Chapter 38
38
Max
‘How are you alive?’ Max grabbed Vittoria’s shoulders and basically assaulted the woman just to make sure she was actually there, actually breathing.
Vittoria pawed Max away, her breath hot and heavy with sangue. ‘There obviously wasn’t enough in that dart to kill me.’
Max didn’t miss the pride in Vittoria’s voice. ‘They weren’t aiming for you,’ she said, grabbing the woman’s thin upper arm. Even though she doubted those bumbling idiots out there would find the lever in a hurry, they were still bumbling idiots with guns and she wasn’t about to put all her faith in the structural integrity of Emilio Barbarani’s fifty-year-old walls.
They weren’t aiming for you.
The face of the hooded guy whose gun she’d stolen swelled in her mind. Max was now sure she knew where she’d seen him before: in one of the videos she’d watched on the drive from Perth to the Barbarani mansion. He’d covered himself in blood and stood inside a ribs and burgers restaurant in Perth, holding hands with Frankie Barbarani.
Frankie Barbarani, who had been the true target of his gun.
Frankie Barbarani, whose voice Max could hear right now through the thin gold lines of a closed door at the end of the tunnel she and Vittoria were stumbling down.
‘ Step away from her, Greyson, or I’ll shoot your little girlfriend. I can hear her outside the door .’
Vittoria stiffened beside Max at the coldness in her daughter’s voice. Max’s mind spun like a too-fast treadmill she’d never match the speed of, never pull all the loose pieces rattling round in her mind together.
Vittoria did not want me to see the note because she knew I would recognise the handwriting.
‘It’s a trap,’ she started. Too late.
The door wedged open, and Max saw a slice of what lay beyond it for a nanosecond, before an enormous form squeezed the air out of her, dragging her into the room.
Bed. No window. Frankie. Gun. Grey.
From the kick of heels and Italian swear words beside her, the same thing was happening to Vittoria. Max heard the door slam again and this time, as her captor released her, Max was able to take in everything before her – like she was watching a tsunami from the beach with nowhere to run.
Skinner, on the bed, hands, feet and mouth bound. Stained white button-down shirt cut open to reveal a burned, twisted patch of skin the same size and shape as an old heart-shaped tattoo. Nella, Luca, Tom and Jett in the same position, writhing like snakes impaled on a stick.
‘Max, what the hell are you—’
‘Shut up.’ Frankie held the gun in two hands, pointing it in a firm line at Grey. Her arms didn’t shake despite the size of the thing. She was still in Max’s dress, the straps falling down her upper arms. Her face was hard but expressionless.
Had Max actually been hit by the gunmen at the top of the stairs? Was she still lying on the cold floor of the entrance hall, having the strangest nightmare?
‘Francesca,’ Vittoria started.
‘Stop talking.’ Frankie kept the gun on Grey but someone else, a guy with green hair under a black hoodie, trained his piece on Vittoria. Quinton. Max thought she’d seen a sliver of green under the attacker’s hood back in the dining room.
Kudos to her.
Including Frankie, three people had weapons – Quinton, who had been the one to bring Max into the room and the dark-haired guy who’d brought Vittoria, now standing over the bed. When he locked eyes with her, Max’s stomach dropped.
Raphael. So that bastard had been in on this whole thing from the start. A pool of blonde hair drew Max’s eyes to the ground. Ariana La Marca lay motionless on the floor by a second door, leading through the opposite wall. There was no visible blood, but Max couldn’t tell from this far away if the girl was breathing.
‘Frankie.’ Max had never been trained in hostage negotiation, but she’d watched the leader of a tactical response team do it with a boy who’d poured petrol on himself and his girlfriend at a Caltex station and was flicking a lighter on and off, trying to muster the courage to drop it onto himself. The tactics hadn’t worked. The guy had dropped the lighter and both had died in the ambulance. ‘What’s going through your mind?’
‘You want to know what’s going through my mind?’ Frankie smiled at Max like she’d been asked the question on a current affairs show and was repeating it back to check she’d got it right.
