by Bethany-Kris
Alberto waved it off. “Nonsense. No party. I just wanted to have you come over, see your face. I worry.”
Oh.
Violet understood, then.
Something had happened, and her father panicked, calling her to the mansion. He wanted to make sure she was safe from any possible action—no matter how slight it was—they might face.
“Of course,” Carmine said, scoffing as he tried passing Violet in the doorway.
She didn’t move, confused by the bitterness in her brother’s tone. Looking up at him, she found his cold, brown eyes boring down into hers.
“Always worry about poor, little Violet, right?” Carmine asked, shooting his father a look over his shoulder.
Alberto’s gaze passed between his son and daughter. “Now is not the time for that, Carmine.”
What had she missed?
“It’s never the time, but your favorites are showing, Dad.”
Alberto’s back stiffened like someone had shoved a stake there. “Carmine.”
Carmine sneered as he pushed past his sister. “I bet had Kazimir Markovic put his hands on your daughter’s throat like he had mine, he’d already be in a grave.”
Violet swallowed the lump in her throat, looking back at her father.
Alberto was watching her, too. And she could plainly see his unspoken confirmation written in his posture and shining in his gaze. Yes, if her father thought for even one second that Kaz had touched her, the man would be dead.
He didn’t know it, but those hands had already been on her throat.
And everywhere else.
More than once.
“Where’ve you been?” Ruslan asked as he oversaw the men bringing in his new shipment of vodka—they had a tendency to go through it rather quickly.
Kaz shook his head at his brother. “Most of you gossip more than women.”
Leveling his eyes on him, Ruslan said, “Any change to your routine, no matter how minute, will be noticed by somebody. Careful there, little brother, you don’t want someone digging into your secrets—you won’t like the result.”
Kaz didn’t dismiss his words as easily as he had Abram’s, not when he knew how true that statement was. They had both suffered the consequences of someone being a little too curious.
Ruslan still was.
“That’s not why I’m here.” Avoidance was his friend at the moment.
“No? What do you want?”
Scratching at the hair covering his jaw, Kaz considered his words before he asked what he wanted to know. “Gavrill.”
Ruslan frowned. “Our uncle? What about him?”
It was no secret that Ruslan had been closer to their uncle than any of their siblings. Truthfully, his relationship had been far better with Gavrill than it was with Vasily. Wherever Gavrill went, as long as there was no business involved, then Ruslan was on his heels, never too far behind.
He had been older at the time of their uncle’s death, so there was a stronger possibility that Ruslan remembered the details better than he did.
“January 21st—never forget that day. It was cold as shit, and the streets were silent because of that car bomb that nearly took your life. Someone—and even to this day we still don’t know the face behind the gun, just that he was Italian—walked up to him in the middle of the street and shot him, point-blank in the face. I don’t think they actually found all of his teeth.”
Fucking hell. Kaz hadn’t known any of that. He knew Gavrill died, or was murdered, rather, but he hadn’t known it had been so brazen.
“I’m confused. Why didn’t Vasily ever do anything about it? If you know it was the Italians, he had to know, too. Could probably find the gunman, too, if he asked the right questions.”
“There was a girl, Italian, left raped and murdered behind a pizza parlor in Hell’s Kitchen, all fingers pointed back to Gavrill,” Ruslan said. “Whether by his word or action, Gavrill had to answer for it.”
Something about the tone of his voice gave Kaz pause. “But …”
“But?”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Ruslan signed off on the slip, sending the men on their way, gesturing with a tilt of his head for Kaz to follow him inside. “Gavrill was a lot of things, but even he had limits.”
Kaz shook his head, agreeing. From what he could remember of the man, he had been rather loud, quick to anger depending on who was speaking, and had a tendency to act before he thought. Was he a murderer? Yeah, weren’t they all? But a rapist … Kaz couldn’t see that, nor could he ever think of a time when Gavrill had even used that as a threat.
But he had been a child …
“And Vasily didn’t question this?”
“He was more concerned with ending the war. Men were dying—you almost died. If Gavrill’s death meant it all came to a stop, he couldn’t retaliate.” Rulan paused. “At least that’s what Vasily says.”
It didn’t have to be asked whether Ruslan believed that, the contempt in his voice told his true feelings. Everything he’d said only made Kaz more curious—it wasn’t meshing with the shit Carmine had said. Of course, it could have meant that he was just trying to get a rise out of him, say what he needed to push his buttons, but Carmine had been too arrogant in the way he spoke for Kaz to believe that.
“Why are you asking about all of this anyway?” Ruslan asked, peering over at him as though he could read the answer on his face.
“Had a run in with Carmine Gallucci earlier—he said some things. I was curious.”
It was at that moment that Kaz’s phone rang. He already had a good idea as to who it was.
“One day, you’re going to go too far,” Ruslan warned. “Who the hell is going to save your ass when Vasily decides to teach you a lesson?”
Digging his phone out, Kaz smiled absently. “Let’s hope we never have to find out—Kaz.”
“You know,” Vasily began, sounding rather thoughtful, “when I asked Irina to bear my children, you were not what I hoped for.”
