Читать книгу Playing Dead - Jessie Keane - Страница 8

Chapter 2

It was mid-afternoon and Lucco Barolli was lying in the super-king-sized bed in his chic, ultra-modern Upper East Side condo with its red-lacquered walls and black Oriental furnishings when he took the call from his father. He put the phone down and lay there, staring into space.

‘Wassup, sweetie?’ asked Sophie, her lovely nakedness tangled up in the red silk sheets after their marathon love-making session.

Lucco stared absently at her. Sophie was as fair as he was dark. Unlike his father, Lucco truly looked Sicilian, with straight black hair, nearly black deep-set eyes and olive skin as fine as any woman’s.

‘My father’s puttana of a new wife is expecting a child,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ The girl propped herself up on her elbow, her delectable tits swinging in his face. She was an English model and beautiful – he could afford the best and Sophie Thomson was renowned. He had pulled strings, got her the plum jobs using his connections. Nobody said no to a caporegime of the family. Now, with her tall athletic body and the face of an insatiable fallen angel, she could command ridiculous fees worldwide.

‘Well that’s good news.’ She smiled engagingly. What the fuck’s a puttana? she wondered. ‘You’ll have a new brother or sister.’

Lucco looked at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses.

‘The child will not be my brother or sister,’ he said coldly.

‘But . . . the kid’ll be your father’s, like you,’ she said.

Lucco suddenly sprang up and struck her hard across the face. Sophie fell back amid the tangled sheets. Lucco pinned her down there. He glared into her shocked eyes from inches away.

‘The child is not my brother or sister,’ he roared.

‘All right, okay,’ said Sophie hurriedly, tears of pain spilling out from her eyes. He’d slapped her once or twice before, just love play, but this time he was frightening her. She knew all about his connections, she knew he’d used them to help her up the ladder of fame, and she liked that. Or at least, she had. But now . . . her face hurt from the blow. She hoped he hadn’t marked her. She had work tomorrow.

‘You understand me? This kid is nothing to do with me.’

‘Yeah. Got it,’ said Sophie, and suddenly he released her and lay back.

She looked at him warily. She reviewed all that she had been about to say, and decided against saying any of it. Silently, she watched him. He had a big erection jutting up from between his thighs; hitting her always seemed to turn him on. She adored Lucco, but she was coming to realize – not to put too fine a point on it – that he was a bit of a shit.

Lucco saw her looking, and glanced down his impressive body. ‘Mount me,’ he ordered.

Would he hit her again if she refused? Sophie decided not to risk it.

Lucco lay back, sighing restlessly as Sophie straddled him and guided him smoothly inside her.

Everything he had feared since the day Annie Carter had come into his father’s life was coming to fruition. He tried to consider it all logically, furious though it made him feel. Constantine was forty-seven while his new English wife was twenty-seven – twenty years his junior.

The Carter woman – Lucco couldn’t bear to think of her any other way – was closer in age to him, his brother Alberto and his sister Cara than to their father. It was obscene. And now the worst had happened. Marrying the whore had been bad enough, but now his father had impregnated her; there would be a baby.

Why hadn’t his father just had her if he wanted to – she was just a cheap English gold-digger after all; she’d have been grateful to receive the attentions of a man like him. He didn’t have to go and marry her.

Lucco thought of Annie, his father’s new wife. Her glossy, cocoa-brown hair, her dark green eyes, her intriguing body, always discreetly hidden, but . . . oh yes, guessed at by Lucco. He didn’t doubt that she was hot between the sheets, to have snared his father so easily. And now she was going to give him a child; a new child who would supplant his grown-up children in his affections. He felt sick at the thought, furious.

‘You 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.