Page 33 of Last Shot

He ignored her. ‘They are always counteracting the balance – they do not like being in debt to one another, good or bad. Peace is kept through that balance. But the problem with a seesaw is that gravity will always force one side down.’

‘So you’re saying if the La Marcas have contracted Skinner to kill Giovanni, then it must be a repayment for something a Barbarani did?’

A vision of the prison TV lounge rushed into her mind at high speed. Libby’s wild eyes as she launched herself at the screen, the shouts of the other inmates, their cellmate Esme’s tattoo of some sort of ball punctured by a knife. She remembered focusing on that tattoo to help ignore Libby’s face as she writhed and thrashed. Esme had grabbed Libby’s legs and Max had hoisted her up by the arms as they tried to shield her from the other inmates ripping her apart for cutting off theFarmer Wants a Wifefinale. But nothing could block out what Libby had screamed, over and over again ...

Max shook off the memory and tried to focus, taking another sip to distract her from the echoes of Libby’s voice.

Grey’s eyes crinkled in a way that suggested she was right, but it physically hurt him to admit it. ‘There is nothing the Barbaranis do that I don’t know about.’

‘Okay.’ She leant in, the wine pulsing through her veins. ‘So what did Luca Barbarani do to me last night?’

He choked on his water. Perhaps Forrest had laced it with razorblades on the advice of his future father-in-law. ‘Unless Matteo La Marca is your boyfriend,’ he said, wiping his jaw, ‘therefore giving the La Marcas reason to care what you and Luca did before you tried to slit his throat with a blunt Swiss army knife, that question is redundant.’

‘The question’s purpose was to prove you don’t know everything the Barbaranis do, thus its non-redundancy.’

‘That’s not a word.’

‘Thus?’ she teased, amazed it came almost effortlessly. ‘Yes, it is. It’s like a connective word in Shakespeare. Didn’t you studyRomeo and Julietin school?’

‘There wasn’t really room for Shakespeare in between Knife Throwing 101 and Strangulation for Beginners at Hit-Man School.’

Did the Fixer just make a JOKE?

He stared at her deadpan. Probably not. He probably did go to Hit-Man School.

‘Why come to Luca? Why not the police?’

‘You said it yourself and so did the articles I read on the way here – they don’t involve the police.’

‘You didn’t know that before the auction though,’ he said as he chewed a tomato from his carbless-Instagram-influencer caprese salad.

She looked down.

‘You were worried they wouldn’t listen to you?’

She couldn’t let him see her face. She shoved a bite of her creamy, cheese-stuffed agnolotti into her mouth.

‘How bad was it?’ he asked.

‘It’s actually pretty good – would have preferred more sauce, though.’

‘Yourcrime,Maxella. How bad was it?’

‘No one calls me Maxella,’ she said. Not anymore. She used to hate her name – her parents had chosen half each from their respective grandmothers. She’d often thought if they ever got divorced she’d have to separate her name – be Max with Mum and Ella with Dad. But they never got divorced. They died and her name stayed whole. But now it felt wrong, in its wholeness, because she wasn’t, after they were gone.

‘The government does. It’s on your licence – there was an R there too.’

‘It stands for “Really good driver”.’

‘It’s a motorcycle licence.’

‘You sureyouweren’t also a detective, Hawke?’

He leaned in. ‘What did you do,’ he asked again, ‘that was so bad your old colleagues have shunned you to the point you can’t even tell them about a suspected murder?’

‘You tell me,’ she said. The wine had stoked a warm flame inside her but now he’d forced fuel down her throat and it had become a raging wildfire of fury.

Keep calm.Her psych’s voice and stupid red glasses were in her head. ‘Surely you read on past my mugshot?’

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