Six months later …
She came into the world quietly, and maybe that was the most surprising thing of all, as the last thing Violet had expected of her child was one that didn’t cause a commotion. It was so unlike her own personality when she had been a baby—or so she was always told. Someone always seemed to have a story of her causing one scene or another and worrying people with fevers or exhausting them with late nights.
Not her child.
She came quietly.
Peacefully.
One week early, in fact, but she didn’t even surprise her mother and father with that seeing as how all of Violet’s final doctor visits leading up to the birth had shown the baby was going to come before her due date.
Violet thought that it had been rather easy, considering all things surrounding her daughter’s birth on that early morning of October sixteenth. The pain had been blinding—but she managed.
Then Anastasya Liliya Markovic had come into the world all dark-haired and cream-skinned like her father with a face full of delicate features that mirrored her mother. She didn’t cry a lot, and she liked to sleep no matter who was holding her or where she was placed.
Violet could remember her whole pregnancy being filled with people telling her to get rest while she could; that the baby wouldn’t give her the chance to after she was out in the world.
The last thing Anastasya did was cause any sort of heartache.
She was far too perfect for that.
Violet had spent the first two weeks after her daughter’s birth in a hazy bubble of happiness. She rarely let the baby out of her sight because she was far too enraptured with watching the cloudy baby’s eyes turn from a dark, milky tone to the same bright gray as her father.
And Kaz …
God, Kaz.
He was … smitten.
From that very first breath and that groggy cry, Kaz had been spun, all caught up in his daughter’s pretty, new web, and he didn’t seem to mind a bit.
Violet remembered waking up one night in the hospital after Anastasya’s birth to find her husband tucked away on one of the corner chairs in the private suite, the baby’s bassinet right at his side. His hand had been hanging inside the bassinet, and even from Violet’s position across the room in the darkness, she could still see the tiny baby’s fingers wrapped tightly around her father’s thumb.
And that, in a nutshell, was how Anastasya made her way into the world.
Softly.
Sweet cries and wild hair.
So loved.
And perfect.
The gentle click-click-click of a camera brought Violet out of her inner musings. She stood back, letting the photographer rearrange Anastasya in her tightly wrapped swaddle inside the white wicker basket of cream furs.
Kaz was so careful with their child—never letting anyone take her from their home for visits, and rarely allowing people in to see the baby unless it was immediate family. Even his own mother had been escorted to the hospital to greet Anastasya after the birth, but only when Irina had finally asked to come in.
And even then, she’d asked Kaz to make himself scarce.
Violet didn’t ask her husband why that was, as she had a pretty good idea without the explanation. Whenever forced to be in the same room with her youngest son, Irina could never truly hide the slight sadness in her eyes.
The anger rarely showed, but the sadness was always present.
“We’re almost done, little one,” the photographer said.
Jenny was her name. She was an older woman—in her late fifties, at least, but pleasant and quiet. She did her job in silence, never asking for help and staying out of the way when others were in the room, too.
Violet had asked Kaz to have something set up for photographs before Anastasya got beyond the age where the photos wouldn’t have that sweet, innocent newborn tone. There would be a great deal more photos, to be sure, but these were her very first, the ones that would decorate the walls of their home forever.
They were important.
Violet had assumed Kaz would have it set up so that they went somewhere to have the photos done, but in his usual fashion, he kept his wife close, and now, his child even closer. He had the photographer come to them. They certainly had the space in their mansion, and the photographer had picked several locations to do what she wanted in.
“Why that middle name?” Jenny asked.
Violet glanced over at the woman, the first time she’d taken her eyes off her baby girl since the shoot had begun. “Pardon?”
“My husband is Russian. The middle name you picked—it’s not traditional.”
Ah.
“Kaz thought it was a mouthful to give her the traditional name,” Violet explained.
That was half of the truth.
The other half was thoroughly mixed up in them and their crazy love.
They’d picked names in bed, naked, and Violet distinctly remembered the taste of salt and sex on her tongue while they argued back and forth about what to name the baby girl.
We’re not traditional, Kaz had murmured in her ear from behind while she was on her knees.
No, she supposed they weren’t.
So … Anastasya Liliya it was.
Jenny stood, leaving the sleeping baby in the wicker basket as she peered down at the screen on her camera. “Well, she’s a beautiful little girl. Thank you for letting me take her newborn photos. I think I got it all, so I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks to let you know when you can pick the prints up.”
“Great.” Violet bypassed the photographer to sweep her baby girl into her arms, preferring to hold her while she napped. “And thank you for coming here to do this—I know you probably prefer to work in your studio.”
