Date Rape New York

DATE RAPE NEW YORK

Date Rape New York

Copyright © 2015 by Janet McGiffin

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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pter 1

Shadows swirled around her, faceless, nameless, frightening her. Car doors slammed; windows opened onto stairways and banged behind her; empty closets loomed; papers flew up, slapping her face, cold and wet against her skin; her ears were filled with the shrieks of an angry old woman. “Jacky! Jacky! Bite! Bite!” 

“Francisco! Help!” Grazia screamed, frantic for her lover. She reached for him with clutching fingers. But he wasn’t there; he couldn’t help her. Deep sorrow filled her and tears flooded her eyes. A flash of gold flitted across her vision, then a cry awakened her. Her own.

Grazia Conti lay frozen in fear, fists and eyes clenched, trembling from the nightmare. Where was she? Seconds stretched into minutes with no sense of place. Whenever she traveled on business, she awoke unsure of where she was, but normally a few seconds of backtracking was enough to locate herself in place and time. Now, as she found no answer, anxiety tightened her stomach muscles and added to the nightmare terror. 

This wasn’t her bed, that much her body instinctively knew without moving or opening her eyes. This wasn’t her apartment in Naples where her balcony draperies were dappled with the colors of the sea. Had she been sleepwalking and ended up in someone else’s bed? The thought made her break into a sweat. Throughout childhood, she had suffered walking nightmares, waking the household with babbled nonsense. As a teenager home with the flu, she had pounded on the neighbor’s apartment door wailing about dying. After that, her mother had taken her to a psychologist who blamed the somnambulating on the parental fights that had led to their divorce. When the psychologist had started to delve into Grazia’s relationship with her father, her mother stopped the counseling. The walking nightmares stopped when Grazia left home for university.

Grazia cautiously reached around her. Francisco was not in her bed. So she wasn’t at their usual Naples hotel where she met him for an evening or a night. She forced her eyes open a slit. Immediately, vomit rose to the back of her mouth and her head began throbbing. Her back ached. She shut her eyes to let the nausea subside, then opened them wide. 

The room was dark except for a blurry white patch that crept forward, retreated, then crept forward again. She watched it, heart pounding, until she was sure it was coming no closer. Cautiously, she slid her arm out of the covers towards the bedside lamp, fighting the nightmare certainty that a monster was waiting to pounce. She clicked the light switch. The creeping white patch became heavy white curtains with moving lights behind them which came and went with the swish of passing cars. She saw a large dresser, a round table with two chairs, and a green striped armchair. She was in an expensive hotel room.

But what was this? Scattered over the white carpet were crumpled shopping bags with the Lord & Taylor logo and items of new clothing, still bearing tags. A red blouse and one black snow boot lay under the round table along with jeans entangled with aqua underpants, as if she had stripped them off together. Confused and growing more anxious, Grazia started to sit up, but immediately sank back, dizzy and nauseated. Had she made this mess? Normally, she was tidy to the point of obsession. In Naples, her cleaning ladies quit because they couldn’t meet Grazia’s standards. Her designer suits hung in her walk-in closet sorted by color, fabric, and skirt length. Blouses were arranged by sleeve type; shoes sat in custom-built racks. Her desk at her law firm was a model of legal orderliness.

Grazia’s aching eyes settled on a down coat with a mink hood flung over the green striped armchair. Ah, it was coming back. She was at the Hotel Fiorella in New York, on a two-week vacation from her high-pressure job as a contract lawyer in Naples. The vacation was paid for by Francisco, who was her lover and also her boss and senior partner at Francisco Pamplona Law Offices. It was his bribe to keep their affair going after she had broken it off. And those clothes on the floor were from yesterday’s January sale at Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue. 

Nausea struck again. The last time Grazia had felt this sick was Christmas before last at Francisco’s holiday party that he had given for her law firm’s Milan office. She had taken the high-speed train from Naples to Milan for a staff meeting. At the conclusion, Francisco, in front of everyone, had asked her to stay for the Christmas party at his Milan apartment instead of taking the night train back to Naples. All eyes upon her, she had accepted with casual grace and gone off to find a hotel and buy a party dress.

