LITMIR.BIZ

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what she needed Fredo to do, was done.

      ‘There’s Rocco,’ said Fredo.

      They watched silently as Rocco came out of the diner and walked quickly away down the block.

      Minutes passed. Fredo casually laid a hand on Cara’s thigh. She let it stay there, but only by an extreme act of will. God, he disgusted her.

      ‘There he is,’ said Fredo, and left the car.

      Frances Ducane was walking back to his car, thinking happily about the coming weekend. Under the pretext of a golfing break with the boys, Rocco and he were going to take off alone to a cabin in the Rockies. Frances loved Rocco and he wanted more time with him, but he understood that Rocco’s witch of a wife came with the money, and the money was what they enjoyed, so she had to be tolerated.

      Cow, thought Frances in disgust. Swanky Upper East Side Princess with her nose in the air, busy spending Daddy’s money. And he knew from Rocco there was plenty of it. Why else had Rocco married her? For love? Frances didn’t think so.

      ‘Hey – faggot,’ said a voice behind him.

      Frances felt a shudder of fear jolt up his spine to the top of his head. He half turned and then felt the first stinging lash of the blade as it struck the edge of his mouth. Blood splattered out and gushed down over his clothes. Frances screamed with pain. He staggered back, half running, desperate to get away, and Fredo came after him, shoving him back against a building wall, slashing in with the knife that glinted in his hand.

      ‘No!’ Frances wailed, hardly able to speak now, raising his hands to protect himself.

      Fredo waded in, slicing fingers and palms indiscriminately. Two digits spun off into the gutter, blood spurting, and when Frances lowered his hands to stare at them in horror, Fredo came in close again and slashed the other side of Frances’s mouth wide open.

      Frances fell to his knees, groaning. The crimson slashes on either side of his mouth looked like a clown’s painted-on smile: grotesque.

      Fredo knelt down too, grabbed a handful of hair and yanked Frances’s head back.

      ‘That’s a present from Rocco and Cara Mancini, you little shit. Now back off,’ he hissed. Then he wiped the knife on the front of Frances’s once-pristine shirt and left the man there, blubbering and bleeding.

      Fredo slipped the knife back in his pocket and made his way back to the car. He got in.

      ‘Well?’ said Cara. ‘Did you . . .?’

      ‘Yeah, I did.’

      ‘Show me the knife.’

      ‘Jesus,’ said Fredo. He’d already wiped it clean, what the hell, didn’t she trust him?

      But there were traces of blood still on the blade. Cara sat back, satisfied. ‘And it went okay?’ she asked.

      Fredo slipped the knife into his pocket and grinned at her. ‘It went fine,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home and fuck.’

      Chapter 16

      When Annie left the massive master suite with its sprawling ocean view, she walked straight into Cara.

      Annie groaned inwardly. Her relationship with her step-daughter had never got off the ground. She had tried hard to befriend Cara, but she found her snobbish, vain and unlovable. She spoke to Annie hardly at all, and Annie thought that was just fine, if that was the way Cara wanted it.

      But today, something about Cara seemed different. She looked . . . well, Annie wasn’t exactly sure how Cara looked. Usually, Constantine’s daughter exuded an icy poise that left no room for even an attempt at civility. But today, Cara looked shattered. She looked as though someone had just given her a scare that had rocked her world. She looked sick.

      ‘Cara?’ Annie caught her arm as Cara was about to pass right by her without a word. ‘Are you all right?’

      Cara’s eyes met hers and in that instant before her guard went up, Annie saw something there; something bruised, something covert and uncertain. But then the shutters were in place again and Cara just stared at Annie coldly.

      ‘Like you care,’ she said, and looked pointedly at Annie’s hand resting on her arm.

      Annie removed it. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.’

      But Cara was right: Annie’s words were a lie. There was just something about Cara’s own personal fuck-you demeanour and the swanky pea-brained friends she hung around with that put Annie’s back up.

      ‘I told you. I’m fine.’

      Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Sheba, thought Annie. But fuck it. Did she really want to know what petty concerns went on in the life of someone so vacuous, spiteful and vain?

      Answer: no.

      Cara hurried on by. Annie heard her go into the bathroom at the head of the stairs, slamming the door behind her – and then she heard retching.

      Annie paused there on the stairs, frowning. Maybe Cara was pregnant? But Annie sort of doubted that. So maybe Rocco had upset her . . . but then, Rocco was so mild, so practically invisible as a personality, that Annie couldn’t imagine him upsetting anyone, far less his notoriously difficult wife.

      In the downstairs hall, Annie found Nico sitting patiently on guard outside Constantine’s study.

      ‘Is he free?’ Annie asked him.

      Nico rose to his feet and gave her a smiling half-bow. ‘For you, yeah – he’s free.’ He turned and tapped at the door.

      ‘Come!’ came from inside the study.

      He looked up as she came in. She stood there leaning against the door. He pushed himself back from the desk and stared at her.

      ‘Mrs Barolli,’ he said, his eyes playing with hers.

      ‘Mr Barolli,’ Annie greeted him.

      ‘And to what do I owe this unexpected honour?’ Constantine made a ‘so come here’ gesture with his hand.

      Annie went over to the desk.

      ‘Closer,’ said Constantine.

      Annie stepped nearer.

      ‘Not close enough,’ said Constantine.

      Annie went around the desk, sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck. ‘Close enough now?’ she asked.

      ‘Barely,’ he complained, nuzzling her neck with his lips. ‘Something bothering you?’

      ‘Not really.’ Annie thought briefly of Cara’s face, but then it was gone, forgotten.

      ‘The baby?’ said Constantine, anxiously. He glanced down, concerned, at the small neat bump beneath her light lilac shift dress.

      ‘I just wanted to see you.’

      ‘Mrs Barolli, I love you very much,’ he said, and kissed her, and Annie found herself remembering her first pregnancy, when she had been expecting Layla; and Max had been so delighted, just as Constantine was now.

      A sharp pang of sadness and regret struck her heart as she hugged her second husband and whispered her love for him, because once there had been Max, owner of the East End streets around Bow in London; Max Carter, gang lord, lover – and her first husband, her first true romance. And she had loved him too. Oh, so much.

      She shivered, and clung to Constantine.

      Chapter 17

      Rocco got called to the hospital at two in the morning. Cara was asleep beside him when the phone rang. He flicked on the bedside light. She stirred sleepily and looked at him as he spoke into the phone. When he put it down, his face was ashen.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Cara.

      ‘It’s

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