Kaz came awake slowly, then all at once. The sharp rays of sunlight peeking through the drapes of his bedroom were too fucking bright this early in the morning. With a groan, he rolled over, putting his back to the windows, his arm stretching out beside him, but coming up short when he was met with soft skin.
There was a moment of confusion as his foggy mind tried to catch up with what his hands were feeling. Nevertheless, he continued on, letting his fingers slide down and over feminine curves. Memories of the night before slammed back into him as his eyes opened and he took in the sight of blonde hair fanning out along his sheets and pillows.
From what he could tell, Violet was still sleeping, her chest rising and falling with even breaths as she remained unaware to his movements. How many hours had gone by as he had familiarized himself with the very curves he was tracing once more? Did it matter? He still felt like there was so much left to learn.
Even more so when it came to the woman herself.
Slipping out of bed, careful not to jostle her, he headed in the direction of the bathroom, leaving the lights off as he went. After relieving himself and washing his hands, he splashed water on his face, trying to further wake himself up. He had only been gone a handful of minutes at most, but as he reentered his bedroom, he could see that Violet was awake, though she hadn’t moved from her spot in his bed.
And, oh, what a sight she made.
She was naked beneath that gray sheet she held against her chest. Her hair rumpled and in disarray, she looked like she had spent the night getting fucked. He might have smiled at that thought, but for the way she was looking at him with a mixture of confusion and dawning realization.
Curious, he asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I remember you,” she said just soft enough that he almost didn’t hear her. “We were in a graveyard? I think? I’m not really sure—it was all fuzzy.”
It wasn’t fuzzy for Kaz. He remembered that day well, mostly that he didn’t want to go. After the car bomb shortly before, Kaz had hated any kind of light, the sight of it making his head hurt instantly, even with the thick, opaque sunglasses Vasily had bought for him.
His father hadn’t told him much of what was going to happen that day, only that he was expected to be there, and to be on his best behavior. Even at ten years old, he knew better than to disappoint his father, especially on a day as important as that one, even if he didn’t know it at the time.
It had been one of the few times that Kaz had seen Alberto Gallucci in person, and the lone time he had seen Violet in person before a few weeks ago. More, it wasn’t the Italian Don, or his father’s excitement after the meeting had taken place, that he remembered most about that day.
It was Violet.
She had to have been no more than four at the time, but she smiled and talked to him like they were the same age. There had been no fear in her when she spoke, talking about things he couldn’t see as she described them for him.
It was the sun, she had said, that shined the brightest …
Thinking back on it, he wasn’t so sure that was true.
“Yeah,” he finally responded. “It was a graveyard.”
She ran fingers through her hair, trying to tame it as best she could, even as she looked away from him, trying to remember a past that he knew all too well. “Why were we there, though?”
That was one answer even Kaz didn’t have. He had asked Vasily once, what he and Alberto had discussed that day, but his father had never given him an answer, and even forbid him from asking about it again. Until recently, he had abided by that—truthfully, he hadn’t given a shit to ask again—but now, he was a little more curious.
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t seem surprised by his lack of knowledge. “That was what you meant then, when you said we met before?”
Pushing off the wall, he crossed the floor in a few, quick strides, and stretched out at the foot of the bed, tucking his hands beneath his head. “It was.”
“Funny that no one’s ever mentioned that,” she said almost absently, shifting in the bed so she was sitting up.
Especially with the way Vasily talked about the man, as though he was the scum of the earth. One would think that the two men had never seen eye to eye on anything, but at one point, at least for a time, they had. There had been no bullets fired that day, nor had any voices raised above pleasant conversation level.
Strange. All of it was fucking strange.
But the last thing Kaz wanted to be doing presently was thinking about his father, and hers, knowing that if either of them knew what was happening at that very moment, Kaz would be a dead man.
Reaching out, he offered her his hand, and she accepted it without question, letting him pull her across the bed, dragging the sheet along with her. As she straddled him, his hands drifted beneath the fabric that covered her to rest at her hips, and he felt content, enjoying the visual she made on top of him.