“Someone’s in a mood,” Kaz said in return, already heading for his car, knowing what Vasily would tell him. “How about we skip the ‘I don’t know why you’re calling,’ discussion? Yes, I had a run in with Carmine Gallucci, and considering you’re not yelling, you know that he wasn’t hurt too bad—his pride, maybe. So really, what’s there to discuss?”
Kaz slipped behind the wheel, and as he switched the call over to the Bluetooth radio, his phone buzzed again, this time with a text.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Vasily asked. “Is that what this is about? I don’t understand. I’ve given you everything you could have ever wanted. Money, the best schools, the best cars … and yet you never do the simplest of things that I ask.”
“What was that?” Kaz had only been half paying attention to his father as he unlocked his phone, opening up the message.
“Kazimir!” Vasily snapped, that last little thread he had on his control breaking. “Stay the fuck away from the Galluccis. How many times must I say this?”
The image took a while to load, but when it did, Kaz grinned slowly. There was no face, just the curve of a shoulder, pale skin, and the mottled bite mark he had left some days ago. He was intrigued as to why she sent it.
Whether it was meant as a reminder that he needed to be careful as to where he left his mark, or whether it was an invitation.
He chose to go with the latter.
“I’ll be in there in fifteen,” Kaz said to his father, even as he typed a message to Violet. “And yeah, you have my word. I’ll stay clear of Carmine Gallucci.”
But not Violet. Never Violet.
The clink of a spoon hitting china lightly made Violet look up from the textbook she had spread out on the table. She found her father watching her from the other side of the large kitchen, still stirring the cup on the counter. With a smile, Alberto picked the cup up and brought it over to where his daughter was seated, pushing it across the table as he took a seat.
Viol
et picked up the Chai tea for a sip, and smiled approvingly. Her father wasn’t the type to prepare someone else’s food or drinks. He had people do that for him, and for others around him. But he had learned a while ago how to make Chai tea just the way Violet liked as a way to soften her up before a chat.
She had caught onto his games over the years.
But she still appreciated the effort.
“It’s good,” she mumbled around the rim.
Alberto shrugged. “As long as you like it, dolcezza.”
Violet put the cup back to the table, flipping another page over in her textbook. With her father, it was better to let him open up the discussion, rather than coming right out and asking him what he was thinking about.
“How is school?” Alberto asked.
No better time than the present, she thought.
Her father had all but demanded she stay for supper long after his guests were gone, and even after Carmine had left. Her mother had taken to her studio office, leaving the father and daughter alone. Still, he asked her to stay, and she did.
“Actually …” Violet trailed off, frowning.
Alberto matched the expression. “What?”
“I’m flunking two of my classes. And at this rate, I might as well just add another year—or a semester, if I’m being kind—onto my Bachelor of Art degree.”
Her father’s expression barely changed at all. Violet was surprised. She expected him to be angry—disappointed, even.
But, no.
Nothing.
Alberto tapped a single finger to the table. “Is college not what you want to do?”
“It is,” she responded fast.
“Then why aren’t you keeping up? You’re not a stupid girl, Violet. You graduated top ten in your high school. What is so different about Columbia that you’re struggling?”
Violet sighed. “It’s a lot of things, Daddy.”
“Try me.”
Her phone buzzed with a text, and her gaze shot down to where her purse rested beside her chair. Still, she didn’t reach for the bag to grab it. Her father surely wouldn’t appreciate that at the moment, and he was being particularly kind about her bad grades as it was.
“Okay, here’s one,” Violet said, “today I didn’t even get to finish my classes, and I had a presentation due for my last class that was meant to give me extra credit. I’ve been working on it for a week. That is one of the classes I’m failing.”
Alberto nodded. “All right. Fair enough. I’m sorry.”
Violet waved around her, high above her head. “And there’s all this stuff going on, it seems. No one wants to talk about it, but I’m not an idiot, Daddy. I can see what’s happening, okay? It’s distracting when I’m brought into it or it takes me out of focusing on school.”
He leaned forward in his seat. “And shall I mention the weekends at clubs, the mid-week parties, and the late nights with friends all the times in between? How about that boy you were seeing a few months ago? I seem to remember several trips out of state during times when you should have been in classes.”
Damn.
Yeah, her father had her there.
“He wasn’t important, just fun,” she said weakly.
It was the truth.
“And the other things?” Alberto asked.
“I’m not doing those now. I’m trying to focus.”
“I’m aware—your grades do show it, even if you think they’re still too low. And they are too low, Violet.”
She sat straighter in the chair. “What?”
“I’ve been keeping up with your grades for a lot longer than you think, and I hoped that you would see the downfall and start to correct it. You have, and that’s enough for me to let you learn from this. So, you’ll have to spend an extra year in school. That’s your consequence for this last year and the mess you’ve been.”
Violet sucked in a hard breath. Her father could have said a lot of things, but calling her a “mess” downright cut her to the bone.
“Keep focusing,” her father continued to say, oblivious to her hurt. “Give me something to be proud of, hmm? Because if you do flunk out, then you’re promising yourself very little but the life of a housewife with no education, dependent on her husband to carry her.”
“Is that really what you think I’d be good for, marriage?”
