Читать книгу Playing Dead - Jessie Keane - Страница 10

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 not seeing the expression on Gina’s.

Alberto smiled. Mommy. Layla was sounding more American every day. ‘We sure are. And we’ll stop off on the way and get her some flowers, okay?’

Gina watched them, her expression surly. Flowers, for the love of God. She turned away, irritated. Personally, she would rather see flowers laid on the Englishwoman’s grave.