He could have never anticipated this, that he actually wanted her exactly where she was, but he did. And though he had business to attend to, he wasn’t ready to give up this moment. He’d hold onto it for as long as he could.
“Now it’s you,” she said with a smile, drawing his attention back to her. “You’re overthinking.”
He merely returned her smile, reaching up to let the strands of her hair drift through his fingers. She leaned down further to give him better access, but the moment she did, he stole a kiss instead, feeling her contented sigh against his lips.
One hand drifted around to the back of her head, fisting the hair there to keep her in place, the other palming her backside to keep her steady. It was only supposed to be for a moment, just a quick kiss to remind him of what she tasted like, but it soon spiraled into something else as she ground down on his cock, making him grip her ass just a bit tighter.
Kaz was hard, had been since the moment she climbed on top of him, but at the feel of how wet she was, even the slight tremor that worked its way through her body, it became almost painful.
Last night hadn’t been enough. No matter how many hours were spent rolling around in his bed. He was quickly learning that when it came to her, he was insatiable, the need almost making him crazed. But as he had half a mind to grab a condom from his nightstand, a ringing phone made him pause.
It took him a moment, thinking it was his phone, but as Violet shot up, scrambling off of him to go in search of it, he knew their moment was over, and at worse, their time was up.
She hadn’t been gone long before she was right back in his bedroom, the phone to her ear, her face devoid of color. “Hey, Daddy.”
There was nothing quite like the sound of her saying, ‘Daddy,’ that made his cock shrivel up, but he didn’t move from his spot on the bed, not wanting to even breathe in her direction.
“In thirty minutes?” Violet said, the anxiety in her expression making Kaz frown, wondering what they were talking about. “I won’t be ready by then. I’ve only been awake for a few minutes. I need to shower, do my hair—and you know how long it takes me to do my makeup, I—”
She grew quiet again, and he could almost hear her father’s muffled voice on the other end.
“No, no. An hour is fine … right, I’ll see you soon … bye.”
The second she ended the call, she turned her panicked eyes on Kaz. “My dad is sending a driver to my place in an hour. We need to go.” She spun around, rushing back to his bathroom where he had thrown her clothes all over the floor.
Fuck.
It was already hell trying to get through Manhattan traffic on a good day, and that was on top of the hour and a half drive that it took to get there from Little Odessa. To get her there in less than an hour?
Kaz grabbed the first pair of pants he could find, then a shirt, and finally shoes before he had his keys in hand and was ushering Violet out the door. Down in the parking garage, he unlocked the doors to his Porsche with a press of the button, but as he walked toward it, Violet hesitated.
“What?”
She bit her lip. “Everyone knows this car …”
True enough. “But if you want to get back to Manhattan anytime soon, it’s the Porsche—the Rover will be too slow.”
He didn’t have to say anything further before she was sliding into the passenger seat. He barely gave her a chance to buckle in before his foot was on the gas and he was shooting out of the garage and onto the street, ignoring the blaring horns he left in his wake.
Shifting into second gear, he bypassed another set of cars, barely making it through a yellow light before it turned red.
“You know, if I die in a car wreck,” Violet started, her fingers white-knuckled around the center console. “That’s not going to help us.”
Kaz merely said, “I got this,” before concentrating on the road again, the speedometer already approaching ninety miles an hour.
He hardly paid attention to anything else besides the cars surrounding him, and the time ticking by on his dash. Doing well over forty above the speed limit, he knew if he passed any police, he was definitely getting stopped, but that was the last thing on his mind.
Just sitting beside her, he could feel the waves of anxiety pouring off her, the fear that she wasn’t going to make it in time, or worse … that she would be caught with him.
But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen.
“You know,” Kaz said, a sudden thought popping into his head. “I don’t have your number.”
Violet looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. “Are you serious?”
“About needing your number? Absolutely. The next time I show up to your place uninvited might not work out as well for me.”
With one hand still on the wheel, he dug into his pocket for his phone, typing in the four-digit code before passing her the device. “Plug it in.”
