Chapter 45
Estella stood shakily in the carpark of the police station.
She had no phone; Yolanda had pocketed it.
And yet, somehow, here she stood, sipping on the sweet night air, quite sure she’d never breathe freedom like this again.
She was going to prison, that was now certain, but she had one last chance on this earth.
She tilted her head back and gazed at the moon, three-quarters full, perfect.
“What the fuck happened in there?” Sasha demanded. “How are you not behind bars right now?”
“Can you drive me?” Estella asked. “Please?” she managed to add, at Sasha’s glare.
“Will where I’m dropping you implicate me?”
“To a hotel,” Estella promised. “That’s all.”
Once they were on the road, Sasha turned to her, fury and curiosity warring in her voice. “If you want me to represent you, you have to keep me in the loop. What the hell did you just show Detective Markos?”
“Receipts,” Estella said. “Tonight I bankrupted the Florellis. Every dirty cent I could find got diverted out of their accounts.”
“To where?” Sasha’s knuckles went white on the wheel. “Oh fuck, I shouldn’t be driving you anywhere. You have a massive target on your back. I have a child, Estella!”
“I know,” Estella agreed tightly. “I’m a walking dead woman.
But I swear to you, Sasha, it won’t be tonight.
They’re in total chaos. Bruna implicated and gone, Alessia responsible, and missing.
They got news of a betrayer in the ranks; they lost a ton of significant product in the warehouse explosion and I don’t even know who died in that carpark tonight.
That’s not even counting the fact they won’t be able to accept that their money is really gone.
They’re chasing so many tails they won’t even know their heads from their arses—”
“Where did you put the money, Estella?!”
“It’s rerouted through a series of accounts overseas. Then a bunch of laundering networks. Then it’s gone to…” At some point in her diatribe Estella had started smiling, and now she could barely get the word out around the intensity of her smugness. “Charity.”
“Charity?” Sasha sounded like she was wheezing. “Please. I don’t fucking think so.”
“Domestic violence, anti-trafficking, drug outreach… they’ll all wake up in a few weeks, once the immediate heat has died down, with some very generous anonymous donations.” Estella couldn’t stop grinning at the thought. “Luciano’s finally doing something good with his fucking life.”
“That’s why Yolanda let you go? She thinks you’re fucking Robin Hood now?”
“She let me go because I’ve got one more evil fucking crime family to take down,” Estella said, as her smile died. “The Grants.”
Estella paced her hotel room like a caged animal.
She knew she couldn’t go home tonight, or ever, actually.
The Florellis may be in utter disarray; between Estella, Alessia and Bruna, they’d been mortally wounded on every front.
Bankrupt and turning on each other, key players taken out, Luciano’s wife and granddaughter on the run.
Worst of all, now that their money had vanished all the very bad people they owed would be coming after them.
Luciano’s lifespan had contracted down to weeks, at most, of that she was sure.
Of course, Yolanda and her taskforce were circling them too— the evidence on Estella’s phone would send a lot of people to prison.
Desperate people would make desperate mistakes; there was no coming back from this, whether the Florellis accepted that or not.
Anyone with a thought to spare would have vengeance on their minds, and the leader of the Grants would be front and centre.
No matter, she just needed to stay alive for one last night.
Sasha had been shocked into making one call for her. And now, Estella could only wait. Finally, the phone in her room rang and she snatched it up.
“Florence.”
“I knew you could do it.” The older woman’s voice came down the phone, victorious. “Look at you, alive and free! I heard the fucking Florellis are finished.”
“Alessia—” Estella tumbled over her own urgent words. “We got separated. She’s out there, somewhere.”
There was a terrifying pause on the line, and a younger voice came down the line.
“I’m here,” said Alessia softly. “Florence found me.”
Estella, quite insensibly, burst into tears.
“She’s fine,” Florence reassured her. “We’ll get her to Bruna as soon as the dust settles.”
“Ava and Violetta.” Estella’s voice was shaking. “The cops know where they are. You need to get word.”
“On it,” said Florence grimly. She hung up the phone and Estella stared at it in defeat.
Fuck! She had no way to contact her, again.
She could only hold fire, waiting to see if she’d call back.
Jesus christ. She cursed herself for not memorising anyone’s numbers; what a stupid reason to get hamstrung now!