‘I do,’ Max said, raising her hands so Frankie didn’t get spooked that she was going to go for a weapon. She’d left the dart gun at the entrance to the secret passageway. Keep your hands where they can see them. ‘I’m a little bit confused at the moment.’
‘Right?’ Frankie said. ‘But what’s going through my mind is it fucking worked . It’s finally happening. It was all worth it.’ She glanced at Max conspiratorially, still smiling.
Max swallowed and did her best to return the smile.
Keep them talking. That’s all she remembered. Don’t rely on logic. Lean into emotion.
Max nodded. ‘It’s certainly happening. You fooled me, you fooled Greyson, you fooled your family. How long have you been planning this?’ Whatever the fuck this is.
Tomaso made a strangled noise from the bed in protest at Max’s question. Raphael shoved a gun nozzle above his ear. Tom fell silent.
‘I recognised your friend from the video,’ Max continued. ‘That dart was meant for you, wasn’t it? But your mum took it instead? Was that meant to take the suspicion off you?’
Frankie’s eyes widened a little. Surprise? ‘It was filled with a combo of midazolam, detomidine and butorphanol. It’s used by wildlife vets like Quinton for tranquilising animals.’ She was still pointing the gun at Grey, who would not look at Max. Was he angry she was here? Had the watch been left by accident – fallen off his wrist as Frankie led them through the door to what they thought would be safety? Or did he think Max was going to fuck this up, like she’d fucked up with Evan and Jackie?
‘Not enough to hurt a human but enough to knock ’em out for a good fifteen minutes or so,’ Quinton added.
Max hoped that’s what the guards had been given too.
Nella tried to scream through her gag. Max remembered her wild eyes, her blue nails, stabbing at Quinton’s chest.
‘I was meant to take the hit. Quinton was gonna carry me out and meet in here, but Mum screwed that part up.’
By sacrificing herself for you.
Max tried to focus on the words coming out of Quinton and Frankie while looking at both doors. She was Alice in fucking Horrorland. Did she choose the door she’d come from – the known poison? Or the mystery one? ‘Was that what you gave to Arnold too?’
Frankie’s eyes flickered to Nella. ‘He killed a bird,’ Frankie said. ‘I saw the feathers on his face in the hot spring. And it’s not the first time he’s done it! Cats are not native here. I warned Nella about him. I injected him with a horse tranquiliser so Quinton would know exactly what antidote to give him.’
‘Which was what Nella was confronting you about tonight,’ Max said, turning to Quinton, keeping Frankie in her periphery. ‘She called the real Bindi Bindi vet and asked her about the drug you gave Arnold. Eliza would have known it was an antidote to horse tranquiliser. A pretty good guess on your part, unless you already knew exactly what Arnold had been given.’
Nella was nodding vigorously, her screams strangled in her throat as she bucked against her binds.
Frankie chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘I needed Quinton here tonight, without anyone asking questions. I knew Nella or someone would insist he came to the gala if he saved Arnold. I didn’t like hurting Arnold, just like I didn’t like cutting the brakes in Tom’s car, but I don’t expect any of you to believe that, because you never do, you never believe me! You never even hear me, do you? When I was eleven and stuck in that cellar, you didn’t hear me then, and you don’t hear me when I’m telling you your planes and your cars and your clothes are killing the fucking planet! You. Just. Won’t. Listen!’
‘The car,’ Grey croaked. ‘That was you ?’
‘ Billionaires account for a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person ,’ Max repeated Frankie’s words back to her. ‘This has got something to do with your environmentalist group, Earth’s True Redeemers, right?’
Frankie drew herself up taller. ‘The car was a mistake, I realise that now. Esme and the others showed me that’s not what ETR’s about. They don’t commit murder .’
‘Esme?’ Max felt like a glass slipping out of someone’s soapy hand, that moment just before it smashes on the floor.
‘She founded ETR,’ Frankie said. ‘She’s in prison at the moment.’
‘I know,’ Max said.
Edie R. ETR.
Libby Johnston was not brought up in a world where it mattered how sharply you pronounced your ‘t’s like the Barbaranis were. Libby was from Max’s world, and Max should have realised Libby hadn’t been talking to her visitor about someone named Edie – they’d been referencing Frankie’s environmentalist organisation. The organisation apparently run by Libby and Max’s shared cellmate, Esme.
