Playing Dead

by Jessie Keane

  It was only when she was passing Cara’s bedroom door that she heard the grunts and moans coming from inside. She paused. The door was slightly ajar. She knew she shouldn’t, but she peeked inside and had to stifle a gasp.

  There was a couple across the room beside the big line of fitted wardrobes, a man facing away from Annie, holding up a woman whose legs were wrapped around his waist. His trousers were down around his ankles and she could see his nude buttocks clenching and unclenching as he thrust hurriedly into the woman, each thrust pounding out a hard beat on the wardrobes behind her.

  The woman was Cara.

  ‘You hot little bitch,’ he was groaning out, panting and pushing at her like she was a blow-up doll.

  Cara’s response was about the same as he’d get from a doll, come to that. She was almost grimacing, staring blank-eyed over his shoulder, as if . . . as if she didn’t want this but couldn’t bring herself to say no.

  Annie stood there, frozen in shock – and then Cara’s eyes met hers through the crack in the door.

  Annie stepped back, embarrassed to have been caught spying. She quickly walked on along the hall to her own room, her mind wiped clean of all but the startling realization that Cara was playing away. The man between her legs wasn’t Rocco, her husband. It was Fredo, the driver.

  She wasn’t even surprised when there was a tap on the door an hour later. She’d been lying on the bed, half dozing, and now she got up and went and answered it. Cara stood there, her expression guarded.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’ Annie stepped back. Cara walked into the master suite, straight over to the window seat. She sat down. Annie came over and stood there, watching her.

  ‘Look,’ said Cara, ‘it’s not what you think.’

  Annie shrugged and folded her arms.

  ‘Don’t give me that shit,’ she said flatly. ‘And don’t even take the trouble to explain. You don’t have to. All I would suggest is, if you want to fuck the help, at least shut the door.’

  Cara’s eyes grew spiteful. ‘And what would you know about anything? You had a great man in my father. You would never have had to look elsewhere.’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing?’ Annie eyed her stepdaughter speculatively.

  This was almost the longest conversation they’d ever had. And Cara had sought her out. She’d certainly never done that before. And thinking back . . . Annie remembered Cara coming up the stairs at the Montauk house, looking shattered. And then on the day of Lucco and Daniella’s wedding, Cara had been clearly unhappy, and Fredo had been watching her with a gloating gleam in his eye. If the girl was enjoying the excitement of a clandestine affair, shouldn’t she at least look happy about it?

  Cara stared at the floor. ‘I’m not happy with Rocco. I told Papa so.’

  Annie was intrigued despite her dislike. She sat down beside Cara.

  ‘And what did Papa say?’ she asked.

  Now it was Cara’s turn to shrug. ‘Oh, nothing very much.’

  ‘If you were unhappy, I can’t believe that Constantine wouldn’t have suggested something to remedy the situation.’

  Cara looked up, into Annie’s eyes. ‘He was too preoccupied – with you,’ she spat.

  Well, she’d always known that Cara resented her. No big news there. She stood up. So much for the sisterhood.

  ‘So what do you want me to say?’ Annie asked. ‘You’re an adult. Adults sort their own problems out.’

  Cara’s mouth opened but she bit back whatever words were about to tumble out. She looked away. Then she stood up. ‘Look, I just . . . I don’t want you telling anyone, Aunt Gina or Alberto or Lucco, about this.’

  ‘Why would I? It’s your business.’

  ‘All right then.’ Cara still looked uneasy. Annie felt she wasn’t getting the full story here; and looking at Cara’s closed, uncommunicative face, she doubted she ever would. And, come to that, did she care? Answer: no.

  Chapter 54

  There were summer storms for a few days and then the sun came out again and everyone congregated around the swimming pool in the steaming grounds behind the house to soak up this rare event.

  Annie had been studiously avoiding contact with everyone, especially Max. Dolly had called and said she wanted her over at the club soonest, but that would be some convoluted business problem that Dolly couldn’t sort without Annie’s say-so, and she didn’t want to do business right now so she was putting that off. She couldn’t think straight when she was so screwed up over Layla.

