Playing Dead

Fredo looked at her and he didn’t seem like an adoring boy any more.

‘I know you, Cara, remember? This is Fredo you’re talking to, not some stranger who’ll be taken in. So I want sex first, not after. When we get back tonight, I want it. Or the deal’s off.’

So what could she do? After the first time they’d followed Rocco, seen him there in the diner with what was obviously his male lover, discussed what they could do, Fredo drove them back to the Montauk estate in her father’s car, drove it into the garage, then got out and locked the garage doors.

‘In the back,’ he said to her, and Cara wondered how it had happened that Fredo, of all people, was ordering her about like this.

Still, she knew she had to comply if she was to get him to help. It was semi-dark in the back of the car, and quiet but for the ticking of the engine as it cooled down. Fredo got in the back too and closed the door. He was up close to her – Jesus, he was trying to kiss her. Cara turned her head away.

Fredo pulled back, uttered a low curse. Suddenly his hands were on her, pushing her skirt up and reaching under, scratching her, bruising her, grabbing her pants and pulling them down, and off. Quickly he got between her legs and then with a groan he unzipped himself. Cara looked away, trying not to feel even his breath on her, but she felt the big hot tip of his penis parting her flesh, felt the hard jolt as he drove it all the way into her cringing body, was pummelled by every manic thrust of it as he had her.

He was finished very quickly. He moaned as he came, and lay there for a moment against her. Then he withdrew, zipped up, flopped back onto the seat beside her. Cara sat there, feeling his disgusting wetness on her thighs. She was trembling, sore, aware that she’d just been raped and that she had brought it entirely on herself.

‘Now,’ said Fredo imperiously when he’d got his breath back. ‘Get your tits out. I want to touch them.’

Shivering and nearly crying, Cara unbuttoned her blouse, unfastened her bra. When she was naked to the waist, Fredo fell upon her, pinching and pulling at the tender flesh of her breasts until he was too aroused to stop. Then he raped her all over again.

The second time they trailed Rocco and finally agreed how the thing would be done, this pattern repeated itself. Fredo drove them home, locked them in the garage, and had Cara forcibly in the back of the car.

Now, it was time for him to keep his part of the bargain. And he was saying: I’m not sure about this.

After all that she had done, all that she had let him do, he wasn’t sure?

She had to breathe deeply to keep her voice from shaking, so ferocious was her hatred of him at that moment.

‘You’re not sure? What do you mean?’ she asked, and she was surprised to hear her own voice emerging from her body with that cool, calm sound to it. Inside, she was raging. She wanted to kill him, she was so angry.

Fredo was silent for a moment. He had the upper hand and he knew it. She would never want her father to know she planned anything like this. Rocco was a Mancini. The word had got around among the boys; they had overheard a shouting-match between Cara and her father, with Cara threatening all sorts. Constantine had said the Mancinis were not to be touched. And okay she wasn’t touching them, but it was a moot point. She would still be doing Rocco harm, if only indirectly.

‘I’m not sure you love me,’ said Fredo, and turned his head and grinned at her. ‘Joking,’ he said.

Cara had to look away or she was afraid she was going to throw up all over the bastard.

‘Look,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘You know what you’ve got to do, yes?’

‘I know,’ said Fredo.

Cara glanced at her watch. ‘They should be out soon.’

And then it would be over, she thought.

But, she wondered, would it? She felt she had descended straight to hell to wreak her revenge on Rocco. Maybe the price had been too dear. Maybe not. Only time would tell. Now all she wanted, all she was here for, was to be absolutely sure that 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.’