Wasn’t the Barbarani Fixer the family’s greatest confidant? The keeper of their secrets, their lies, their truths? He knew all of their dirty laundry – he was the one who cleaned it – so what could make Vittoria suddenly wary of trusting him? Unless ...
‘You don’t think Greyson had something to do with the backpack, do you, ma’am?’
Vittoria’s lips paused around her cigarette, her mascaraed lashes closed for a second against her cheekbone. ‘He left, did you know that?’ Vittoria said. ‘When he was twenty-one, he joined the army.’
‘I was aware of his previous military appointment, ma’am.’ Max felt her skin tighten, her bones vibrating – she should not be feeling this sense of intoxicating curiosity, not about him .
‘Do you know why he came back?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘My youngest daughter locked herself in a thief-proof cellar – one of Giovanni’s father’s greatest brainwaves.’ Vittoria’s voice turned sour. ‘Emilio was always convinced that someone, namely Antonio La Marca, his nemesis, was trying to steal the recipe to the Barbarani Vino. As you’ve now seen, this property is littered with his secret passageways and traps for thieves. The idea behind most of them was that the thief would be locked in, unable to call for help, and would eventually starve to death. Francesca didn’t realise no one was home to hear her “protest”. To this day I cannot even remember what she was whining about – Concetta made one of her favourite chickens into a soup or a cutlet or something.’ Vittoria waved a dismissive hand, and Max felt a pang of sympathy for Frankie, who couldn’t have been much older than twelve at the time.
‘Thank god the driver’—Vittoria nodded towards the garage where Jett was still inside with Grey—‘came back early and by chance heard her screams. If he hadn’t ...’ Vittoria’s hand fluttered to her chest.
‘That’s why Grey left the army?’ Max asked, her chest tightening. ‘He felt like he should have been there?’
Vittoria surveyed her shrewdly and Max suddenly wished she’d kept that observation to herself. It felt like she’d conceded something. ‘That’s what he told Giovanni’s children,’ she said.
Max baulked at the phrasing . Not ‘the children’, or ‘our children’. Giovanni’s.
Vittoria continued. ‘He lied to them because I asked him to. But he told Giovanni and me the truth. He was dishonourably discharged.’
Dishonourably discharged . The term was leaden and heavy, a chunk of metal in her gut, tearing through her organs. A weight, a shape, that did not fit with what she thought she knew about the Fixer. But then again, what had the character witnesses said about Evan?
A family man. A great guy. Top bloke.
Max knew better than anyone how easily some men could slip into the skin of the Nice Guy. Not that Grey fit the description of ‘nice guy’. Broody Guy, maybe. Everything Annoys Me Guy. Look at All My Stupid Muscles that I Don’t Even Need to Use Guy.
But not Dishonourably Discharged Guy.
What had happened after the bomb went off when Grey had ... gone somewhere? Was that connected to why he was forced to leave the army?
‘Other men might have lied,’ Vittoria said, ‘but Greyson told us the truth. He trusts us. He trusts my husband, but if he wants to keep us safe, I don’t know if he should.’ She paused. ‘Someone put this on my husband’s pillow. Someone let an enemy into our house.’
Vittoria’s hand shook as she took a folded piece of paper from her handbag. Max didn’t recognise the brand so she knew it was probably worth more than her monthly rent on the Freo apartment.
Max tried to stop her hands from matching Vittoria’s as she opened the note.
Forgive us all.
‘That is not my husband’s handwriting,’ Vittoria said, crushing her cigarette under her heel.
‘When did you find this, ma’am?’
‘After.’ Vittoria nodded towards the flat ground Max now knew concealed the secret passageway out of the cellar.
Max did a mental recall of everything Vittoria had said, and everything she hadn’t. ‘You believe someone, who is not your husband or your children, broke into your house and put what looks like a murder-suicide note on your husband’s pillow?’ She tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
Vittoria sniffed. ‘That’s right.’
‘You think this was attempted murder, disguised as a mass suicide?’ Looks like someone’s been swapping Real Housewives of Melbourne for a few too many episodes of CSI: Miami.
