“I’ve never liked you.”
Those weren’t the first words Kaz had ever expected to say to his mother-in-law, but as he stared at the face of a woman who hated his guts, they felt appropriate. She had finally regained consciousness some time along the ride, and thankfully, the gag was still in her mouth because she’d immediately started shouting the second she realized that he sat across from her.
“Violet told me all about you,” he said sitting back in his seat, gazing out the window. “I never understood why a mother would treat their daughter the way you treated Violet. What excuse could you have possibly used to rationalize the jealousy you feel for your daughter?”
Whatever she said was muffled behind the gag, but Kaz could take one look at her face and knew what she couldn’t say. But even if he couldn’t read her, he knew the real reason.
The one she was probably too ashamed to say.
Kaz knew women like her—had even slept with a few—the kind who based their worth on the approval of a man. She was jealous of her daughter simply because she thought Alberto loved Violet more.
That would almost be understandable coming from Carmine—even Kaz had been privy to the way Alberto had treated his only son. But Andrea? She was Violet’s fucking mother—she had no excuse.
“Don’t worry, though,” Kaz said as he patted her head. “We’ll have an answer soon enough.”
Nine minutes later, they arrived at Kaz’s favorite place—the remote warehouse he liked to conduct business in. Even with both hands, he couldn’t count the number of Italians he had brought to this place and strung up.
Climbing out of the back of the van, Kaz rolled his shoulder, stretching his arms as he walked to the doors. Before he even made it halfway across the lot, he heard the voice of the other guest of honor.
But even knowing Carmine was in there wasn’t enough to bring a smile to Kaz’s face.
He was dead inside.
The room fell silent as Kaz entered, and even Carmine stopped struggling long enough to glare at him a moment before his gaze cut to who they were dragging in behind him.
Colorful curses spat out of his mouth as he threatened Kaz in both Italian and English as his struggled renewed, scoring his skin with the force of his movement.
Kaz came to stand just before him, watching his mouth moving, even seeing the rage reflected in the man’s eyes, but he remained detached from it all. Like it was happening, but his mind refused to process what he was doing.
Only once they had Andrea tied up next to her son did Kaz finally deign to speak. “We all know why we’re here, yes?” To make sure he got an answer, he ripped the rag from Andrea’s mouth.
The second she could speak, Andrea did just that. “Wait until my husband gets—”
Kaz slapped her, the sound of his palm hitting her face echoing in the cavernous space. Grabbing her face, he turned her back around so that she was facing him. “I’m not in the mood for threats. Answer my question or keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Though she jerked away from him, stumbling on the tips of her toes, she didn’t speak again.
“Weeks ago, your husband, and your father,” he said with a nod to Carmine, “wanted me to choose between the people I love—I thought it only fair I return the favor.”
Ijor walked over to him, handing him the iPad Kaz requested he bring. A few taps and swipes of his finger and he was on the screen he needed.
“But I’m not a bad man. I’ll even offer you something he didn’t offer my family.” His lips curled of their own volition, and in the reflection of the tablet he carried, he saw what had Carmine trying to take a step back.
Mania.
“Who wants to play a game? It’s simple, you understand. Who do you think Alberto Gallucci loves the most between you two? Who would he want to save?”
Carmine was the first to speak. “He would never choose.”
“Are you willing to bet your life on that?” Kaz asked.
He had no answer that time.
“Let’s call and see, yes?”
Glancing at the time, he made the call. It rang three times, and then the picture showed up. Alberto appeared in the center of the video looking confused a moment before he smiled, as though pleased to see Kaz.
“It’s good to see you, boy, though I don’t know why you’re calling tonight. Have you decided to concede?”
“You gave me something—I’m simply returning the favor. Question for you,” Kaz said before he held the device up so the man had a clear view of Carmine and Andrea behind him. “Who do you love the most? Inquiring minds want to know.”
“Kazimir, what do you hope to accomplish by doing this?” Alberto asked, and though he tried to temper his reaction, Kaz could see that he had caught the man off guard.
And whether he wanted to admit it or not, Kaz had gotten one up on him.
“Simple question, but if you don’t want to answer, I understand.” Kaz stepped away from them, though not very far. “Here’s the deal. Either you die, or I’ll take everything you hold dear.”
Alberto was silent a moment before his laugh cut through the speaker. “And do you expect me to shoot myself in the head, too, then?”
Sighing, Kaz retrieved the gun from his belt, aimed and fired a round into Andrea’s arm.
Over her agonized wail and Carmine’s shouts, Kaz said, “There goes the drawing arm. What’s next, Gallucci? Would you like her to be a paraplegic too? I can start at her knees and work my way up.”
Alberto was no longer smiling. “What do you want?”
“Pick one—choose and I’ll let one of them live.”
Carmine shouted something at his father, his voice desperate and pleading. Kaz knew the choice he would have made, and he knew what he would be shouting at his father.
He would gladly die for his mother.
Was Carmine ready to make the same sacrifice?