Jenny laughed, waving a hand as if to dismiss the notion. “I do, but I make exceptions. I’ve known the Markovic family for a long time—I photographed the twins when they were brand new babies. I understand that the Markovic men are a little … intense when the babies are new.”
Violet didn’t offer a response to that.
She figured she didn’t have to.
The woman wasn’t wrong.
Jenny quickly packed her things and said a quiet goodbye to the still sleeping Anastasya in her mother’s arms. Violet managed to give the woman a smile, but without realizing it, she’d also hit a nerve that had been dormant for a while.
Actually, it’d been dormant for months.
Since she’d come home and stayed there—happy, safe, and quiet.
Because everything had been quiet for so long.
Kaz had every reason to be intense, as Jenny had put it. He had every need to keep his wife and child hidden from the world and protected as much as he could.
Those threats her father had made all those months ago—he’d never followed through.
Alberto Gallucci was nothing if not a man of his word.
Violet held her baby girl a little tighter, lifting her just enough to rub her cheek against Anastasya’s soft skin.
She didn’t even hear Kaz come into the sunroom until his hand was smoothing over her lower back and his mouth was pressing softly to the side of her temple.
“Happy?” he asked.
It was something he had asked at least twice a day but sometimes more ever since the day their daughter was born.
She didn’t mind.
It reminded her that he—no matter how distracted he sometimes seemed—constantly had a part of her on his mind.
“Very,” Violet said, turning to smile at him. “And it went well—she barely moved the whole time.”
Kaz peered down at the sleeping baby, a soft smile curving his lips. “I’m starting to wonder if she’s being good now because she’s saving all the hell for when she’s older.”
“Kaz! Don’t say that.”
Violet’s slightly louder tone woke Anastasya, and the baby blinked in that sleepy way of hers that said it would only take a quiet minute and she would be fast asleep once more.
Kaz didn’t let that happen, scooping the baby from Violet’s arms and lifting her to eye level so he could stare at her with a bigger grin starting to form. “Privet, printsessa.”
Hello, princess.
Violet smiled.
He rarely talked to the baby girl in English. At first, Violet thought it was a little strange, but it didn’t take long for her to realize how incredibly smart he actually was for doing so. She used English—he used Russian. Anastasya was getting the best of both languages as early as she possibly could, and it would likely continue in that way.
Even she was picking up on more things now that she didn’t have a choice if she wanted to understand what Kaz was saying to their daughter.
Kaz said something else, a longer bit, and all Violet gathered as he spoke to the baby was that someone was coming over.
“Who?” Violet asked.
He passed her a look, shrugging. “Ma, the girls, and Vera.”
Violet didn’t bother to mask her surprise.
Irina avoided the house if she could, but she had come once to see the baby with Ruslan in tow while Kaz was out one afternoon.
“Are you going—”
“Not this time,” Kaz interrupted softly.
Violet openly frowned. “Did she ask you to?”
“No.”
All the while, Kaz never took his gaze off his daughter.
Violet could still see his silent, private pain.
It would be an interesting visit, she supposed.
Or a very awkward one.
There was nothing quite like a mother’s scorn.
Kaz had tried to ignore it, understanding that Irina would need time to grieve and come to terms with what Kaz had done, but because he had never truly felt it before, he wasn’t prepared to witness his mother’s anger.
Following the funeral, he had only seen her once, going by to take out some remaining things of his that he had never bothered to pick up. That time, she’d had them packaged in a box and waiting for him on the front stoop. She had stared down at him from an above window but moved out of sight when she saw him looking up.
Since then, she had avoided him, and though he reached out just to make sure everything was okay with her and the twins, he hardly saw or spoke with her. It was only because of Rus that he was regularly updated. Now with Vasily out of the picture, his brother was making up for lost time.
That, at least, was something good that had come out of it.
Even when Anastasya was born, Irina had made it a point to ask that Kaz not be around when she came to visit—a fact that still bothered him—so it had come as a surprise when Vera had called him asking if it would be all right if they all stopped by to see the baby.
Though her silent treatment didn’t bode well with him, Kaz would never keep his mother from her grandchild. He had planned to set it up with Violet, find something to keep himself occupied away from his own home, but Vera had surprised him when she mentioned that their mother had wanted him to stay.
“Just family, you said,” Kaz muttered to his sister, drawn from his thoughts as another waiter brushed by him carrying a tray topped with flutes of sparkling wine.
Just the girls, he had thought, but knowing his eldest sister, she always managed to turn something small into a goddamn event.
Vera grinned, a smile that even reached her eyes. For reasons known only to her, she had been a bit down lately. “This is just family.”
Somehow, she had turned a simple visit into a ‘Welcome to the World, Anastasya’ party, complete with servers, pink and white balloons and streamers, along with a one and a half foot high cake.
