Playing Dead. Jessie Keane

know what? My father’s right. It is time I got married,’ he said aloud. It was all arranged, anyway – not that he’d confided that to Sophie. Why the hell should he? The wedding was only two months away now. Of course it was expected of him, part of the process that would see him assuming control of his father’s empire one day. Already he was caporegime like Alberto, joint second-in-command beneath their father; but he, Lucco, was the eldest son, the rightful heir. It was good to appear settled, married, respectable; there would be children, his own children; family life.

      Sophie stopped bouncing up and down on Lucco’s cock and raised her head. She looked at his face, her blue eyes wide with surprise and a sliver of hope; all right, sometimes he lost it, but so what? She adored him, and she was excited by his powerful family with its dubious links to the underworld. Was he proposing . . .?

      ‘Not married to you, obviously,’ said Lucco, correctly interpreting her gaze.

      His marriage had been arranged ever since he was eighteen. He was going to wed his dull little second cousin Daniella. He’d been reluctant before, dreading the day, but now he could see it might be a good thing. Now he appreciated the need to get some kids off Daniella at the earliest opportunity. If anyone was going to inherit his father’s considerable fortune, he would make sure that it was his line, his sons – not hers. And not Alberto’s, either.

      ‘Harder,’ he said, and Sophie obeyed while Lucco closed his eyes and thought of Annie, his father’s wife.

      Chapter 3

      Cara Barolli Mancini, Constantine’s daughter, got the news just as she was finishing lunch with her girlfriends and her second cousin, who was fresh off the boat from Sicily. They were in the plush uptown apartment that Cara shared with her husband Rocco.

      The second cousin, Daniella, was her brother Lucco’s intended, a laughably rough-around-the-edges girl with long frizzy black hair, big frightened eyes, lamentable dress sense and nothing of any interest to say for herself. She had been sitting there like wood all through the meal, her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed, the conversation of the assembled Park Avenue princesses buzzing around her.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ asked one of Cara’s friends, looking at her face when she came back into the room.

      Cara shrugged and sat down again. Her pretty mouth twisted. ‘Apparently, my father’s wife is going to have a baby,’ she said.

      ‘Oh! Well . . . congratulations, darling,’ said the friend, looking at Cara’s stormy face with uncertainty.

      Even Cara’s closest friends knew you had to treat her with kid gloves. The dreamy-eyed quality Cara possessed was a thin veneer. She was very beautiful, with her tumbling blonde hair, her heavy-lidded blue eyes and her voluptuous mouth, always half open, pouting, inviting. But she could be touchy and arrogant. Daddy was an important man in this city, and she never tired of letting everyone around her know it.

      Cara couldn’t trust herself to speak, not yet. She was crazed with rage. How dare he get that tramp pregnant; how dare he foist a filthy half-sibling on his three truly legitimate children?

      ‘When . . . is the baby due?’ asked Daniella in her stumbling English.

      Cara looked across at her with irritation. Poor stupid sacrificial lamb, shipped over here to marry elegant, arrogant Lucco with the razor-sharp tongue. Lucco would demolish the girl, Cara didn’t doubt that.

      ‘I don’t know that yet,’ she said.

      ‘She’ll have a baby shower, won’t she?’ another friend asked as the maid cleared their plates away.

      ‘She’s English,’ said Cara. ‘I doubt she even knows what that means.’

      The friends were silent for a long, awkward moment. Cara’s own marriage had so far proved fruitless, and they all knew she wanted a child. It was whispered covertly among them that Rocco might even have some problems in the bedroom department. Which wasn’t surprising, really; Cara had a strong, vocal character, but Rocco was quieter – too quiet to put her in her place sometimes, which was what they all secretly thought she really needed in a man.

      Cara was staring at Daniella. Lucco had met Daniella at the age of eighteen when he visited Sicily with Constantine. She had been sixteen then, virginal and shy, socially inept. She still was. The marriage had been agreed between Constantine and her father, and there had been celebrations, countless bottles of fiery yellow Strega consumed and many a tarantella danced because it was a huge honour for any daughter to receive a proposal from the son of a great Don.

      Now Cara watched Daniella sourly. Lucco is going to eat her alive, thought Cara. She knew her brother.

      Not that she much cared about the fate of this little paisan from the old country. She had her own problems.

      Chapter 4

      Alberto, the youngest son of Constantine Barolli, received the news when he went to collect Layla, his stepmother Annie’s bright and adorable five-year-old from her first marriage, from his Aunt Gina’s that afternoon.

      Layla ran to him; she loved her big brother Alberto. He swept the giggling child up into his arms while Gina looked on sourly. She was putting the phone back on the cradle and she looked as if someone had just told her something really, really bad.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Alberto in concern.

      ‘Your father’s wife,’ said Gina, her mouth pursing even as she uttered the words.

      Alberto knew that Gina despised Annie. Gina would have despised any woman who came close to her brother. She had hated Alberto’s own mother, Maria – and after Maria’s death, he knew very well that Gina had hoped there would be no more women; but then along had come Annie Carter with her ‘whore’s tricks’, bewitching his father – according to Aunt Gina.

      Privately, Alberto believed that his aunt was too possessive, clinging to Constantine in a way that was both selfish and faintly perverted. He for one was delighted that his father had found happiness with his second wife.

      ‘Annie? What about her?’ Alberto glanced at Layla.

      ‘Your father tells me she’s expecting a child,’ said Gina. She didn’t look overjoyed about it.

      Alberto’s attention sharpened. ‘And it’s fine? She’s fine?’

      Gina nodded tensely.

      ‘Well, that’s good news.’

      ‘Good? How can it be good?’

      Alberto stifled a sigh. He knew Gina would never soften towards Annie, and he knew she thought him a fool for liking his father’s second wife so much. But, to him, Annie was family now. He could be the hard man, the tough caporegime when it was required of him, but at heart he was a family man, and both more reserved and more reflective than his elder brother Lucco.

      Sometimes, he had to do bad things, difficult things, for the family good. Quiet and polite though he was, he had been responsible for many deaths while carrying out his father’s orders. But he could never delight in the pain and suffering of others, as Lucco did.

      ‘You hear that, Layla?’ Alberto bounced the little girl in his arms, smiled into her dark eyes. ‘You’re going to have a new little brother or sister to spoil, how about that?’

      ‘Yay!’ said Layla.

      Gina watched her nephew with a glacial eye. Alberto was a good boy, but he was too amiable, too soft. Couldn’t he see how this would affect his own standing in the family; how it could affect them all? Constantine’s English wife had up until this point been an unwanted, isolated interloper with little say in the running of things. Now her status would radically change. She would be the mother of the Don’s baby; her position would be assured.

      ‘Are we going to go home and see Mommy now?’ asked Layla, watching her big stepbrother’s handsome face and