Page 43 of Last Shot

Frankie scampered past him, looking thoroughly annoyed, and slouched beside Nella near the bottom of the staircase.

‘Security,’ Max said.

Tomaso rolled his eyes. Nella looked her up and down, then gave a wink of approval. Max suddenly felt self-conscious – she’d forgotten she was wearing Nella’s clothes. Had Giovanni noticed? Max guessed probably not, but Vittoria might.

Giovanni huffed and then rounded on Frankie. ‘Is this one of your psychotic vegan friends’ idea of a joke?’

Max expected Frankie to cower under her father’s glare. Max definitely would have. To her credit, though, the girl rolled her shoulders back and looked Giovanni square in his toadlike face.

‘Not that this redeems you in any way, but thesangueis actually vegan. Not that I’ll ever drink it. ETR doesn’t care about your wine.’

The knowledge that her short-term memory synapses hadn’t completely disintegrated over the past six months was reassuring: despite everything that had happened between her reading Kingsley’s articles and now, she was still able to recall the name of Frankie’s greenie group: Earth’s True Redeemers. It was small, but it made her feel almost like a cop again.

‘I’ve seen the footage!’ Giovanni roared. ‘You’ve started fires! I had to bail you out of jail!’

‘Greybailed me out of jail!’ Frankie yelled, tears beading.

‘Where do you think he got the money, Francesca?’

All of Max’s police instincts were reacting like this was a critical incident stand-off. She moved to get between Frankie and Giovanni, but a massive hand wrapped around her bicep.

‘Leave it.’ Grey’s breath against her ear made her skin prickle in a way it shouldn’t. He didn’t need to lean that close to her, did he?Did he?

She was delusional. Why had she taken her top off in front of him earlier? Why had she bridged that barrier? All those strategies she’d been working through with her psych – to help her think before she acted – were clearly working justsplendidly.

He probably thought she was an absolute joke.

And what the hell would he say if he knew what she was thinking about when he gave her an order like that? Tonnes of cops –malecops – had spoken into Max’s ear before, during raids or just comparing observations. Never once had it felt like that.

Frankie’s wails broke Max out of her ridiculous thoughts. She was still screaming at Giovanni, he was still screaming back. Nella tried to intervene. Failed. Grey tried. Failed.

Frankie shouted that she was leaving. Giovanni blocked the door.

Tomaso was trying to look at Nella’s ankle, while she reprimanded him for not taking this seriously enough.

Luca’s eyes were glued to his phone, shouting out press quotes about Poppy Raven’s death to anyone who would listen.

Giovanni, between shouts at Frankie, told him to shut the fuck up.

Luca grabbed a wine bottle from the shelf behind him. Max wasn’t sure whether he planned on throwing it at his father or sculling it.

Giovanni was clearly having neither. He launched at the bottle and—

‘Enough!’ Max wasn’t sure what she’d expected Vittoria’s voice to sound like, but it wasn’t like this. Deep, eloquent, frightening. The matriarch of the Barbarani dynasty slanted her eyes like little bullets. From the abrupt silence that followed, it seemed they weren’t used to her making any claim to authority over Giovanni.

‘You want to act likegalline? Pecking each other to death?Bene. I will feed you scraps likegallinethen, for the rest of your lives.’

Max wasn’t sure if it was the threat of chicken food or the shock of the entire situation, but no one yelled after that. Not even Giovanni. They all turned to Grey.

With a flicker of surprise, Max realised this was the first time she’d seen Grey look genuinely worried. With it came the swooping sensation of an elevator dropping too fast.

‘I’m waiting on the coroner’s report,’ Grey said.

No one seemed to think it was shocking that Grey would have access to Poppy Raven’s autopsy results. Who the hellwasthis guy?

‘What’s the point?’ Luca said. ‘The entire country knows it was the Barbarani wine.’

‘It wasnotthe wine,’ Tomaso said through gritted teeth.

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