“Who’s footing the bill for this exactly?” he asked, watching that smile grow bigger. “You’re too comfortable spending my money.”
“Oh, stop your complaining, Kaz. Look at Violet. She’s happy, right?”
For the millionth time that day, Kaz sought out his wife, finding her smiling as she talked with the twins while holding a sleeping Anastasya in her arms. She was happy at the surprising turn of events, going right along with the flow of things as though it had all been planned.
Not for the first time, however, Kaz wished there was someone he could have called for her—someone she had known all her life who would celebrate with her. She never complained, or ever made him feel like he wasn’t enough, but sometimes, he could see the ghost of sadness in her.
“Right, where’s our mother?”
“In the kitchen,” Vera said with a knowing look. “Kaz, when you talk to her, be kind. You can’t forget that he wasn’t always a bastard.”
Sighing, Kaz nodded once before going in search of Irina, speaking to a few of his men as he went along. She was directing servers, pointing at where the presents were meant to be stacked and dishes were made. She looked right back in her element.
Clearing his throat so as not to startle her, Kaz stepped further into the kitchen. “You should be enjoying the party.”
She barely spared him a glance, though only because she was too busy directing. “A mother’s job is never done. Besides, this is a gift for your family. Violet only needs to worry after that darling little girl. This, I can handle.”
His mother had always been good at hosting—probably where Vera got her instincts.
It almost felt like they were back to where they once were.
“We appreciate it.”
“And how are you, Kazimir?” she asked, laying a hand on his cheek as she stared up at him. “You look tired.”
“That’s what a newborn will do to you,” he returned with an absent smile.
Nothing could truly prepare a person for the long nights, though he’d had some practice with the twins. He remembered all too well the way they had cried up until the moment they were fed. That had been a long few months. Though, back then, it had felt like ages.
Anastasya, his beautiful little girl, didn’t give them that kind of trouble. She was a dream come true, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t up at all hours of the night when it was time to feed her.
Though, if he were honest, he didn’t mind it so much.
“You were a pleasant baby, you know,” Irina said with an affectionate smile, as though recalling a fond memory. “Never gave me any trouble until you learned to crawl. I couldn’t keep you in one spot for long.”
Kaz chuckled. “Sounds about right.”
“Such a curious boy, you were. And do you know where I would always find you?”
“Where?”
“Following after Ruslan … and your father.”
Kaz lost his easy smile, not knowing what to say.
Irina too lost her smile, but she also didn’t look as sad as Kaz thought she would. “Things were simpler back then.”
Tucking his hands in his pocket, he glanced back through the entryway at his wife, his daughter, and the family he hadn’t been able to see in so long. “I am sorry.”
“Are you?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“I’m sorry for your loss, not for what I did.”
She swept her thumb over his cheek, turning her eyes away. “I’m sorry that you were the one to do it.”
And that would just have to be good enough.
“It’s time for presents, I think,” Irina said, effectively changing the subject. “Take these into the other room and start.”
Kaz didn’t get a chance to respond before she was waving for one of the servers to pass him the first stack, this one topped with a rather small white box, wrapped in red ribbon. Deciding it was best not to argue, he did as he was told, carrying the lot back out to the party.
He set the towering presents on a nearby table, reaching a hand for Violet as she neared. She passed Anastasya off to Vera who seemed rather smitten with her new niece.
“Thank you all for coming,” Kaz said once Violet was close. “And thank you for all of your gifts. I’m sure Violet will thank you all individually, but consider this my one.”
Most laughed as Violet rolled her eyes at him, though even she had to admit that he was right. Smiling, Kaz reached for the present on top—the box with the bow.
It took all of a few seconds to get the ribbon undone and tossed on the table, the top quickly following, but to his surprise, there was nothing inside but a small card, barely bigger than a business card.
It was blank, or so he thought before turning it over in his hands and reading the one word written there.
“Auguri?” He tried pronouncing it, not recognizing the word.
No one else seemed to understand what he was trying to say, either—all except one.
Violet was no longer smiling.
Violet couldn’t breathe.
She was well aware she needed to do something—speak, move, or damn, anything.
Instead, all she could do was stare at that white box with its blood-red ribbon tied in an intricate, beautiful bow. The card in Kaz’s hand dropped to the floor, its congratulatory word already forgotten in his mind as he stepped toward her, probably with one of his reassurances that all was well and fine … or it would be.
But the Italian phrase that had been written in familiar, broad script was not lost on her.
Auguri.
Best wishes, it had read.
Kaz’s Russian accent had, of course, obliterated the word. He had zero interest in pronouncing Italian correctly, or for that matter, learning how to when it came right down to it.