Frankie’s tattoo – the earth with the dagger, the connection that Max had been trying to make this whole time every time she saw Frankie’s arm ... She’d had that feeling that there was something she should know, something she’d missed. It was the same tattoo Esme had – the one Max’s face had been shoved into in the TV room as they fought against the other women who wanted Libby dead for ruining the finale.
Max looked at Grey, who nodded, his jaw set, eyes hollow. ‘I had someone look into all of Libby’s prison contacts. Esme led the protest that killed three people at the Australind abattoir.’
Max had known Esme’s burns were from a fire, and that the fire she’d set had killed people, but she’d followed Libby’s advice of never asking why, because she was too blind, too fucking trusting of an older woman who saw Max as nothing but a motherless mark. The protest Esme was locked away for had to be the one Frankie had told Max she hadn’t gone to because she’d been waiting for Nella to bail her out for the earlier rally.
Frankie, who always wore baggy clothes. Who had short hair and would not run the risk of being recognised as Giovanni Barbarani’s troublemaking daughter in the Semperdom Women’s Prison visiting room. The ‘boy’ in the tracksuit.
Libby and Frankie. Working together.
Max couldn’t look at Grey.
Find the emotion , she told herself. Like looking for the right wire to cut on a bomb, a shard of glass in a deep wound.
‘Okay, so ETR doesn’t commit murder,’ Max said. ‘So why did they shoot your dad?’
Frankie raised her eyebrows and, to Max’s surprise, her gaze flickered to her siblings, Jett and Skinner, all of whom had stopped struggling. ‘Oh?’ Frankie’s mouth made an exaggerated O shape. ‘ Now everyone wants to listen? Now everyone cares about ETR’s mission?’
‘Tell us, Frankie, we’re listening,’ Max said, eyes fixed on her.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ the youngest Barbarani said, her eyes flickering between them.
‘What am I doing?’
‘You think you’re going to distract me or keep me talking until help arrives. But no one’s coming to help you. I made sure of it.’
‘I know,’ Max said, ‘but it’s like you said, isn’t it? No one listened before. That’s why you messed with Tom’s car, right? So people would listen?’
Frankie nodded.
‘What does ETR want with your family, Frankie? I know you were talking about Australia becoming carbon-neutral by ...’ Max tried to push her mind back to the sounds of Quinton’s ute and Nella’s sobs over Arnold as Frankie had tried to explain ETR’s mission, but Max had been too caught up in her fury at Grey to pay attention—
‘It’s quite simple,’ Grey said. ‘Earth’s True Redeemers have always had the one ideology: money equals environmental change. ETR believe there’s already enough global capital to finance the actions required to stop climate change. But that wealth is currently in the hands of a small percentage of the population. They need big investors, big donors to limit global warming to two degrees within the next five years and transition to a low-carbon global economy.’
‘You listened?’ Frankie’s eyes were wide, staring at Grey like he was a golden retriever that had just learnt to fetch.
‘I researched,’ Grey corrected. ‘It’s my job.’
Frankie’s mouth tightened. ‘Your job, yeah, well, you’re right – mostly.’
‘Some corners of the internet are aligning ETR with something else though, aren’t they?’ Grey said. ‘Eat The Rich?’
Frankie rolled her shoulders. ‘That why you wanted me back here? You worried I’m being corrupted?’
‘Someone’s gotten in your ear, Frankie. Whether it’s this Esme woman or Libby Johnston or both, it doesn’t matter – you can’t possibly think that your inheritance from killing your dad’s going to get you enough money to make Australia carbon-neutral. You know this is insane, right? This can’t work.’
‘They’ve done it before,’ Frankie said quietly. ‘I know it sounds insane. But nothing has ever changed the world that didn’t sound a little insane at first.’ She tightened her grip on the weapon. ‘I’m not an armchair activist. I’m not an idealist making cutesy Canva squares with save the planet hashtags, I’m a warrior. A soldier. And sometimes soldiers have to kill in the fight for their country. And I’m fighting for the entire planet .’