Alberto didn’t bat a lash. “A couple of decades ago, daughters of made men who couldn’t make themselves useful in other ways often found themselves of use to the family.”
“Meaning what?”
“Exactly what I already said. Housewives.”
Violet bit hard on her inner cheek, disliking how that felt like a slightly veiled threat. She tossed a look at the clock, noting the time was well after seven. “I should get back to Manhattan. School in the morning, right?”
Alberto nodded, and stood from the table. “Remember what I said, dolcezza.”
Right.
Housewife.
As her father turned to leave, Violet reached down for her purse. She grabbed the phone out and unlocked the screen, seeing Kaz had responded to her text earlier in the day.
She had just opened the message up when her father turned back around saying, “Oh, and Violet?”
Violet’s head snapped up, heart racing. “Yeah?”
“I let Gee take the night off. Call a cab to take you back.”
She nodded, glancing back down at the phone.
An ache settled deep in her stomach, traveling even lower.
Kaz had sent back his own picture. Black and white, his hand shoved down his unbuttoned pants and wrapped around the base of his length, the rest hidden where she couldn’t see. She only knew it was him because of the tattoos, and damn, because she knew his body now.
Her mouth went dry.
Another message quickly followed.
An address.
A time.
Nothing else.
She took that to mean it wasn’t a request.
Vasily was waiting in his office, a gun on his desk. Kaz shook his head as he entered, eyeing it. “Are you trying to send me a message, Vasily?”
His father looked from the gun to him and shook his head. “Of course not.”
How easily he overlooked something as simple as his weapon being out, but Kaz? Kaz rarely, if ever, saw a gun that close to Vasily, not when he had men at his back at all times.
Ignoring it for the time being, Kaz said, “What did you need, besides the whole, avoid Gallucci thing. That’s getting a bit redundant, no? After all, it’s not like I actively sought out this last encounter.”
“I’m sure you’re completely innocent, Kazimir,” Vasily said, sounding like that was the last thing he believed. “I know you better than to believe something of the sort.”
“Good to know.” He had thought about dismissing the incident with Carmine entirely, at least until he thought about what had been said. “He has a big mouth though.”
“Oh?”
Kaz sat forward, looking around with casual disinterest at the paintings that hung on the walls of Vasily’s office. “Mentioned how his family helped ours some years ago. I’d wager I was about ten? Eleven?”
Vasily scoffed. “Those Italians always believe they do more than the average man. I wouldn’t place too much credence into anything the boy said. After all, he is his father’s son.”
It was funny, seeing how easily Vasily disregarded what Kaz was saying, especially when he didn’t know what all Carmine had actually said. “True, but I did wonder what he meant by that. Oh wait,” Kaz said as though he had just realized something, “he probably was talking about that meeting. You and Alberto, his daughter and I. Considering how much you actually hate the man, what made you attend a meeting with him?”
Vasily cleared his throat, sitting up just a little bit straighter as he regarded his son. “It was necessary at the time. Do you remember that bomb that nearly took your life? Who do you think set it? If you wonder why I hate those Galluccis
, look no further than that.”
“And Gavrill?” Kaz asked next. “How did he feel about you meeting with a man he wanted dead?”
There was a flash of some dark emotion in the man’s eyes, but it was gone before Kaz could read into it. “The uncle you loved and the man that was Pakhan were two very different people. You couldn’t possibly understand, not at your age. To you and your brother, he was the savior. You two treated the man like he was fucking royalty though he wasn’t.”
Had they? Kaz remembered Ruslan’s doting, but never his own. Sure, he had looked up to his uncle, loved the man, but back then, before life and its pain came between them, Kaz had looked up to his father as well.
But even with his passionate speech, Kaz still didn’t miss one important detail. “But you still didn’t answer my question.”
“No?” Vasily rested his fists on his desk as he stared across at Kaz, unblinking. He lacked the fatherly pride of only a few minutes ago, now replaced with coldness that Kaz had no trouble reading. “Why are you asking about this now, Kazimir? What has you so curious?”
Kaz had to quell his need to tap his fingers, balling his fists instead. “I hate being in the dark on certain matters—I’m sure you can understand this. Carmine Gallucci? He knows who I am, and what I’m capable of, but yet he stood toe-to-toe with me, spouting off about things I’m not sure of.”
“What did he say?” There was an edge to Vasily’s voice as he asked the question.
“You misunderstand. It’s what he didn’t say that concerns me. In one breath, he’s spouting off about how his family has helped ours. In the next, he’s telling me how he’ll put me down, just as he did my uncle.” Kaz moved to the edge of his seat. “That sounds pretty fucking strange to me.”
Vasily slowly rose to his feet, the glare on his face enough to reflect his current mood. “If there is a question, ask it. My patience for this runs thin.”
“The meeting in the cemetery … what were the odds that it was about Gavrill?”
“I’ve told you to leave it be, Kazimir. Eto prikaz—that’s an order.”
That should have been the end of it. Should have.
But Kaz wasn’t done yet. “We know it was the Italians that killed Gavrill, I’ve heard you say as much. And yet, you never once tried to get back at them for it.”