She didn’t question his command, merely did what he asked, then went on to call her own phone so that she would have his number as well.
The hour mark had just passed when he made it into the city. The traffic was far worse there than it was outside of it.
Worse, he knew better than to pull up directly outside of her building. There was no guarantee that her father didn’t have people watching the place, or even just in the neighborhood doing business. So instead, he turned on a side street, parking on the opposite side of the back of her building.
He didn’t get a chance to say a word before she was whipping her seatbelt off and opening the door, but before she got out, she leaned across and gave him a quick kiss, surprising the hell out of him for a moment.
“See you later.”
Violet was gone seconds later, dashing across the street in a flurry of blonde hair. Even with the circumstance being so dire, and the fact that he still had to make it back out of Manhattan yet, Kaz still smiled.
Violet had just come up to the back of her building when the phone in her purse started to ring. The sound was as insistent as it was dooming. Answering the call, she put the phone to her ear and hoped the background noise of the city went unnoticed.
“Hello?”
“Gee will be there in fifteen minutes,” Alberto said, not even offering her a greeting. “Apparently, traffic is terrible in Manhattan this morning and he’s stuck behind an accident that just happened two minutes ago.”
Violet felt her heart finally rise back up from her stomach into her chest. “That’s okay, Daddy.”
“Are you already outside? I hear cars.”
Shit.
“Yeah, just waiting on him out front. You said an hour, right?”
“I did,” Alberto agreed. “You’ll be a little late for breakfast because of the traffic, but it was semantics anyway.”
Violet’s brow furrowed as she dug for the access key that would let her in through the back emergency door of her building. She needed the front desk people to at least see her walk by them in case her father asked after her at some point.
“Semantics?” she asked.
“Your friends are here,” was all he said.
She knew then what was happening. The events of the night before involving Ruslan and Franco had not gone unnoticed by her father. Amelia’s lies had probably been exposed.
Alberto Gallucci was not the type of man to beat around the bush. She had told her father the truth of what happened, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would not have sent Franco after Kaz’s brother, based on her side of the story.
But her father didn’t know that she knew.
So, she feigned ignorance. “Why are my friends there?”
Alberto sighed, heavy and angry at the same time. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Wonderful.
He hung up the call without a goodbye.
Violet managed to get inside her building, and took a quick look at the screen of her phone. She had another ten minutes to be at the front waiting, if Gee’s estimate of time had been anything to go on. The man was known for his fucking punctuality.
His time was right and she knew it.
The decorative mirrors along the back hallway that led into the main floor where the elevators were stopped Violet. She grabbed the small toiletry case out of her purse, and did what she could to her face and hair with what time she had, and what products were in the bag.
She made a mental note to keep more in it next time when she was left with nothing more than a bit of color to her cheeks, red lipstick, and mascara. The single black elastic in the bag was more than enough for her to pull her messy hair back at the nape of her neck, and flip the hair up in and around to make it seem like she had put far more effort into the updo than what she actually had.
Messy was a style, after all.
Checking her appearance one last time, and pulling a few strands of hair out to let it frame her face, she grabbed her purse off the floor and headed for the front. She didn’t give the front desk a second glance, and they didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t come out of the elevators.
Her heart still pounded like crazy.
The building’s front door just closed behind her when Gee pulled up.
Violet walked in on what she could only describe as a somber mood. The dining room table was filled with people—Amelia, Nicole, their parents, Violet’s mother and father, and her brother. There was even a couple of other men standing in the corner of the room, gazes trained on Amelia, and faces as blank as stone.
“Violet,” Alberto greeted, barely glancing up from the phone in front of him.
“Morning, Daddy.”
He waved a hand at the free chair beside Nicole. “Sit.”
The command was laced with the sound of his obvious irritation. Violet chose not to argue, and grabbed the chair to sit as fast as she could. Her father looked her over, taking in her appearance quickly before his attention was back on that phone again.
Silently, Violet let out a breath of relief.