She hadn’t wanted to attend but her pride was at stake. Six months before, Francisco had shocked her to her soul when he abruptly ended their affair by announcing his impending marriage—his second—to Belinda, a lawyer in his Milan office. Grazia had heard the news from her secretary. She should have seen this coming, Grazia told herself, sick with humiliation and rage. She had known that Francisco was going out with Belinda in Rome at the same time that he was going out with her in Naples, but she hadn’t taken it seriously. Francisco was an Italian male, after all, and he had gone out with many of the women lawyers and interns at his two large law offices. He was good-looking, charming, rich, and powerful and he liked women. Grazia’s mother and grandmother had warned her about dating a man twenty-five years older than she—who was also her boss—but she told them she could handle him. She liked being taken to expensive restaurants and opera. On his arm, she felt beautiful, sexy, and wanted—a real boost to her wounded ego after her divorce.

But Grazia had never expected Francisco to marry Belinda! Francisco’s divorce fifteen years before had been so vitriolic that it made newspaper headlines and he was quoted as vowing never again to marry. Despite her fury, however, Grazia felt a grudging admiration for Belinda’s sultry skill. In one move, she had acquired a man, two lavish homes, a beach house, and a permanent place on the pages of Italian fashion magazines. 

The day she heard of Francisco’s engagement, Grazia had sent Francisco her congratulations by email, and his gifts of expensive jewelry by mail. She kept the clothing and handbags he had bought her, but shoved them into the back of her closet. Since then, she had spoken to him only at the office in the presence of other attorneys.

The Christmas party changed all that. Grazia had been chatting with her Milan counterparts, with her eye on Belinda dancing in a dress that was more gap than fabric, when Francisco had appeared at her elbow. He had handed Grazia a vodka cocktail, quickly followed by a second. After she was dizzy and giggling, and her resolve to stay aloof had softened, he had led her into his study where he had locked the door and laid her down on the oriental carpet. Grazia’s will to resist his practiced hands had vanished along with the anger she had harbored for six months.

“Aren’t you worried about Belinda?” Grazia had murmured as Francisco quickly slid off the black and silver sheath Armani dress that Grazia had purchased that afternoon because it emphasized her slim figure, heart-shaped face and large, dark eyes. Grazia knew that Belinda would be wearing a far more expensive dress, but Grazia couldn’t let her win the dress competition without a fight.

“Belinda was a mistake. All she wanted was the houses and the status.” Francisco eased his short muscular leg over her long, slim tanned legs and ran a hand down her Pilates-flat stomach and down the inside of her leg. “We barely have sex. How I have missed you!”

Grazia groaned with pleasure. “I missed you too.”

The vodka cocktails kept Grazia up all night in her Milan hotel room with vomiting and a splitting headache—she had no tolerance for alcohol. The next day, however, she presented herself at Francisco’s office and requested, with a cool smile, to be promoted to head of contract-negotiating team for the firm’s biggest Naples client who was Geraldo Kourtis, a cement sub-contractor with multi-million Euro contracts.  Francisco had agreed immediately, then suggested they go out to dinner to celebrate when he got back to his Naples office. Grazia accepted, expecting no less. Their rekindled affair was a given. She didn’t mind. It would be revenge on Belinda for taking him away from her. And the Kourtis account was a real notch on her belt. With that on her record, Grazia’s career as a contract lawyer was set.

Since that night, however, Grazia had stuck resolutely to one small glass of wine. Temperance was wise anyway. Naples was a dangerous city and a single woman living alone had to stay sober, alert, and fearless. Twice, in heavy commuter traffic, she had been robbed by motorcyclists working in pairs. They had sandwiched her car, smashed the passenger window, and grabbed her handbag. The drivers in the surrounding cars had taken quick terrified looks and struggled to get their cars farther away. Now Grazia carried a gun between the seats. She had pulled it out twice. The second time, in fury when she saw the robber reaching for her laptop, she had nearly pulled the trigger. The robber had sensed real danger when he saw the cold look in her eyes as she deliberately pointed the gun at him, and he roared away. The violence in her response shocked her, however, and she had sat quivering until the car behind her honked at her to move forward. Was she really capable of purposefully harming a person?

