Violet stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, taking her time to touch up her makeup while she had the chance. She was alone in the restroom, which was unusual considering it was in a semi-busy hall of the college. But she was grateful for the privacy all the same.
Smoothing her hands down the front and sides of her dress to smooth out the lace fabric that always seemed to ride up or crinkle, her fingers hitched in their travels over her hips. It was automatic reaction—an ache pulsed between her thighs when she pressed her fingers into that one spot, because she knew what was there.
Or what had been there.
Marks. The smallest of bruises that didn’t hurt at all.
His marks.
Kaz.
Violet shook her head, needing away from those thoughts as she focused back on her reflection. Her classes for the day were almost over, thankfully. She had one left, and then she was free for the evening.
Already, she was considering messaging Kaz to meet up with her somewhere safe. As long as she stayed off her father’s radar, and wasn’t called away, she didn’t worry all that much.
And it was becoming a habit she didn’t want to break.
She typed a text. Kaz answered.
She asked him away. He went.
Violet liked it more than she should. It was a stupid game to be playing with a man that was entirely off-limits to her in a big way. Whatever they were doing—whatever they were—was not something that would be able to continue on forever.
It all was going to end eventually.
She just wasn’t sure this was the time.
Fluffing out the waves of her hair with her fingers, Violet leaned a little closer to the mirror. Tipping her head to the side, the blonde strands fell over her neck, exposing the tight collar of her dress that fit snugly around her throat.
He was usually so careful, she thought.
He never left something that might be seen by someone else. Not something that would be obvious, or might get them—her—in trouble.
But Kaz had left something a little too close to the column of her neck a couple of days earlier. Just a small mark on her right collarbone—his teeth.
And Christ, it had been good.
That pain was good.
Addictive.
Violet tugged the collar of her dress outward from her neck, exposing the discolored mark to her reflection. She had the means to hide it if she needed to—clothes and makeup, but she couldn’t help but keep going back to it every single time she had the chance to do so without being caught or questioned.
Before she could think better of it, Violet grabbed her phone from her purse resting on the bathroom counter. She unlocked the device, opened the messages, and found the contact she wanted. Holding the phone at an angle that would keep her face hidden, she snapped a shot, making sure the mark was visible, and then sent it off.
A message quickly followed, but not from who she expected when she glanced back down at the phone.
Her father’s number lit up the screen. For a moment, Violet panicked, thinking she had sent that picture to the wrong person, but she opened up the message to find it was just coincidence.
Gee will be at the main entrance of the University in ten minutes, the text read. Another followed right after. Do not keep him waiting.
Violet cussed under her breath, gaze cutting back to the mirror. How in the hell was she supposed to fix her grades—yet another thing her father still wasn’t aware of—and manage to keep from flunking out the semester, if she couldn’t even get a full day of classes in?
It didn’t even matter.
She glanced back down at her phone again, waiting for a message from Kaz, responding to that picture.
It didn’t come.
She didn’t have the time to wonder why.
Her father was waiting.
Violet found the Gallucci mansion lit up and full of people when she arrived. The tone of her father’s text message had not suggested there was a last minute party or dinner going on that he wanted her to attend, so she was confused at the sight of so many vehicles and people milling about.
That idea quickly faded away when she realized it was all men.
Her father’s men.
Gee, who would usually open her door to let her out, exited the vehicle without so much as a goodbye. Violet, more confused than ever, grabbed her messenger bag and purse off the floor before leaving the backseat of the car. Inside the house, she found several familiar faces going in between rooms and chatting quietly.
Too quietly for her to really discern what was being said.
After she had put her things away—but made sure to keep her phone hidden in her dress pocket—Violet went in search of her parents. As she passed her father’s men, she heard snippets of conversations she probably wasn’t supposed to, but took note of anyway.
“Russian, yeah,” one man said.
“Carmine was down awful deep in Brooklyn,” said another.
“It could have been worse,” came someone else’s opinion.
Violet’s brow furrowed as she took the random statements in. What exactly had happened that would cause enough of a fuss for her father to call his men to his home, not to mention her?
Passing by the entertainment room, Violet saw her friends—old friends—chatting to one another in a corner. Amelia and Nicole barely noticed her as she stopped to at least acknowledge their presences. In two weeks, they had said less than a few words to her in passing, and that was only if they had no other choice.
No calls. No messages.
No dinners or time at the clubs on the weekends.
Kaz had been right, in a way. Her friends weren’t very real at all when it came right down to it. They blamed her entirely for a situation that had been caused by all three of their choices, not just hers.
But she didn’t really care.
Better to move on, and let it go.
Dwelling on it wouldn’t do her any damn good. Amelia and Nicole probably figured she would eventually make her way back into the folds with an apology and a willing acceptance to take all the blame.