If Alberto hadn’t been satisfied with the way she looked, he would have said straight away, regardless of who was around to hear him criticize her. She figured what with the adrenaline rush the entire morning had been, she probably looked fresh-faced and wide awake.
Maybe she should thank Kaz for driving like a freaking maniac.
Alberto swiped at the screen on his phone, and scowled.
“Nothing?” Christian asked from where he sat, directly across from his daughter.
Nicole flinched at her father’s question, her head dropping a little lower.
“I’m sorry,” Amelia whispered.
Vito shook his head, rubbing at his temples. “Boss—”
“Shut up. Fermo, stolto,” Alberto barked, the volume of his shout echoing through the dining room. Even Violet dipped her head, and she knew damn well it wasn’t her in trouble. “Do you know what your daughter has done now?”
“I know,” Vito replied quietly.
“I cannot even get a response from the Russian. It’s bad enough when I do have to speak to any of them, but let me just say it is far worse when he will not answer a call.”
Violet’s head snapped up, finding her father seething mad, but with a bit of panic lingering there as well.
“And for what?” Alberto asked, waving at Amelia. “So she could make that idiot jealous?”
Amelia sniffled, using the heels of her palms to press against her eyes. Violet wanted to feel some sort of sympathy for her friend … but she couldn’t find any. Amelia had always liked to play stupid games with Franco, things that would draw him back to her before she pushed him away again. Ruslan had probably been another one of those stupid games.
But it wasn’t a game.
Those kinds of lies killed people.
Amelia should have known that.
So no, Violet didn’t feel bad as both Alberto and Vito started shouting between one another, and at Amelia.
Violet passed Nicole a subtle look at her side. “Did you know?”
Nicole shrugged, but her expression said that no, she hadn’t known a thing.
“Explicitly!” Alberto roared. “I explicitly forbade Franco, and you—” He turned on Carmine. “You, I told you the answer was no because her stories didn’t line up with the other two.”
“Dad,” Carmine started to say.
Alberto pushed away from the table, taking a single step toward his son. “Say that again, Carmine.”
It didn’t even come out like a question.
Carmine tipped his chin down. “Sorry, boss.”
Violet blinked, confused and stunned at the same time. She knew her brother had long been mixed up in the family business, but inside their home, she had never heard him address their father as anything less than “Dad” or “Papa”. Certainly not “boss”.
Alberto, seemingly satisfied with Carmine’s correction, turned back to the table and pointed at Amelia. “A man very nearly lost his son last night because of your lies. And if I didn’t know you as well as I do, if I didn’t care for your father as much as I do, it would be you taking the punishment for what happened, and not Franco.”
Amelia sucked in a sharp breath, saying again, “I’m sorry.”
Vito said nothing, and neither did his wife beside him.
Violet wasn’t surprised at their lack of a response. They were la famiglia, and a blood relation didn’t have to factor into that at all. Alberto was the head of the family, a family they were a part of, and like he always had done, he made the calls and doled out the punishments.
This was just another one of those times where he had to step in.
“Get out of my face,” Alberto said, far quieter than before.
Violet was up out of her seat before anyone else.
The others sat there, looking stupid, as she made a beeline for the exit.
Alberto Gallucci was a lot of things, but a quiet man was not one of them. And when he was quiet, when he spoke softly through thinned lips and clenched teeth, it was a very bad thing.
“Now,” Violet heard her father say behind her. “But do not leave the property.”
She was already heading toward the back door.
The further she could get from her father in that moment, the better she thought it would all be.
Standing beneath the spray of water, Kaz ducked his head, letting the shower wash away the night before. He hadn’t minded the scent of Violet clinging to his skin, reminding him of just how long he had spent learning every inch of her, but business was calling, and he had to get a move on.
He had only been upstairs for little more than thirty minutes before he was heading back down. With his phone in hand, he looked over the messages he had ignored earlier, but came up short when he caught sight of Raj, one of Vasily’s soldiers, standing next to his car, his hands in his pockets.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Vasily had sent a man around to see him, especially when he was indisposed, but he saved Raj for special occasions. Kaz knew all too well what the man was capable of, especially when he was feeling inspired. And while Kaz feared no man, he still gave him a wide berth whenever they were in the same room together.
