Playing Dead - Jessie Keane

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friends. He left the poker game and he’s been attacked in the street.’

      Now Rocco was throwing back the sheets, getting out of bed, hurrying to pick up his trousers and put them on.

      ‘Is . . . is it bad?’ asked Cara innocently. She knew exactly how bad it was. Here was the reward for all her suffering; here was her revenge. Fredo had slashed up Rocco’s little fag friend . . . before driving her home and then forcing himself on her once again in the garage. She shuddered to think of it.

      She had told Fredo that this would be the last time. And, chillingly, he had laughed and said fuck that, not unless she wanted her father to hear all about what she had made him do to her husband’s fag boyfriend.

      Now she was in a mess and she knew it. She despised Fredo for all that he’d done to her, but worse than that was the fact that she despised her father too, for making her sink to such levels of depravity with his refusal to help.

      Would Fredo really dare tell her father? She didn’t know. And if she told Constantine first, blaming Fredo rather than carrying the blame herself for the attack, would her father believe her? She couldn’t take the risk, because Constantine would be so angry if he discovered she’d wormed her way around his warnings and found another way to get to Rocco.

      ‘This don’t stop until I’m ready,’ Fredo had told her, crudely slapping her on the arse as she emerged once again, shaking and abused, from the back of the car.

       The bastard!

      But the deed was done. And here was the result. Wasn’t it worth it? Yes, she knew it was.

      Now Rocco was fastening his shirt and almost running for the door.

      ‘I hope your friend’s all right . . .’ Cara called after him, but he was gone, slamming the door closed behind him.

      Cara lay down, a catlike smile playing over her pretty features.

      So Rocco Mancini thought he could make a fool of his wife, did he? He was about to discover how horribly he had miscalculated her capabilities.

      Rocco got to the hospital at nearly three a.m. They let him in and Rocco had to hide his shock at the state Frances was in. His face – oh, his beautiful face! – was a mess of stitches and bloody smears and bandages. His mouth had been slashed almost neatly on both sides, widening his lips so that they were hideously elongated. Two of the fingers on his right hand were missing.

      Rocco tried to cover his disgust at the sheer ugliness of Frances’s appearance, but he couldn’t quite conceal it from his wounded lover. He sat down beside Frances and, while Frances sobbed, each sob muffled beneath the wadding and stitches around his mouth, Rocco asked him who had done this to him, who could have done such a thing?

      ‘You’re saying you don’t know?’ said Frances indistinctly. His eyes were red and accusing. ‘It was you, you fucker.’

      Rocco looked aghast. His eyes went to Frances’s face, and he had to look quickly away.

      ‘What? No, I swear—’

      ‘It was a man,’ said Frances. ‘You must have paid him. He said it was from Rocco and Cara Mancini. For the love of God, you only had to say if you wanted to end it. You didn’t have to do this.’

      Rocco sat back in his chair, feeling dizzy from the shock.

      Cara must have instigated this. Cara must have known about their affair. He felt his insides clench with fear. If Cara knew, had she told her father? My God, if the Don knew . . .

      Clearly, she had somehow discovered his secret. He felt consumed with horror at that thought, at the dangers inherent in this situation for him. Again his eyes strayed to the damage she’d wreaked on his once-exquisite lover, and again he had to look away, frightened that he might actually be sick. He was no good in hospitals. His grandmother had been an invalid for much of her life, languishing in bed; he had a horror of sickness. And as for any sort of disfigurement . . . well, he knew it was shallow. He knew it was bad. But he couldn’t help it. Just to look at Frances, the repulsive state of him, was making his stomach heave.

      And he could see – oh, and wasn’t this the worst bit? – he could see that Frances’s beauty was comprehensively wrecked. These wounds were too severe to be anything other than permanent. Frances was ugly now. And if there was one thing Rocco couldn’t stand, it was ugliness. He only liked beautiful people around him. Men or women, he didn’t much care which, but they had to be flawless.

      ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he told Frances.

      ‘But look at me,’ wailed Frances. ‘You vicious fucking bitch! How am I going to find acting work now? I’m a freak. And this is all down to you.’

      Frances stared with hate-filled eyes at his lover. Self-pity flooded through him and he flopped back against the pillows in despair. In his heart he knew that this was the end of it. Tears splashed down his cheeks, soaked his bloodstained bandages.

      ‘I didn’t do this,’ insisted Rocco, patting Frances’s unbandaged hand and wondering when he could decently leave. He wouldn’t be coming here again. It was over.

      ‘Yeah,’ said Frances, snatching his hand away. ‘Right.’

      Chapter 18

      Rocco said nothing to Cara, except that his friend was recovering and would be fine. He wanted to grab her, to break her stupid head against a wall for damaging something so exquisitely beautiful. All right, he had been tired of Frances. But what she had done was like smashing a Ming vase or defacing a Renoir: a crime against a work of art.

      But he bit his lip and said nothing, although he felt sick with a mingling of loss and terror. If she had told her father about this, then he believed he was a dead man. Only last week that sadistic bastard Lucco had been laughing about Roy Giancana, who the Barolli mob had sent out to Vegas to handle business and who had tried to cheat them on the skim. He’d ended up in an oil drum at the bottom of the sea, just off the coast of sunny Florida.

      And there had been others, many others Rocco knew of; men who had once been called friends and had been dispatched to meet their maker for stepping out of line in one way or another.

      Now he had stepped out of line and he knew it.

      Cara, the daddy’s girl, would run weeping to Constantine with any trouble, he knew that, and what would the Don do? Let it rest? No way. Rocco knew that once the word was given by the Don, his life was over. He was wracked with terror. Frightened of Lucco, who could in an instant switch from charming to deadly; and equally frightened of Alberto, whose urbane politeness concealed a businesslike efficiency when it came to conducting his father’s business.

      Brother-in-law or not, he knew that neither of them would baulk at giving the word for an enforcer to take him out. He had to make moves of his own, to preserve his own safety.

      He drove up to New Jersey to pay a visit to his father, Enrico Mancini.

      His mother greeted him with all the usual hugs and cries and kisses.

      ‘You’ve lost weight!’ she tutted, fluttering around him, pinching his sallow cheeks.

      It was true, he had lost weight, such had been his anxiety over the mess he had gotten himself into. He’d been under so much stress: keeping out of Constantine’s way, tiptoeing around Cara, and worse, much worse, fielding the unwanted and increasingly desperate calls from Frances, yelling accusations and wild declarations of love down the phone at him. He felt as though he was under seige. Food had been the last thing on his mind.

      ‘Son.’ His father greeted him without enthusiasm. He was watching the Boston Red Sox play the Yankees on TV. He glanced up, waved Rocco into an armchair and looked back at the screen.

      Rocco glanced at it too. He had no interest in sports. His older brothers, Jonathan and Silvio, did, they were always in their father’s favour, but Rocco was the youngest

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