And maybe that all would have been a little funny had Violet not looked at the white box with the red ribbon and saw a man’s heart being cut out all over again. Perhaps it would have been amusing had the innocuous, seemingly innocent note inside not been written in writing by a hand she would recognize anywhere.
Her father.
Their calm before the storm was over, Violet knew.
She’d known it the moment Kaz had pulled out the card.
The peace of their daughter’s birth, welcoming her into their happy, loved world, was shattered just like that.
And now … now, Violet couldn’t breathe.
“Take it away,” she heard Kaz demand.
No one moved at first.
They were still staring at her.
Sometimes, Violet wondered if these people blamed her for the terror that always seemed to be a constant in their life. Her presence caused it, after all.
Now, it wasn’t just her but her child, too.
Her father’s innocent gift was nothing of the sort.
It was his declaration.
A reminder.
He was not done with her just yet. He’d not finished what he started where she was concerned.
Her heart. Her soul.
Those words still rang heavily in the back of Violet’s mind whenever she thought about her father.
Violet’s heart was just a few feet in front of her, saying something in Russian to another man, but Kaz’s gaze was still firmly stuck to her. She imagined she was quite a sight standing there, probably as white as a ghost and feeling about the same.
Dead inside.
Or damn well nearly there.
Her soul, however, was off to her right, sleeping comfortably in her aunt’s arms and so entirely unaware of the hell that was promising to be unleashed.
All because she was here—born and alive.
All because her mother loved her.
“Violet,” Kaz said, moving to stand in front of her, “it’s—”
“Please don’t say that it’s fine.”
Her voice barely broke the level of a whisper.
It still, somehow, made her throat ache.
She didn’t want to be afraid.
She was not fragile—not weak under a man’s thumb.
Certainly not her father’s now.
Yet that all-consuming terror she had only felt once before when her husband lay in a coma, his future uncertain, was exactly what she felt at that moment.
For her child.
Her husband.
Not a single bit of it was for herself, though.
Alberto didn’t want harm to come to her.
He wanted to hurt her in a different way.
“Let’s call this—”
Violet pushed past Kaz, not bothering to let him finish whatever he was trying to tell the guests of the small welcoming party. At first, she had appreciated that they had thought to put something like this together since Kaz was so very careful about letting people into their lives, even if they were familiar with the people.
Now, she wanted the eyes off her.
She wanted her child and her husband safe.
She wanted them all out of her house.
Vera barely said a thing when Violet carefully took a sleeping Anastasya from her arms without so much as a word as to why she was doing so. Violet didn’t bother with a goodbye to the guests as she cradled the baby close and left the main room without a look over her shoulder.
She could hear the chatter begin behind her as soon as she was gone.
She caught bits and pieces.
The Italians.
A message.
Violet didn’t need the obvious stated. She was not naïve; she was far from a dumb woman who stuck her head in the sand. But that didn’t mean she needed to face her anxiety and panic with all of them watching.
She headed to the one place in their large home that always, no matter what, made her feel safe and happy. Their bedroom.
Violet finally felt as though she could take a real breath when she had the door closed behind her and curled up on the reclining chair that also acted as a rocking chair. Anastasya barely reacted at all to being moved and now, rocked. Violet felt her daughter’s small lips smacking against her neck a second before a tiny hand replaced the feeling, telling her she’d found her thumb.
Her third favorite thing in the world next to her mother and father.
Violet settled for a moment, her heart calming and her fears beginning to leave. It wasn’t all gone, but it was better than it had been moments before.
It was only when Kaz slipped into the bedroom with a frown etched into his handsome features, and then kneeling down in front of her did Violet’s world finally begin to turn again.
All was right.
In those few seconds, as his one hand curved her bare knee and his other came to rest on their child’s back, Violet’s world was calm and good and right.
“I’m not going to say it’ll be fine,” Kaz said.
Violet nodded, thankful. “Okay.”
“But whatever it is, it will not last long, and then we’ll be back to our normal again. Yes?”
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe their normal was just constant chaos.
“Violet?” Kaz pressed gently.
“Back to normal,” she echoed.
“We have people downstairs—a party for the baby.”
Violet heard his unspoken question, though she knew he would never demand she do what was appropriate or respectful if she didn’t truly want to. He was not that kind of man. He didn’t treat her like property to be used when he felt like it.
She was one of the faces of their family, and she understood that all too well.
But she was his wife first.
Still, Violet stood, letting Kaz take the baby as she smoothed her dress and checked her makeup in the mirror. Some of the color had returned to her face, and she smiled, knowing that was needed, too.
She didn’t have to go back downstairs and pretend as if nothing had happened, as if nothing was wrong when it so clearly was.
Yet Violet still did it.