  She’d forced herself to make the effort to call the management team at the new Annie’s nightclub in the States, and she’d been both surprised and relieved to find a very sharp-sounding individual called Sonny Gilbert in charge there. Sonny reeled off the state of preparations for the September opening, the guest list (‘You’re going to love it!’ he gushed), the planned advertising campaign, and he detailed for her the lushness of the new place’s interior, the colours they were using (‘So on trend!’), the particular size of the ‘Annie’s’ sign outside the venue.

  ‘Massive,’ Sonny told her happily. ‘Huge. You’re going to adore it, I promise you.’

  Sonny was so enthusiastic, so patently on-the-ball, that Annie knew Nico had selected exactly the right person for the job.

  ‘I’ll send you pictures,’ he enthused. ‘If you’d like that, Mrs Barolli?’

  Annie declined. Everything was in hand; right now, that was all she needed to know.

  The day was so beautiful; the sun was blazing down. With nothing to do except worry about Layla, she thought she might have a swim in the heated pool in the grounds behind the house, try to relax if she could manage it. The trouble was, everyone else seemed to have had the same idea.

  She had done a couple of lengths and was lying on a sun bed in her black bikini, which was nearly falling off her – she’d lost so much weight in the depths of her grief over Constantine and the baby.

  Before very long, Cara was stretched out in a red thong and a barely there bikini top, and even Aunt Gina was out by the pool reading The Financial Times, sitting primly, fully dressed in her black mourning dress at a table sheltered by a parasol. Rocco dived in and shouted out: ‘Christ! I thought this pool was heated? It’s freezing!’ before doing slow, un coordinated laps. He was a terrible swimmer.

  His wife was flicking through the pages of a magazine and paying him scant attention.

  ‘This is England, Rocco,’ she pointed out, sounding bored. ‘Pools are never hot enough. Beer is warm. And it rains nearly all the time.’ She glanced up at the radiant blue sky. ‘Just be grateful it’s not raining today. Or not yet, anyway.’

  Lucco came out, looking svelte and toned in white shorts, and sat in splendid isolation at the other end of the pool. He was followed by Alberto, looking every bit as attractive as his darker, thinner brother; looking in fact so much like Constantine that for an instant, glancing up, Annie thought it was him once again, and her heart caught in her throat. Then Alberto smiled and sat down on a sun bed beside hers and the illusion was gone.

  ‘Stepmom,’ he said, dropping a quick kiss onto her cheek. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Baking nicely,’ said Annie, smiling at him because you could do nothing else but smile at Alberto, he was so charming – and, like his brother, so deadly, she reminded herself.

  Then she looked beyond him and saw Max coming out onto the terrace in black bathing trunks, carrying a newspaper and a drink. He sat down at a distance, and she just knew that he’d seen that smiling kiss she’d exchanged with her stepson. He was wearing shades so she couldn’t see his eyes, but his mouth was grim.

  Fuck it, she thought. And then she wondered why it bothered her anyway. He thought she was a slut: nothing she did would make him change that opinion.

  Lucco looked up and saw Max there. He glanced at Annie.

  ‘Do we really have to have the help intruding on private family time?’ he asked her.

  You snobby little bastard,
she thought. But she smiled at him with her teeth gritted so hard that she felt her jaw ache. She didn’t want any confrontations developing between Max and Lucco. All she wanted was a little peace and quiet.

  ‘Mark is my security,’ she said. ‘He stays with me.’

  Lucco glared at Max but then shrugged and got back to his paper.

  Max didn’t even glance at either of them. He just stretched out on the sun bed with all the indolence of a big cat. Annie tried and failed to stop herself looking at his body, so tanned and muscular; she had to admit he looked super-fit and incredibly tough. On each of his ankles she could see a tiny circular mark, like a cigarette burn. Those hadn’t been there before.

