On and off the phone for the past two hours, Kaz was more than ready for the calls to stop. He was tired of talking and fucking repeating himself. He was tired of not knowing where Alberto was, and he was definitely tired of seeing the unease in Violet’s face ever since they had received his ‘gift.’
She tried to hide it, always smiling when she noticed him looking at her, but he knew her better than that.
He needed to finish what he started.
When his phone rang this time, Kaz contemplated throwing it against the wall just to be done with it. “Speak.”
“Boss? You need to get down to Vera’s office.”
“Vera? Why?”
An audio recording drowned out whatever the man said—the feedback was so loud that Kaz could barely make out what the recording was saying.
“My sister, where is she?”
“On her way—she’s bringing the Brit.”
“I’ll be there in thirty.”
Luckily, he wasn’t far from Vera’s office and was actually getting there well before he said he would.
He expected the traffic, that was common in most parts of the city, but what he wasn’t expecting was the normality. Nothing looked out of place, nor was there any problem that Kaz could see.
Why the fuck had he been called?
And he was readying to ask just that when he got out his car and could finally hear whatever had been playing when he was on the phone.
It was an audio recording, though Kaz couldn’t for the life of him figure out where the music was coming from. He was trying to grasp where he’d heard the melody when Vera shouted his name.
“Kaz! What’s going on?”
He looked at her in confusion. “I should be asking you that, no?”
“Ijor called me and said you wanted me here for a surprise.”
Kaz’s frown grew more pronounced. “No, I didn’t. What the fuck?”
“Well,” Alfie said as he came upon them, “seems like a giant waste of my time.”
“London Bridge,” Kaz said, earning two confused expressions.
That was the song someone was playing, and Kaz had only just realized it when a big blast shook the street, sending him dropping to the ground. Alfie already had a hold of Vera, shoving her down before using his body as a shield for hers.
A second followed, the screams of others standing along the street turning even louder. It took several minutes before Kaz finally raised his head to survey the damage.
Now, Kaz understood why they had been called.
It was Vera’s building that had been hit, fire licking out of the windows, curling black smoke following. And all the while, that nursery rhyme played.
London Bridge is falling down … falling down … falling down …
There wasn’t a single part of Kaz that didn’t think this was done by the Italians—Alberto, sending another message—as they loved their fucking explosives. He could feel the phantom burn of a car bomb very much like this one as he got to his feet.
But this wasn’t just about him, he thought, as Alfie shot to his feet with a curse, drawing his gun out for anyone to see as he marched across the street to where the music was playing from. There was a car there, though no one was inside it, with the windows down as the song played.
Alfie merely stuck his gun through the window and fired off three shots into the car, silencing the music.
“Don’t ever play that fucking song again,” Alfie said absently as he walked back over. “You had one job, mate, yeah? One fucking job. You can’t even manage that, can you? Fucking hopping about declaring to all how much you give a fuck about that bird you married, but you can’t even handle your business, mate. Gallucci did this,” Alfie snapped with a wide gesture of his hand, first to the building, and then to Vera a little ways away with her hand over her mouth as she stared at the one place that meant everything to her.
“I know. I’m—”
“Oh, fuck off, you. He’s laughing at you, mate. And fuck if he isn’t laughing at me now.” Alfie shook his head, and then pointed at one of his men. “Oy! Take her home and lock her down. Then find a building, whatever she wants, and get it. Yeah, got that? Now, fuck off.”
Kaz could just hear the sirens sounding in the distance, and the vibrations of his phone in his pocket.
“Listen well, Russian. You should hope you find that fucking wop before I do—the second I get my fucking hands on him, yeah, I’m breaking his fucking neck.”
Fuck.
Little Anastasya wailed in all of her twenty-four inches and nine and a half pounds of angry glory. Violet was silently thankful that Kaz had opted to stay outside of the small, private doctor’s clinic for the baby’s one month appointment. He’d gotten a call just as they arrived, and Violet, knowing what the appointment would bring, convinced him that it would be fine to miss it.
Vaccines were a bitch but important.
Still, the baby girl cried her little lungs out in her mother’s arms until all she could do was sniffle miserably and suck on her tiny thumb.
Violet could just imagine how well this whole appointment would have gone over with Kaz had he decided to come in, too.
Not well at all.
“Shhh,” Violet soothed Anastasya, rocking her while the doctor disposed of his gloves and the vaccine supplies. “Your father will be in a fit if we go out to him like this, baby girl.”
The doctor chuckled. “I am sure Kazimir would understand.”
Violet wondered just how much time the older doctor had spent around Kaz if he seriously believed that crap. Kaz must have trusted the man to some degree, as he’d been the only doctor Kaz offered as a pediatrician for the baby.
“Give her a warm bath and some Tylenol if she gets any fever, and all will be well,” the man said. “And you, Violet, have another two weeks before you can return to normal activities.”
With a wave and an order to make the baby’s next appointment date before she left, the doctor was gone from the private room. It took another five minutes to finally calm Anastasya enough to get her clothed in her pink dress and bundled up once she was in her car seat.
The baby wasn’t very expressive at only a month old. She still slept quite often, but she had started smiling and cooing when she was in that sort of mood.
At that moment, however, she looked fit to kill the world, her tiny fists clenched into her fluffy pink blanket and her hat pulled down close to her eyes where her brow was furrowed.
Anastasya was her father all over.
Violet laughed.
“You couldn’t look more like your father than you do right now,” she told the baby.
Anastasya just kept on scowling, if that was even what it was.
Violet didn’t waste time getting back to the front of the clinic where she made the next two appointments—one for her and the other for the baby. Hers would be awkward, if only because she had zero interest in letting a doctor look between her legs. She’d had more than enough of that during the birth.
