Prologue
Montauk, Long Island, USA
August 1971
Annie Carter-Barolli knew that there are some things you remember forever. Like your child’s first cry. Or your wedding day – or days, in her case: she’d been married twice. Or like the moment you stare death in the face and it’s not scary like you expected it to be, not a face of bones, not a reaper. Instead it’s bright red ribbon on a big square parcel of sunny sky-blue, and your husband is picking it out from the front of the huge pile of presents. He is turning towards you holding it, smiling at you and saying, Hey, wonder what’s in this one?
That moment stays with you. You want to rewind, replay, edit; take the hurt away. Splice the whole thing back together and make it come out another way. But you can’t. Once the jack-in-the-box is out, he’s out; there’s no going back.
Annie was standing out on the big terraced deck overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was a hot August night but the breeze from the sea was cooling and sweet against her skin. Inside the house, Constantine’s oceanfront house out here in the millionaire’s playground of Montauk, there was the music of a mariachi band, and laughter.
Most times, this place was like a fortress, guarded day and night by his men. Sometimes police cruisers drifted by the gates at the front of the Montauk estate and the cops took pictures, exchanged hard-eyed stares with the men on guard, and moved on.
But today was a happy day; it was the day of her stepson Lucco’s wedding. The celebrations were likely to go on long into the night. Already she was tired. Layla, her little girl from her first marriage to Max Carter, was asleep upstairs at the back of the house, tucked in by her nanny Gerda. Annie clasped her hands over the bump of her pregnancy. Soon, there would be another child, Constantine’s child, a new brother or sister for Layla. She was five months gone now and the morning sickness had – thank God – subsided at last. But the new baby was hungry, draining her energy levels, robbing her of sleep.
‘Honey?’
She turned. It was him – Constantine of the sharp suits and the silver hair. Feared and revered Mafia godfather. Her husband, her lover, her friend. He had come to find her, knowing she loved it out here, that she liked to stand here sometimes, alone, and watch the sea at night.
Hey, wonder what’s in this one?
The pulsating roar and suck of the tide, the music, and his smile. Some things you really do remember forever. He lifted the parcel – it seemed to her that it was heavy, that maybe he felt a little resistance as he did so.
The actual explosion was too sudden and shocking to take in. A huge flash of light, a deafening, mind-numbing whumph, then smoke and a pushing out, a propulsion of hot air that made her ears pop as if she was on a mile-high flight, and brought with it the acrid smell of black powder.
She felt herself hit the balcony rail, but only distantly; her hearing was gone, everything was happening in some strange, detached, dreamlike state. Shrapnel sprayed. She felt a sting, distant pain in her arm, and then she was on the beach, lying on the sand, staring half-wittedly at a shell, her vision cutting in and out like a faulty light switch.
She could hear her own heart, that was all, beating very fast. The shell was ridged, pink, beautiful. A marvel of nature. Her brain felt scrambled. There were other things in the sand too, she could see that. Things charred and blackened, and she didn’t want to look at any of that so she kept looking at the shell. She would not look at the black things. The sand was soft and her ears felt sticky. She felt more than tired; exhausted, ready to sleep.
But someone was touching her shoulder; someone was turning her onto her back on the sand. She looked up at a million bright stars with blank wonder. Then a face loomed over her, blocking out the stars. It was Alberto, Constantine’s twenty-four-year-old son, her stepson. She loved Alberto, he was a total delight. Unlike Lucco, unlike Cara, Constantine’s other children. Now Alberto’s face was twisted in anguish. There were smears of soot on his chin. He was touching her cheek, checking that she was breathing. He was mouthing words but she couldn’t hear them.
Are you all right?
She could read his lips. All right? She didn’t know. She was alive . . . wasn’t she? Her ears were hurting now, really badly. She hoped it would pass. Everything did, in the end. Soon, she might even be reconnected to reality. A spasm of fear shot through her at the thought of that. She started to tremble.
She turned her head. The black things.
She screwed up her eyes, wished that she’d been blinded as well as deafened. She knew what the black things were. One of them was a hand, charred so badly it looked like a mummified claw, propped up in the sand not a metre from her head.
There was a ring on one of the bent, scorched fingers. The gold was tarnished, the diamond stars studding it were hidden beneath blackness. Somewhere inside her, she felt a scream building, but she hadn’t the strength to release it.
Chapter 1
Two Months Earlier
‘Hey, I’m home!’ Annie called out as she passed the guard on the door and hurried into the penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue with its spectacular views over the treetops of Central Park.
New York in June was stifling, hotter than the mouth of hell; but they had lingered. Constantine was doing business – among other things, he had bought a lease on a building in Times Square that by next September would be transformed into a new Annie’s nightclub. Annie herself had just been killing time until today, when she’d consulted her gynaecologist.
Nico, Constantine’s most loyal and long-standing foot soldier, was sitting on one of the huge couches, flicking through the New York Times.
‘Hi, Nico,’ she said.
‘Hey, you see this? They say the Supreme Court’s gonna clear Muhammad Ali of trying to dodge the draft. You know, Nixon’s right. We got to come out of Vietnam.’
Nico’s voice was deep, thunderous; it seemed to come from somewhere down in his boots.
She glanced over his shoulder at the headlines. It constantly amazed Annie how fascinated and involved with politics the Americans were; none of her English pals gave a stuff about it, and neither did she. But even she could see that Vietnam was a mess, and one that would have to be resolved soon.
She nodded in the direction of the study. The apartment was massive, and Old Colonial in its style of decor. It was one of only two apartments on this floor, with full-service white-gloved doorman, concierge and elevator operator.
‘Is he free?’ she asked.
‘For you?’ Nico rose to his feet with a courtly smile and a bow. ‘He’s free.’
Annie gave him a smile in return. She liked Nico. She felt he would throw himself under a ten-ton truck to protect Constantine, and she liked that; he needed good people around him.
Nico was a big friendly bear of a man with a thin scraping of darkish hair remaining on his big dome of a head. He had humorous and shrewd dark eyes, half hidden under thick eyebrows. In his gait and mannerisms he was shambling and casual, he always looked untidy. But he