  ‘I was upset that you left the States without even saying goodbye,’ Alberto was saying.

  ‘Hm?’ Annie’s attention shot back to him. She’d left the States because she was done there: finished. And Lucco had warned her off. And, she reminded herself, not even Alberto – whom she had believed to be her staunch ally – had let her know the will was being read.

  ‘What?’ he asked her, seeing her eyes fastened on his face.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not nothing,’ he laughed lightly. ‘Come on, give.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me when the will was due to be read.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. That.’ His face grew doubtful. ‘Lucco didn’t think we should tell you. You were so upset already, and you were really too ill to attend.’

  ‘Then it should have been postponed,’ Annie pointed out.

  Alberto gazed steadily at his stepmother. ‘You were married to my father, you know how it works. The Don’s word is final. It always was, with Papa. Now it’s the same with Lucco. The will was Lucco’s call. Whatever he chose to be done about it, that would be done. Without question.’

  ‘But Constantine told me I’d have the New York penthouse, and this house, and all the shares in the Times Square club instead of fifty-one per cent. He said it was in the will.’

  Alberto frowned. ‘I’m sorry. There was no mention of any of that. And it can’t be questioned. You do see that?’

  He was worried about her, concerned where this questioning might lead her if she persisted with it. She could see that. He didn’t want her crossing swords with Lucco.

  Annie shrugged and let out a sigh. Oh, what the hell? It was all academic now. Maybe she could have contested it, but that would only have brought Lucco’s wrath down upon her head, and would any sane person want that? She’d been screwed over. It was best to accept it, and move on.

  ‘How’s Lucco coping with it all?’ she asked Alberto, leaving the subject of the will. She could see that it made him anxious and uncomfortable.

  He gave a slight shrug – it was his father’s gesture, so like Constantine that again she felt her gut tighten; it was torture, but it was lovely, too, to see his movements echoed by his son.

  ‘Okay,’ said Alberto, lowering his voice slightly. ‘There’s been some trouble on the streets, young up-and-coming thugs trying their luck, pushing in. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times. Some of the Dons get sent down or they die, and for a while there’s chaos. The police can’t control it, but the families can. We’ll get them back in line.’

  ‘Will you though? Can Lucco hold it together like Constantine could?’ she asked.

  ‘He can. He must. Papa had the whole of Queens and the chief of police in his pocket, and now Lucco has too. Things fall apart a little under these circumstances, but they get put back in order.’

  She knew what he meant. Constantine’s death had left punks in the underworld with hopes of a gap they could crawl through. Now, Lucco had to close those gaps down, forcefully.

  ‘And . . . the police haven’t found out anything more about your father’s death?’ she asked.

  Alberto shook his head and suddenly his eyes were hard. ‘They don’t care about my father’s death,’ he said flatly. ‘Why should they? No, we don’t depend on the police to put matters right. That’s for the family, not them.’

  ‘But you don’t know who was responsible . . .?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Alberto’s eyes met hers and for a moment he was Constantine. Tough. Ruthless. Ready to act. ‘If I did, I would kill them with my own bare hands.’

  He turned his head and saw Daniella coming out onto the terrace, and his expression changed. Suddenly, he was amiable Alberto again.

  ‘Hello, sweetness,’ he said to Daniella, who was looking horribly self-conscious in a one-piece black swimsuit. ‘Sleep well?’

  She flashed him a grateful smile. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, and sat down near him and Annie.

  ‘Gold’s down,’ said Aunt Gina to no one in particular, turning pink pages.

  Lucco was staring across at Max. ‘I suppose you’re ex-army?’ he asked.

  Don’t rise to it, thought Annie, but Max put aside his paper.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Special Air Services.’

  Oh for God’s sake. The closest Max had ever come to the army was a brief spell of National Service, and she knew for a fact that he had spent most of that in the slammer for bad behaviour. If he’d ever applied to join the SAS – and he wouldn’t – they’d have turned him down as too bloody rough and too downright nasty.