It was needed, though, and Violet was eager to get it over and done with so she could get the okay to get back to her normal routine … so to speak.
Yeah, she missed her normal with Kaz a whole lot.
Violet found Kaz with a phone still pressed to his ear and a cigarette dangling from his lips as he leaned against the hood of their new Mercedes GLE SUV. Kaz had a few different vehicles, and at least two of them would have been fine to drive the baby around in, all except the Porsche, but no, he had to go and get another car.
She thought it was an excuse to spend money.
He liked that a bit too much.
Violet didn’t care. She liked the new SUV, anyway.
Kaz dropped the cigarette to the ground, snuffing it out with his shoe the second he saw her approach with the car seat hanging off her arm. He was already taking the heavy seat before she could ask and opening the back door, directly behind the driver’s seat, to put Anastasya in.
It was only when he had her in the car did he stop to look in the car seat at his daughter.
Violet saw his back tense.
“Why isn’t she happy?” he asked.
She laughed.
What the hell else could she do?
“How can you tell when she’s happy or sad, Kaz? She has very few moods—hungry, sleepy, mommy, and daddy. That’s it.”
“And angry,” he added, shooting her a look over his shoulder. “She looks angry—why?”
Violet sighed. “She had her one month needles. It hurts.”
Kaz straightened, disbelief filling his features. “They stick her with needles? She’s a goddamn baby!”
“They’re not big ones.”
Violet was not helping.
She could tell just by the way Kaz glared at the clinic.
“She needs her vaccines,” Violet said quickly before Kaz could stew in his irritation for any longer than he already had. There was no need for him to get pissed off about something that would continue whether he approved or not. “It’s over in a couple of seconds. She cries for a bit then it’s over.”
Kaz closed the door on the baby, enclosing her in the SUV. “I’m going in next time.”
Violet shrugged. “Maybe she’ll calm down easier for you than she did for me.”
She doubted it would go over well with Kaz, but whatever. It was his choice.
“Dinner?” Kaz asked, pulling Violet to his side before she could move to get in the SUV. He pressed a kiss to her temple, making her smile. “The diner, yes?”
That sounded great, actually.
Violet and Anastasya didn’t leave the mansion very often, as it wasn’t exactly safe to do so. She was starting to get a little stir-crazy, though, and even something simple like dinner outside of the house was wonderful.
Simple, but wonderful.
“Should we?” Violet asked.
Kaz didn’t ask her to elaborate on her question. It spoke for itself. With everything that was happening, including Vera’s studio being bombed and then burned to the ground, the message was clear. No one from Kaz’s side of the bridge needed to be anywhere inside Brooklyn beyond Brighton Beach.
Violet didn’t ask for more information than Kaz offered to give to her. She didn’t know how he was handling things, or what was happening from his end. But there were more men posted at the house, and Kaz had been leaving a great deal more in the daytime.
Something was happening.
Or it would be.
“The diner is ours,” Kaz said. “It has fuck all to do with Alberto Gallucci.”
“Still in Lower Brooklyn, Kaz.”
“No one knows about it, krasivaya. Not as far as we’re concerned.”
Well, that was that.
Violet agreed with a smile and another kiss, only this time she pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, giving him a wink as she stepped out of his arms before the kiss could lead to anything more.
Kaz’s head dropped back a little and he groaned, eyeing her from the side as she walked in front of the SUV to stand by the passenger door. “That wasn’t nice, Violet.”
“Two weeks,” she said.
His eyebrow lifted. “Two?”
“You can wait two weeks, Kaz.”
“That’s debatable.” Kaz smirked. “But I don’t have much of a choice, no?”
Violet grinned, opening up her door. “Nope.”
She was enjoying this far too much. No doubt, when they could finally fuck again, he would happily let her know just how little he appreciated her teasing.
Violet didn’t mind a bit.
“Get in the car and stop looking so smug,” Kaz said, pulling open the driver’s door, “because I’m pretty sure I can still get your ass red and put you on your knees for something else before those two weeks are up, Violet.”
She was pretty fucking sure that her cheeks turned cherry red at his threat, given he’d said it loud enough that anyone within earshot could have heard it, and they were in a doctor’s parking lot.
“Kaz!”
He simply tipped his head at her before he was ducking inside the SUV without a reply.
Ass.
She kind of loved him for that, too.
Tossing her purse on the seat, Violet was just stepping up into the vehicle and grabbing the door when something caught her eye from the side. She didn’t even sit down in the seat fully because she had to turn around to look back and see what it was.
At first, she blinked.
Unsure and unsteady, her heart beat a little louder.
Kaz was fiddling with the buttons on the dash and then his fingers danced across the touchscreen, putting music on. He didn’t notice her distraction.
Violet, on the other hand, was frozen.
Just two rows down in an unsuspecting black town car was a man with a camera. No one would have seen him given his position and the dark windows.
Violet barely caught sight of the camera lens and the face behind it before the photographer was rolling up the window.
“Kaz,” Violet said.
“Yes?”
Finally, her husband took note of the color draining from her face.
Obviously, whoever it was hadn’t been placed there to hurt them—at least, not today. Had that been the case, he would have made a move on Kaz when he was on the phone and Violet was inside.
No, whoever it was … was watching them.
But why?
Was her father trying to monitor them on a private level?
“Violet, who the fuck was in that car?” Kaz asked.
He had leaned over her seat, his gaze pinned on the black car with its tires squealing against the pavement as it pulled out of the small lot.
“I don’t know who it was,” she answered.
“But?”
“But he had a camera. And it was pointed at us.”
Kaz swore under his breath. “No diner today, krasivaya.”
Violet didn’t argue.