The Christmas party had brought Francisco back to her, but by now Grazia was tiring of what had become an extra-marital affair. His phone calls were becoming erratic and the secrecy of their assignations made it unpleasant. The touch of his hand didn’t spark her desire any more and she was fed up with the terror that he couldn’t hide—that Belinda would discover their affair. A cutthroat lawyer, Belinda would divorce him and take all he had. But mostly, Grazia was tired of the social isolation. Their assignations in Naples hotels were no secret to the sharp-eyed lawyers and secretaries in the Naples office of the law firm and the consequence was that no lawyers in Naples would date her—including lawyers in other law firms or even businessmen who were Francisco’s clients. They were all wary of stepping on Francisco’s toes. Grazia was tired of sitting home alone, especially when she had expected to meet Francisco and he didn’t appear.

Grazia was also getting tired of contract law and the pressure to make more and more money for the firm. She had begun to think fondly of her two years doing legal aide at the women’s shelter where she had worked until she got the job at Francisco Pamplona Law Offices. She had loved the camaraderie, the sense that she was helping women improve their lives. She had quit the job with regret because the pay wasn’t enough to live on.

It was time to move on, professionally and romantically. Two weeks before she left for Manhattan, Grazia had told Francisco their affair was over. She hadn’t told him that she had seen a headhunter who had assured her of excellent opportunities with fatter salaries and lusher benefits, and had already emailed several possibilities. She had turned them down as not perfect. Perfect, she was sure, was just around the corner.

Francisco’s anguished face swam into her foggy mind. His two bodyguards had driven them to the Naples airport in his bulletproof car. In the curtained back seat, a tearful, bitter Francisco had gripped her hands. “I’ll divorce Belinda,” he had vowed. “I told you that I’ve leased an apartment for us. A decorator is furnishing it now.”

Grazia had mopped his tears with her handkerchief, but she was unmoved. She had hired a hacker to break into his email and had found no correspondence with leasing agents or decorators.

“You should have married me instead of Belinda,” she had replied matter-of-factly.

“You wanted babies,” he replied, kissing her hand. “And you accepted I didn’t want to start a new family at my age. My daughter is twenty-one. That’s why you took the Pill.” 

Nausea rose again. She was going to throw up. She pushed off the covers. A chill struck her heart. She was naked.

Grazia’s heart turned to ice. She never slept naked. Francisco laughed when she got up after sex and pulled on pajamas. “For warmth,” she lied. The truth was, wearing pajamas meant she wasn’t a naked woman available for sex while asleep. And pajamas frustrated the voyeur in the neighboring high-rise apartment building. On steamy summer nights, when she slept with her balcony doors and curtains open to the night breezes, pajamas kept her modest in the sights of his high-powered binoculars. Not that Grazia was a prude. Occasionally, she would open the curtains, stand in front of her full-length mirror, and slowly undress down to her thong and bra. They were no more revealing than any bikini on the Italian Riviera, but she knew it drove him crazy.

Confused and frightened, Grazia swung her feet to the floor. Sweat coated her face. She tried to stand but the floor swung from side to side. Halfway to the bathroom, her knees buckled. She crawled the rest of the way. Kneeling on the cool tiles in front of the toilet, she ejected what looked like a liquid dinner.

Wiping her mouth with a towel clutched in a trembling hand, she curled up on the floor. She could sleep here. She could be sick again without crawling across that endless white carpet. She dozed but awoke with a jerk of nebulous dread. She was shivering. This was crazy, said a more lucid part of her brain; she could get pneumonia. She grasped the sink, hauled herself to her feet, and flicked on the bathroom light. Then she gasped.

The huge mirror over the basin displayed a face so unlike her own that for a split second, she thought someone else had entered the bathroom. Her bloodshot eyes were so smeared with mascara that she looked like she was wearing a mask. Bright red lipstick covered her lower face from nose to chin, and her expensive New York haircut stuck out like porcupine quills. Whimpering, she scrubbed at the lipstick, smearing the mess further. A dark spot on her shoulder caught her attention. Her dazed eyes slid down her upper arms. Bruises? She placed tentative fingers over the marks. Each finger fit, as if someone had grabbed her, someone with a broader grip than hers.