‘Do not show this to Greyson. Do I have your word, Ms Conrad? I need you to promise me or I shall have you escorted off this property within the next ten seconds.’
‘I—’
‘You realise what I’m saying, don’t you?’
Max nodded. ‘You’re saying you don’t trust anyone who works for you. But you just said I work for the Barbaranis, so I don’t see how I am different to Greyson. Except that you don’t know me at all.’
Vittoria raised her chin. ‘No one else knows about the note. Whoever wrote it assumed I would be dead, and someone else – the police, perhaps – would find it on Giovanni’s pillow and come to the same conclusion you did. You saw the backpack, you got us out. If you were the one who left the note, why would you have saved us?’
‘But ma’am, you don’t honestly believe Grey—’
‘Greyson is blinded by duty, but he’s also been blinded by something far more dangerous in the past.’ Vittoria licked her teeth again, lips still pursed. ‘Next time you speak to him, perhaps you should ask how Sophie is doing.’
‘Sophie?’ Max’s stomach dropped. The name was familiar, but where had she heard it before? She was certain she hadn’t been introduced to anyone on the property by that name.
Vittoria had already moved on. ‘What I know, Ms Conrad, is that my husband did not write that note, and you did not know there was a bomb waiting for my family in the wine cellar.’
Max drew a shaky breath. She felt the same way she did every time before she used to yell ‘POLICE!’ and burst through a door – never knowing what was on the other side, or if this moment would be the last one she’d ever taste. ‘There’s only one reason you could say with absolute certainty, ma’am, that your husband did not write this note. And that’s if you wrote it yourself.’
Vittoria smirked like Max had drawn a bow without realising Vittoria had a sword hidden behind her back. ‘I know how to hurt my husband, Ms Conrad, and murder would be the last thing on my list.’
I know how to hurt my husband. What the hell did that mean? Max could fill entire castles with examples of how spouses could destroy each other without getting their fingerprints on any sort of weapon. And it wasn’t exactly an airtight alibi.
‘One more thing,’ Vittoria said, her expression blank, ‘the La Marcas will be at the gala tomorrow night. I’ll do my best to ensure my valuables are locked away, but keep an eye on them, would you? Claudia La Marca’s already stolen from me once before.’
Max felt the shift between them, like Vittoria had passed her something in secret, even though they were alone.
Stolen from me. Not stolen from us . Somehow Max knew Vittoria’s phrasing was deliberate.
I know how to hurt my husband.
‘Are you saying your husband—’
Slept with the enemy? Well, the enemy’s wife.
Vittoria surveyed her as though daring her to say it. Her sudden openness made Max wary. Was it Vittoria’s fear for her family’s lives that was forcing this out? ‘Have you ever been married, Ms Conrad?’
The slamming of a door. Tyre marks on the driveway. Damien’s socks still damp in the dryer. A ring in a navy blue box stuffed into a drawer.
Crazy bitch.
‘No, ma’am.’
‘The happiest person in a marriage is the one with the most power. When trust is broken, the one who broke it no longer has the upper hand.’
If Max was reading this right, Claudia La Marca and Giovanni Barbarani had slept together. Which gave three more people a motive to want Giovanni dead.
Matteo La Marca: the wronged husband.
Claudia: the philanderer who wanted her secrets buried.
Vittoria: the vengeful wife.
Max had assumed Skinner had been hired by the La Marcas to kill Giovanni because of money. But love could pull a trigger with equal strength.
Did Vittoria want Max to suspect her of attempted murder? Was this some sort of reverse psychology, trying to get Max onside when really it was Vittoria herself who’d written the note, who’d planted the bomb, who was offering this information to lead Max down a very particular rabbit hole that might in fact be filled with vipers?
And if Max had learnt anything in her career, it was that men who cheated on their wives rarely did it the one time. Where there was smoke, there was fire. And the list of potential husbands who might want Giovanni dead was ablaze in her mind.
Or was Max simply exhausted and reading too much into the situation, and all Vittoria was actually asking was that Max make sure no one went too close to her pearls?
As though sensing her questions, Vittoria said, ‘There are things even Greyson doesn’t know, Ms Conrad.’ She turned and was walking over the lush green hill between them and the mansion when Max heard the scream.