  ‘So I guess you know all this karate and judo bullshit, all this unarmed combat crap?’ asked Lucco derisively, making mocking little chopping motions with his hands.

  Max lifted his shades and stared at Lucco.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said levelly. ‘You want to try it out?’

  Oh here we go, thought Annie. Another who-can-piss-highest-up-the-wall contest.

  Lucco stared equably back at Max.

  ‘Not right now,’ he said, and dropped his shades back into place and returned his attention to the newspaper.

  ‘Don’t fucking well do that,’ snapped Cara, as Rocco emerged from the pool, splashing her inadvertently with water as he wrapped himself in a towel.

  ‘Come on, sweetie, let’s swim,’ said Alberto, and he and Daniella went into the water at a run. They splashed around in the pool, Daniella shrieking with laughter, Alberto trying to tickle her.

  When they eventually clambered out, they were still giggling like a pair of teenagers as they dried off. And it was then that Annie saw the blue bruises on Daniella’s wrists and thighs.

  That rotten little runt, she thought.

  The poor cow was out buying necklaces to make herself look good for Lucco, and he was hurting her in return. She wondered if anyone else had noticed the marks. She got up and dived into the pool, working off her anger at Lucco with fast, overarm laps. Finally, breathless, she came to rest at one end of the pool, aware that someone else had dived in and was now shooting along underwater like a torpedo, coming straight at her.

  Lucco?

  She gripped the pool’s edge, thinking that if it was Lucco then the bastard was almost certainly going to pull her down and try to half drown her, just for a laugh. One thing Lucco loved, it was throwing a scare into people.

  But the man who shot up from the water in front of her was Max. He paused there, pushing his hair back. Their thighs touched under the surface and Annie shrank away from him.

  ‘You’re still a good swimmer,’ he said so that only she could hear.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘Gerda been in touch yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie. She had to go on believing that Gerda would have the sense to do that soon. But then . . . then he’d take Layla from her. She was torn, wanting news of Layla, but dreading her return.

  ‘Shame.’

  Annie glanced around, concerned that the others would see them here talking in whispers and get the wrong idea. She caught Cara’s eyes and saw the cynicism in the girl’s mocking gaze. She knew what she was thinking. Oh yeah? So it’s off-limits for me to get close to the staff, but not for you?

  But that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t close to Max. She had not the slightest desire to alter
that, either.

  ‘So what’s this business about the will?’ asked Max under his breath.

  He’d always had ears like a bat; she’d forgotten.

  ‘That was a private conversation between Alberto and me,’ she said angrily.

  ‘Yeah, I noticed how cosy you were getting with Golden Boy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alberto. The one’s who’s the dead spit of Constantine. I knew Constantine, remember?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No?’ Max looked casually at the people around the pool. ‘What’s this then, plan B? Lucco’s too much of a slimy little worm to get close to, but Alberto . . . well, he’ll have his fair share of the Mafia millions, enough for you to splash out on private yachts in the Med and ski chalets in the Swiss Alps, and – let’s face it – he does look like his father . . .’

  Annie had to bite her lip, hard, to keep back a flood of angry words. She felt like tearing his eyes out, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of flaring up just so he could slap her down.

  ‘Yeah, and the similarity ends there. Constantine’s dead. And I don’t want another man, not even one who looks like him,’ she retorted.

  Max’s eyes were alight with spite; he could see he’d needled her and he was pleased about it. ‘As to that . . .’ he said softly.

  ‘As to what?’

  ‘Constantine’s death. Daniella told me it was an explosion.’

  Annie held herself rigid, tried not to react. Any time she thought back to the day of Lucco and Daniella’s wedding, she felt herself break out in a cold, horrified sweat. She didn’t want Max to see her losing it.

  ‘It was,’ she said. She could feel her stomach start to churn.

  ‘And that if you’d been standing a few steps closer, it would have got you as well as him.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She could see it again. Oh shit, she could see it. Constantine walking towards her with the parcel. Hey, wonder what’s in this one?