Page 102 of Last Shot

No point asking Sophie how she knew Max had a story. She probably knew the background scoops on all the guests, had probably been in that mud room herself a few times, with Grey, and the cottage ...

‘None that I was willing to give it up to.’

‘If you ever want to tell your side, Max—’

‘Not interested. Sorry.’

Sophie surveyed her for a beat. ‘He told you.’

‘He didn’t,’ Max said honestly. ‘Vittoria gave me your name, and I guessed the rest.’

Sophie looked over to where Vittoria stood, talking animatedly to a group of women wearing varying shades of pastel. Max had been keeping an eye on Vittoria and found that although she was only ever speaking to her small coven of pastel, her eyes would often flutter over to Claudia La Marca – Matteo’s wife.

‘That tracks,’ Sophie said. ‘Cruella’s always hated me, even before the article.’

Perhaps it was Max’s few sips of sangue on an empty stomach. Perhaps it was the churning, gaping hole inside her that welled deeper every time she scanned the room and Skinner wasn’t there. Perhaps it was something far more primal that had to do with the fact that when she turned her head slightly, she could still catch the scent ofhimon her own collarbone. Either way, the result was, ‘Why did you do it? Run the story about Luca punching Forrest and everything else?’

So really, she was a cat. Pissing on a tree. In someone else’s backyard.

Sophie assessed her with those reporter eyes. Max had always struggled to hate reporters as much as her colleagues had. She understood it: reporters got to package up a bloodstained crime scene into an eight-word headline and move on, while cops had to carry the stench of it home with them, every part of it soaking into their skin, their marriages, their children. But reporters were just trying to do their job too. They had bosses and deadlines breathing down their necks, kids and partners they wanted to keep in their lives. ‘I didn’t realise how hurt he’d be by it,’ Sophie said eventually, the make-up flaking slightly in the corners of her eyes when she crinkled them.

‘Luca?’

‘Greyson. I thought we were just ... well ...’

‘You thought your relationship was casual?’

Sophie ran a hand through her hair. ‘No. I just ... didn’t think he loved me enough to be that betrayed.’

Max felt burning anger towards this woman. Anger she had no right to, but still. Was this why Grey couldn’t trust her? Was this why he’d been so convinced she was working against him from the start? Working with Raphael for the La Marcas? Keeping Vittoria’s secrets from him? Sophie was clearly smart enough to write well-researched and nuanced articles, but she’d been completely dense about Grey. Max had known him a few days and she could see exactly why Sophie’s betrayal had scarred him so much. She’d been his. The one thing he had that didn’t belong to the Barbaranis. And she’d betrayed his trust, for a story.

Sophie seemed to sense her unasked question. ‘I was desperate to prove myself at work. I was the only woman under thirty who’d climbed the ladder that far. I was working so hard, sleepless nights, diet of Red Bull and espresso, for this promotion. It was a race between me and this other guy who was family friends with the boss, you know the type?’

Max nodded. Even though she was struggling to find sympathy for this woman, she’d worked in a male-dominated industry pretty much her entire professional life. As much as she didn’t want to, she got it.

‘My mum was sick too.’ Sophie swallowed. ‘I just – I wasn’t thinking properly. I think I’d convinced myself that Greyson and I ... we’d never—’

‘It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me—’ But secretly Maxwascurious about the story Sophie published about the Barbaranis and the party where the boy fell from the balcony. Something told her there was more to it. Part of her was also perversely curious about this goddess-like woman who’d once slept next to Grey. Who’d kissed him hello in the morning and goodnight in the evening. Who’d held his trust, and then smashed it up like a child’s piñata.

Sophie traced a finger along her eyebrow. ‘I didn’t realise what had actually happened. I didn’t know Greyson had been the one holding that kid when he ...’

‘Jumped?’

Sophie nodded. ‘That’s what the witnesses said. He was high, drunk. They said he’d been yelling that he was an angel, that he could fly. I didn’t know it was Greyson who’d caught him, who held him until ...’ She trailed off, eyes glistening. ‘I never knew how much it was going to hurt him. I didn’t think I meant that much to him. For what it’s worth, I had the story pulled – but the damage was done.’

Max paused her next sip as realisation struck her.

‘You could have written that it was the Barbaranis’ Fixer holding on to him before he fell. At the same party where Luca punched Forrest. That kind of story would have been the difference between busting a group of teenagers for a bag of weed in their car versus taking down an international ice ring – excuse the cop metaphor. You could have made your career.’

Sophie folded her arms, champagne glass tilted at an angle at which Max would definitely have spilled half of it, because she wasn’t a living, breathing freaking moon-goddess with legs up to her neck. ‘Guess I didn’t have the guts.’

‘You were protecting him.’

Sophie sipped her champagne.

‘You should tell him,’ Max said. ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever protected him before. It’s always beenhisjob.’

Sophie looked her up and down. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

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