Catching sight of Kaz, Raj’s expression didn’t change, that permanent scowl he usually sported still etched firmly onto his grisly mug. “The Pakhan wants to see you.”
Kaz tapped his thumb against his phone, then said, “He couldn’t call me himself?” It wasn’t like the man was incapable of using a phone—he had just seen him the day before. And if Vasily was going underground for any reason, Kaz would have been one of the first to know.
But despite his inquiry, Raj didn’t offer a response—not that Kaz was expecting one. Raj didn’t question orders, just did what he was told and nothing more. He was a good soldier in that way.
And maybe if he hadn’t spent the night between the legs of someone he knew was off-limits, Kaz might have been a little less suspicious as to why Vasily was calling him in.
He was careful to keep his expression neutral as he slid into his car, watching Raj through the windshield as the man jogged the short distance back to his own vehicle. The moment Kaz was sure he couldn’t see him anymore, he dialed someone he thought might have answers. While he and their father might not have been the closest, Ruslan still heard things, sometimes even before Kaz did.
“It’s early for you, no?” Ruslan said the moment the call connected, sounding like he was still in bed.
“Vasily wants a meet,” Kaz explained, driving far more cautiously than he had some hours before.
There was a sound of movement, and his brother’s muffled voice as he spoke with whoever he was with before Ruslan was back on the line. “What the fuck did you do this time?”
Ruslan wasn’t far off. The last time Vasily had called him in this early was because of a shipment Kaz had fucked up and needed to fix. “Nothing that I’m aware of.” The last thing he was going to mention was Violet.
“I haven’t heard anything, if that’s why you’re calling—can’t help you this time.”
Kaz only had a few minutes before he would be outside of Vasily’s residence, so there was no point in him asking for information anywhere else. He would just have to go in and pray to whoever the fuck was listening that he wasn’t walking to his death.
“How’s the face?” he asked changing the subject.
Ruslan made a disgruntled noise, sounding almost annoyed as he said, “Looks worse than it feels. I’ll probably need to avoid Mama for a while. You know how she feels when she sees that shit.”
Irina wasn’t clueless. She knew all too well what the men in her life were doing, even without the specifics, but she never liked when it was staring back at her. That just made the reality of it all sink in a little more. If they could help it, they didn’t show her that side.
“Do that.”
“Right. Well, call me after your meet.”
Yeah, if he lived to see the end of it … “Will do.”
With a quick farewell, Kaz was off the phone, tossing the device in his passenger seat as he pulled up to the gate, punched in the code, and waited for the metal doors to swing open before he pulled in and parked. At first glance, he could already see that Irina wasn’t at home, nor were the twins. One of the two matching BMWs that Vasily had bought them for their birthdays was missing.
He might have been inclined to think of this as a good thing. Kaz didn’t want to believe that Vasily would kill him under the roof where Irina and the girls slept, but knowing his father the way he did, he would have him cleaned up long before any of them got home.
Grabbing his gun from the glove compartment, he checked the clip before holstering the weapon. It was now or never.
The front door was open when he tried the knob, not all that surprising since it was pretty well known who the house belonged to.
He crossed the floor to the spiral staircase, heading upstairs to the second level where Vasily’s office was located. Though the door was pushed closed from what Kaz could see from down the hall, the gruff, but soft voices could still be heard.
Rapping his knuckles twice against the door, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were five men in attendance, his father included. Raj stood off to the side looking disapproving—probably because Kaz had arrived after him, though they had left from the same place. Two more men were seated against the back wall, not speaking. And last, there was Andrei who was standing across from Vasily, his gaze shooting to Kaz the moment he entered the room.
“Good of you to finally join us,” Andrei said, condescension dripping from his tone.