She called reception to get Sasha’s listed number, but it was only the line to her office.
Sasha was home for the night, with her daughter, probably scared for her life.
Estella had a thousand things to do and no one to help her execute the plan.
It took a while before, to her dread, she remembered that she did, in fact, know one number off by heart.
“Well, darls,” drawled Cheryl, “this is a fucking pickle, isn’t it?”
Her mother-in-law sat in Estella’s hotel suite, knocking back the bottle of chardonnay she’d taken from the mini-fridge.
She’d commandeered the small sofa, her feet kicked up on the coffee table.
She had the drink in one hand and vape in the other, the stench of haunted fruit exhaling into the recycled air despite Estella opening the windows as far as they’d creak out on the twenty-third floor.
“Listen, Cheryl,” Estella said, as direct as she’d ever been with this jagged glass shard of a woman. “Just give it to me straight. Are you with me or not?”
Cheryl took a long inhale, relaxing back onto the sofa like she’d happily chat all night.
“Always knew you were trouble, from the minute you blew in the door. It’s finally almost bloody worth it for what you did to the Florellis tonight, I tell you what.”
“I’ve been waiting a long time for that.” Estella couldn’t sit down, instead perching one hip on the edge of the stiff hotel armchair in a simulacrum of patience, waiting to find out if it had been an impossible mission to try to build allegiance with Mike’s mother.
“You should have been in charge a long time ago,” Cheryl said. “Never send a man to do a woman’s job.”
“Th-thank you.” Estella was so surprised at the compliment she actually stuttered.
“You’re a piece of work,” Cheryl said. “Sounds like you’re going to fucking jail.”
Estella sucked in a long breath. Cheryl didn’t sound exactly cut up about this.
She wondered, not for the first time, what this woman had on someone very high up in power that kept her free.
Cheryl’s rap sheet had to be longer than all her limbs stacked end to end.
“Last night of freedom,” Estella said, trying not to tap her foot. “It’s now or never, do or die.”
“What are they going to do you for?”
“Aside from absolutely everything?” Estella didn’t have the time to waste on this.
And besides, Cheryl had been double-crossing and selling out secrets for favours since before Estella was born; she was about as trustworthy as a venomous snake.
Cheryl was jiggling her leg though, waiting, and Estella was fresh out of options.
“They want me for basically every Florelli murder since 2015,” she revealed.
“Lucca and Alessandro,” Cheryl said instantly. “Mike gave you that as a birthday present.” She sounded almost fond.
“I didn’t ask him for that! He did it for his own damn reasons, showing off his new power. Scared the shit out of me.”
“Oh, come on.” Cheryl chugged back another mouthful of her wine. “They were fucking monsters; you know what they did to your mother.”
“I’m not sad they’re dead, and I hope they fucking suffered. But their deaths weren’t about my mother. Mike never even met her.”
“Who else do they like you for?”
Estella scoffed. “Elio and Vincenzo.”
“Ha!” Cheryl laughed out loud, then gurgled her hacking smoker’s cough. “Look at you, little miss. Avenging your father’s death, huh?”
“I wouldn’t lift a finger to avenge that man.
It’s his damn fault we were ever in the Florelli’s bullseye in the first place.
They were revenge killings ordered by Mike, drug turf bullshit.
Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas. Try telling that to Yolanda though.
According to her I’ve been pulling strings for the Grant family before I even finished primary school. ”
“Don’t give me that innocent bystander bullshit.
” Cheryl turned flint hard, her softened wine edges disappearing in an instant.
“Look where you ended up. You bewitched that boy of mine, and you did it for a reason. Used him for protection, used him to manoeuvre yourself into power. Used that power when you finally got it to get your revenge. I knew it from the fucking beginning, that’s why I wanted you dead. ”
Estella met her eyes. This reckoning had been a long time coming, but if this was going to be her last night free on earth, she didn’t have anything left to fear from this woman. She’d be a target in jail whether Cheryl sicced friends on her or not.
“Say what you want to say to me, Cheryl.”
“Always do, darls. You used my boy, and you fucked around on him. That lawyer prank of yours could have sent him down for life.”
“I think you know that I paid for that.” Her voice wobbled as the sick sense she’d had of living forever in hell threatened to return. “Severely. For years.”
Cheryl looked at her for a long time. “Did you kill him?”