Page 112 of Last Shot

The owner of the dart gun was stirring. As he turned his head towards her, Max’s heart stopped. Everything started to melt as she realised where she’d seen him before.

It might not mean anything. It could be a coincidence. But she had to get to the othersright now.

The question that had been rolling in her mind like a dazed marble slotted to the front. Why two different weapons? Why not shoot the guards with bullets too, if the plan had been to create chaos?

Max ran from the dining room and slid quickly along the walls, gun first. She kept to the shadows and, when she came to the enormous staircase, ducked down level with the balustrade and crept down as quickly as she dared without stumbling in the dark.

Giovanni’s body still lay where it had fallen. She couldn’t see his eyes or anything else in the dark, but it felt like his ghost watching her. The sight of his crumpled form made her want to toss the gun over the stairs and run through the glass doors leading out to the skeleton vines, shattering the glass like pellets of rain. Run until she was in the woods. Until the Barbarani mansion was just a speck in the distance and the memory of Greyson Hawke and all the Barbaranis were just bruises on her skin that would fade in time.

On the final stair, Max heard voices. Long shadows bled into the ballroom from the hallway. She was out in the open – nowhere to hide. As two hooded figures appeared, Max threw herself beside the body of a guard by the doors. Gun cold in her hand, she held her breath as their footsteps trudged past, ripping and sticking to the floor.

‘All going to plan,’ one of them said. American accent. Southern.

‘Looks like,’ the other replied. Australian.

‘They all in the passage?’

‘Yeah, just got the text through now. They’re all there.’

‘Even ...’

‘Yeah, even Hawke.’

‘I gotta admit, I didn’t think we’d pull it off.’

‘Mmm. Kinda wish it didn’t have to happen like that. Makes me a bit sick.’

‘You know what we’re gaining.’

‘Yeah, but still,wewere told there’d be minimal casualties. The guards weren’t meant to—’

‘Hey.’ The footsteps stopped. Max’s lungs screamed as she held her breath. ‘Remember – this is a long game. This is nothing,nothing, compared to the lives we’re saving.’

The Australian voice was silent. Max desperately wanted them to leave, but at the same time she wanted them to keep talking – to reveal everything that was going on. Who they were. What lives they thought they were saving by murdering the Barbaranis. How this was connected to the poisoned wine and Poppy Raven.

Why she’d been tricked into distracting the Barbaranis with the threat of Skinner.

Eventually, the footsteps ripped away, heading up the stairs. She waited until it was completely silent before she dared to lift her head. She raked through every word she’d stolen from them, searching for anything that would tell her what their plan was.

They’re in the passage ... even Hawke.

Grey and the others were where these murderers wanted them. One of the secret passages. So Grey hadn’t left her. He’d beentaken. Something still didn’t fit – how had she not heard the struggle? But the face of the man whose gun she’d stolen morphed back into her vision, and what she’d thought she’d seen under the other attacker’s hood. A little bubble of a thought popped up – where she’d seen him before.

No. That was ridiculous.

The cold eyes of Emilio Barbarani scowled down at her from his portrait. The men would be back soon.

She had to find this passage. Grey and the others couldn’t have gone far; they’d disappeared so quickly. That meant the entrance to the passageway had to be somewhere here in the ballroom. ‘Where is it?’ she hissed up at the portrait of the old wine maker. He glared back – those dark, olive-like eyes so much like Giovanni’s had been.

Giovanni.

He’dknown where all the passages were – it was probably one of the reasons why he’d always been so blasé about the threat of an attack. If trouble came to his party, he would know exactly how to escape – how to get his family out safely. It meant that whoever was behind this attack had somehow learnt the Barbarani secrets.

Thesecret.

Max looked back up at the portrait again. Emilio’s eyes seemed, impossibly, less angry.

What was it Giovanni had said up on the stairs, when he repeated the words of his father?The secret is in the wine.

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