No one was moving. It was like they were corpses already. There was no way out. Max had no weapon, no exit. The only person she knew was not working with Frankie was being held at gunpoint and had proven to her countless times that he was loyal to this family. If Grey could think of a way out of this that involved saving Nella and the others and leaving Max with a bullet in the head, he’d do it, she was sure of it.
In this room full of people, she was on her own.
‘Climate change is political, Max,’ Frankie continued. ‘Poverty is political. The earth doesn’t need bleeding hearts, it needs money. The future of the human race is literally on the line, and my father wants to build a fucking hotel? Do you know what my family’s fortune could do if it was invested into green energy? Into making Australia carbon-neutral?’
‘Frankie,’ Max elongated her name as slowly as she dared, ‘that can still happen. No one else needs to get hurt.’
‘They do.’ Frankie smiled at her family, like she was apologising for cutting in front of them in a line. ‘I’m not na?ve, Max. This is the only way to do it. And it’s not just about Dad. I need the whole fortune to come to me, and for that to happen, they all have to die. It’s a small price to pay – the deaths of six people to save seven billion. If someone knew what was going to happen when Hitler came to power, like we know our planet is dying, and they had to kill six Nazis to stop the Holocaust, they’d do it, wouldn’t they? You’d do it.’
‘Your family aren’t Nazis, Frankie. Your inheritance can’t solve the entire planet’s problems.’
‘You’ve got no idea,’ Frankie whispered, ‘what I can do.’
POP.
A gun went off. Max’s lungs crystallised, then shattered through her, piercing her other organs, cutting her breath.
Frankie had just shot the floor. ‘One girl can change the world,’ she said, turning to her right. ‘Do it now.’
Frankie’s words were for Raphael, who still hadn’t looked in Max’s direction.
‘ No! ’ The moan came from Nella, strangled behind the cloth around her mouth. She kicked and thrashed against Raphael. Quinton went to help but as he tried to grab her legs, Jett threw himself at the vet, his hands, feet and jaw still bound. His body crashed into Quinton with enough force to send him stumbling backwards, but Jett fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Quinton’s boot nailed his neck to the concrete floor but still Jett bucked and fought – the one word, the one sound he’d been trying to strangle out of his throat clear to Max now.
Nella.
‘You do anything to stop them,’ Frankie said, watching Grey’s eyes move from Jett to Nella, to Luca and even Skinner, who was lying next to what Max recognised as the plate of food Raphael had snuck through the gala, ‘and I shoot them, now. Then I shoot her .’
Max felt Frankie’s eyes on her.
Nice try. He doesn’t care if you shoot me.
‘Don’t test me, Greyson,’ Frankie said. ‘You know what I’m capable of. What I did to Dad.’
‘Francesca ...’ Vittoria didn’t struggle against Quinton as he dragged her towards Raphael and the others. Her mouth stretched open at her youngest daughter like a wound that wouldn’t close.
Did Vittoria know it was Frankie’s handwriting on the note? Had she been trying to protect her daughter while simultaneously desperate for Max to stop her plan from coming to fruition?
‘Five,’ Max said, before the shock could completely settle. There was nothing left. She’d failed. But her mouth was set on her original plan – keep Frankie talking.
‘What?’ Frankie rubbed her nose, her eyes tracking her mother’s movement as she inched closer towards the door.
‘Five people, Frankie. There’s five people left in your family. You said six.’
Frankie rolled her eyes, but this time turned to her mother. ‘Am I seriously the only one who knows?’
Max looked at Vittoria, who was sandstone white, her eyes fixed on Frankie. ‘How did you ...’ Vittoria’s shaking, veiny hand grabbed at her chest like she was trying to rip her own heart out. She started to whisper what sounded like a prayer or a curse in Italian.
Her eyes weren’t on Frankie.
Or Nella. Or Tomaso. Or Luca.
Max knew in that moment what it was about the portrait of Emilio Barbarani that wouldn’t let her go. His jaw.
The jaw of the Barbaranis’ Fixer.
Max locked eyes with Frankie. ‘Greyson’s your brother.’