Kaz’s brow rose as he regarded the man, but he kept his mouth shut. He and Andrei had never gotten along, in part because the man felt Kaz didn’t deserve the spot he had. Andrei had been a part of the brotherhood for more than two decades, had even spent a tour in a Russian gulag back during the fall of the Soviet Union, and yet he was still occupying the same position as Kaz.
Of course, he couldn’t voice his anger to Vasily—not if he wanted to live—but he lived to make Kaz’s life difficult every fucking chance he got.
“Sorry, Mom,” Kaz said. “Next time I’ll call to let you know when I’ll be late for dinner.”
Chuckles arose, making Andrei’s face mottle with red. “You little—”
“As entertaining as this has been,” Vasily interjected. “We need to get to business. Take a seat, Kazimir.”
Kaz quickly surveyed the available spots left in his father’s office to sit, noting the only seats would put his back to someone else, or a window. Standing where he was, his back was only to the door, and that was better than it facing men he didn’t trust all that much.
“I’ll stand,” Kaz said.
Vasily passed him an indecipherable look, but settled on a nod. “Fine. Last night—”
“I still think we should send a message to the Italians,” one of the two men standing against the wall said.
“I’m going to speak without interruption, or the next time someone jumps in on my conversation, I will have their tongue removed and bronzed for a paperweight,” Vasily said rather dryly.
Any and all sounds in the office silenced instantly.
Vasily wasn’t known for idle threats, and he always had a certain flair when it came to making a point.
“Good,” Vasily said, pleased with the quietness around him. “As I was saying, I wanted to revisit the attack on Ruslan last night, and what I have decided to do about it.”
Kaz shoved his hands in his pockets, curious but wisely choosing to stay quiet. It would do him no good to open his mouth at that moment, and he was well aware of that fact.
“And, what of it, boss?” Andrei asked.
Vasily picked up a mail opener from the desk, and fiddled with the dull knife. He spun the tip against the pad of his index finger as he spoke again. “You have to understand the way the Italians work, especially one like Alberto Gallucci. A man like him understands the value and weight of a proper apology.”
Kaz’s irritation jumped a notch.
His father seemed entirely unfazed by what had happened to Ruslan the night before as he set the letter opener down, and picked up his phone. Swiping at the screen, Vasily passed it a look before turning it off and setting it back down with a nod.
“And while I would usually send out a message of my own after something like this happens, I have chosen not to this time,” Vasily said, eyeing each man, but lingering a little while longer on Kaz when he finally came to him.
It was like his father knew the rebuttal was right on the tip of his tongue.
“Do you have an opinion on that, Kazimir?” Vasily asked.
Kaz kept his cool demeanor firmly in place. “I have an opinion on my brother being attacked, yes.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
That was the only answer Kaz was willing to offer.
His nonresponse to his father stretched on for a long while until Vasily let out a heavy, annoyed breath and rested back in his large chair.
“I have reason to believe the attack was misguided, and appropriate action will be taken,” Vasily informed.
“By whom?” Kaz dared to ask.
Vasily smiled. “Men who understand the value and weight of an apology. Only if I do not receive what I want, then I will revisit this discussion and Ruslan’s attack again.”
Kaz didn’t like that statement at all, but what could he say?
His father made the calls.
And if, after everything was said and done, and nothing happened to Ruslan’s attackers, Kaz could always handle the issue himself. If he felt the punishment he might receive for doing so would be worth the reward in the end.
Vasily drummed his fingers to the desk and said, “For the next little while, I want everyone to be careful and quiet about business. Be mindful of the territory we have, as there is no need to begin pushing against someone else’s lines when we are perfectly capable of working within our own. At least until the dust settles, and I have gotten what I wanted.”
Kaz cocked a single brow. “And what is that?”
Vasily didn’t answer.
No one else seemed to want to question the Pakhan on his decisions, or what was really going on. Kaz was left to the task.
“What exactly are we waiting for?” Kaz asked.
Picking his phone up again, Vasily turned the screen on and checked it. He then placed it back to the desk before clasping his hands together and looking straight up at his son.
“A message.”