Violet was done with those games.
Entirely.
They were not in high school anymore, and she refused to indulge their desire to act like they were.
Finally, Violet found at least one person she was looking for. Her father was in his favorite spot—his office. Leaning over his desk with palms pressed to the top and his knuckles white from the pressure, Alberto looked fit to have a spell. Her father was not a small man by any means. His larger size dominated the room in presence alone, and he often came off as intimidating to others who didn’t know him well.
But she knew him.
And right then, while Alberto looked angry, she could see his worry—his panic.
Alberto nodded to a man at his side—Vito, Amelia’s father, and his underboss—when Vito said something too low for the rest to hear. Across from his desk, Carmine stood with his arms crossed and a deep scowl etched on his face.
“You can’t just let it go unanswered,” Carmine said.
“I can do whatever I want to,” Alberto snapped right back. He stood straight, brushing Vito off when the man tried to calm the situation down. “And you—what did you do in all of this to cause a scene like that?”
Carmine opened his mouth to speak, but Alberto held a hand high, stopping him.
“Do not lie to me, son,” her father warned. “I will know you did. Do you think your men—those enforcers—are so loyal to you that they forget which hand has fed them for years? Don’t. Lie.”
“I might have knocked him a little as I passed him by in the hallway,” Carmine said, “but that doesn’t justify Kazimir’s response, boss.”
Alberto’s gaze narrowed. “Men of honor hold themselves to a far higher standard than games of that sort, Carmine. And you, as a Capo, are well aware of that. Since when have I ever accepted childish taunting and antics between my men to encourage tensions, huh? When? Answer me.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t,” Alberto repeated, spitting the words out.
Violet was still trying to catch up to what she was hearing. But she understood enough. Clearly, Carmine and Kaz had a run in at some point over the day, and it did not end well.
“And now,” Alberto continued, “I have men in an uproar because this is the second issue in the span of a month with the Russians.”
“We could … finish them off,” Vito suggested quietly.
“What for?” Alberto asked. “And to whose gain?”
Violet figured she should probably make herself known or scarce, but she found her feet were like cement stuck to the floor.
When Vito didn’t respond, Alberto turned back on Carmine.
“I know you’re … sensitive … over the events from a couple of weeks ago,” Alberto said, “but that was a choice made by me, not the Russians. And if you want someone to take your anger out on, you are more than welcome to meet me behind a closed door where we will discuss my choices as a boss and his capo and nothing more. Stay away from the Russians, Carmine. And stay the fuck away from that restaurant, regardless of the business you have with Alfred Shelby.”
Carmine straightened a bit more, glared at his father and tipping his chin up. Alberto almost mimicked the pose perfectly, and it struck Violet in that moment how similar her brother and father really were.
“Are you scared of the Russians?” Carmine asked, deadly calm. “Is that it, boss?”
Alberto didn’t even blink. “I have no need to be, and you will not make a reason for me. Is that understood?”
Just as quickly as her brother’s defiance had shown itself, it left. Carmine gave one nod, and then moved toward the door, but stopped in his step as he saw her standing there.
Alberto noticed her then, too.
“Violet,” her father said, his tone turning much softer than it had been.
Almost … relieved.
“I didn’t know we were having a party … or whatever,” Violet said, pointedly looking around at the men in Alberto’s office.
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.
Violet 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.”
“I’ll tell you why!” Vasily suddenly shouted, his face gone red with rage. “Your uncle was a fucking tyrant, and cared nothing for the lives of the men that had to answer for the shit he pulled. Do you think he cared that you were almost killed because of a turf war he started? Or even that you were practically blind for weeks? No, none of that mattered. He only cared for money and sating his bloodlust.”
Very calmly, Kaz asked, “So he needed to die?”
There was a moment where Vasily’s lips moved just as he was about to answer the question, but he caught himself, shaking his head as though to get his control back. “Of course not.”
It took years before Kaz could see it, that tell that betrayed Vasily’s thoughts. For the longest time, he had never been able to tell whether his father was lying or not, not until he was seventeen. And his tell was not one that could be easily seen, not unless one knew to look for it, and only if they were close enough to see.
But he was close enough then, and he could clearly see that his father’s eyebrows were twitching, like the muscles there couldn’t be controlled.
Except, Kaz knew.
Vasily was lying.
“Right.” Kaz regarded his father, taking in the details he never paid attention to in the past. “Are we done here? I’ve got shit to do.”
Vasily waved him off. “Go.”
Kaz moved to do just that, but as he hit the door, Vasily called behind him. “Careful what questions you ask, Kazimir. You won’t always like the answer.”
Or rather, he wouldn’t like the way Vasily responded.
Leaving the unspoken threat hanging between them, Kaz left the office, then the building entirely. For once, he was ready to get the hell out of Little Odessa.