Page 125 of Last Shot

‘But we visited ...’ Max said. ‘She must not have recognised Grey. I told her he drove me there – I think she assumed he was Jett, the driver.’

‘Greyson has always used his invisibility as a weapon.’ Raphael was now out of the darkness. Max could see both his glittering jewel eyes and the sharp lines of his manicured beard. He smelled like smoke and cedar wood – a demon rising from the depths of Hell. His voice trailed down her neck as he bent low enough to whisper in her ear, even though they were the only ones still in the hidden passageway. ‘As you say, the Barbaranis now owe me, Maxella. Be sure you remind them of that. I’ll collect my debt when I see fit.’

Max didn’t let herself breathe until Raphael’s tall, slim form had slipped back through the shadows. Then she sunk to the floor and cried like she had the night her parents died.

42

Grey

Vittoria saw Grey before he had the chance to backtrack down the hall. It was two days after the gala and he’d just left Nella, Tom and Luca curled up on the couch together with re-runs ofFriendsblaring in the fourth-floor TV room. At eleven p.m. he’d figured no one else would be anywhere near Giovanni’s office. Mainly because Grey felt like the only ghost still haunting the mansion full of living, breathing bodies.

‘Still don’t believe her, Greyson?’ Vittoria’s voice blew through the crack in the office door like the smoke from one of the cigarettes she smoked every time she felt like eating chocolate. At least that’s what she’d told him. But that was probably a lie too, wasn’t it? She was sitting in the window reading nook, a thin silhouette against the glass, one knee propped up with a flute of sangue resting on it.

‘How did you know it was me?’ he asked.

‘None of the others set foot near this place when he was alive. His death’s not going to change that.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

‘Come in, child. Snoop away.’

He knew better than to disobey an order disguised as a welcome. The door opened with a groan but Vittoria didn’t move. Clouds of cigarette smoke wrapped around her, making her seem incorporeal.

‘I didn’t mean to snoop.’

‘What was it you were doing, then? See, I thought you’d come here to prove Francesca wrong andsnoopat Giovanni’s will to make sure he hadn’t named you one of his beneficiaries.’

‘Vittoria, I—’

‘Take it!’ She waved a document at him, her eyes not moving from the window where the night rested cool and still, as it had since the gala, as though the weather was being respectful with its own mourning period.

Greyson’s fingers shook as he did what he was told, as he always did when it was a Barbarani telling him. The document was titled ‘The Last Will and Testament of Giovanni Barbarani’ and every last penny of his dynasty was to go to his wife, Vittoria Antonella Barbarani, and his children: Tomaso Barbarani, Antonella Barbarani, Luca Barbarani, Francesca Barbarani.

And Greyson Hawke.

He traced his own name like he was trying to brush it off – a mistake, a bit of spilled tea tarnishing the otherwise pristine page. He wiped the tears before they blotched the paper.

Vittoria gave a hollow laugh as she took another drag from her cigarette. ‘I told him not to do it,’ she said, ‘and he did it anyway. Smug bastard.’

‘Vittoria, I don’t want any of your money – you have to know, I never knew—’

‘Oh, I know.’ She turned to him, her eyes bright and sharp. ‘I made sure of that.’

Greyson felt his knees buckle. He grabbed the back of Giovanni’s leather chair to steady himself.

Vittoria continued. ‘People say many things about my late husband, but one thing Giovanni truly understood was honour. He was anhonourableman, Greyson, you know that, don’t you?’

Grey swallowed.

‘Honourablein business,honourablein the way he undermined the La Marcas,honourablein the way he fucked his children’s nanny while her husband slept in their cottage. So honourable that when that nanny fell pregnant, he came clean – confessed the whole thing. But not an apology – Giovanni Barbarani has never apologised for anything in his life. No, no, he felt like he was entitled to your mother, because she lived in his house, because she raised his children with far more maternal instinct than I could ever muster. He was entitled to her and therefore’—she laughed again—‘entitled to her son.’ She dipped her cigarette in the glass and they both watched it fizzle out in a dark cloud of wine and tobacco. ‘He wanted to raise you as his own, did you know that? Wanted you to live in this mansion and play with my children like you were all the same. When he told me that was the way it was going to be, I told him if he brought his filthy whore’s spawn into my house, then I would suffocate you in your sleep.’

Grey didn’t bother to ask if Vittoria had been bluffing; he knew the answer.

‘So, we agreed that your whore of a mother would raise you on our property, but you would never be one of my children. You would never be the same as them, and nevereverlearn of your true parentage. Now, whether or not your stepfather knew the truth remains a mystery, but I suspect, considering how he raised you to believe all women who were cunning and beautiful like your mother would rip your heart out one day, he likely suspected.’

‘It wasyou.’ Grey’s throat was dry and cracked. Every word felt like a pulled splinter. ‘You made her leave.’

Vittoria tucked up her legs, looking almost childlike, the waxing moonlight smoothing the wrinkles on her face missed by her Botox. ‘Women have a way of understanding each other that men will never truly grasp. I told her I couldn’t guarantee her son’s safety if I ever suspected she and Giovanni were running around behind my back again. I gave her enough money to make a bank robber fall weak at his knees. I told her if she left and never came back, then you would live. I would not let my anger get the better of me.’

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