Except, whatever he was saying only seemed to annoy Alberto more. “Shut up! Enough of your whining.” But as quickly as his attention was on his son, it was now back on Kaz. “You think to make me weak, Kazimir, but it won’t work. I will put a bullet in each of them myself before I let you use them against me—that’s my promise to you.”
Kaz wasn’t sure who looked more shocked, Carmine or Andrea who immediately started to cry and wail louder than before.
“There has to be something that means the world to you, Alberto. Something you would give your life for.”
Alberto had met his gaze before his hand lifted and he said, “Not anymore.”
He ended the call.
As soon as the screen went dark once more, Andrea’s sobs grew louder, to the point that they were all Kaz could hear.
Neither, Alberto had said …
So be it.
Raising his arm, he fired two more shots, silencing Andrea’s cries once and for all. She hung like a limp doll, blood starting to pool at her feet.
“You’re a dead man, Markovic. You hear me? You’re dead.”
Kaz shook his head in the face of Carmine’s rage and anguish. “You should think very carefully about how you respond to me—especially when I hold your life in my hands. You knew someone would have to answer for everything Alberto has done. You knew this. I knew this. So if we both know, why did he leave you to be found? While he remains hidden away, it only took an hour to drag your ass from bed and get you here. Have you asked yourself why?”
He waited for a response but didn’t get one.
“Alberto doesn’t give a fuck about you, or me, or anyone else—except Violet. So as long as I’m in the picture, he’s going to destroy the city just because he’s a child who’s lost his favorite toy. So tell me, are you ready to die for your father’s obsession?”
Carmine ground his teeth, his gaze cutting over to his mother a moment before turning back to Kaz. “What do you want, Markovic?”
Music to his ears. “Hand him over and swear to no retribution, and I’ll let you leave this room alive.”
Carmine cursed, jerking his head. “You’re asking me to—”
“Take the same deal our fathers made before us,” Kaz cut in before he could finish. “You heard the man. He doesn’t care whether you live or die—do you? Besides, who will your organization fall to with him in the ground?”
“And my mother?” Carmine asked a question of his own.
“I won’t cut off her fingers and toes,” Kaz offered obligingly.
The Italian didn’t look like he contemplated the offer very long. “Fine.”
“Good man.” Kaz waved for one of his men to hit the lever and drop Carmine back onto his feet. “When I finish with him, dump them both out in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“What the fuck, Markovic?” Carmine demanded. “We had a deal!”
“And we do, but you wouldn’t think it would look suspicious if you just walked out of here.” Kaz shook his head, even as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “No, you have to look like you earned it.”
By the time Kaz stopped laying into the man, Carmine was barely breathing.
Alive when he made it out of those doors, Kaz had promised him.
He never said he would stay that way.
Violet moved around the kitchen with ease, making sure to peek around the island occasionally to make sure Anastasya was still enjoying her rocking cradle. The flat screen droned on in the background with some news program she had turned on, though she was more interested in getting breakfast cooked rather than watching television.
She didn’t notice Kaz slipping into the room until he was leaning against the far wall, watching her.
Violet hesitated in her work but continued to stir the scrambled egg mixture as she took in her husband. He’d been … strange for a while, progressively going further inside his head and trying to fix the hell that was all around them. She thought—maybe—she had helped that night in the shower, if only for a short while, but she couldn’t be sure.
And now, looking at him wearing the same clothes he had the day before, and knowing damn well he hadn’t spent the night in bed with her like he usually would, she thought perhaps she hadn’t helped him at all.
“You hungry?” she asked.
Kaz didn’t reply.
Violet sighed. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer that time, either. She peered over her shoulder at him, only to find he was watching the television. That distance in his gaze never really left, though it killed her to see it staring back at her every day.
They needed their normal back.
She hated her father for taking it from them for even one second.
“Kaz.”
Silence echoed.
It was only then that Violet noticed a row of scratches across the side of his cheek now that his head was turned to watch the television. And his shirt … a reddish, ruddy brown stained the sky-blue silk.
She knew what those stains were—blood.
He’d not come home the night before, and in his frantic state, she’d worried about that but knew there wasn’t much she could do.
What had he done?
So quietly that she almost missed what he said, Kaz murmured, “What will it be that finally breaks you, Violet?”
She blinked. “What?”
“There must be something I will do—something you’ve thought about that disgusts you—that will make you hate me?”
Violet moved the frying pan from the burner, dropped the spatula she was holding and stepped away from the oven altogether. “Why are you asking me that?”
Kaz looked back at the local newscast, his attention gone, his gaze cold, and his expression as blank as white paper. “Is it my apologies that allow your forgiveness?”
“I—”
“Because I can’t apologize for this one.”
Violet’s gaze shifted from him to the television he seemed so interested all of the sudden. The volume was still on low, making the sound of it like unintelligible murmurs floating through the now silent kitchen.
But the scene on the news had changed, she realized.
A body was being wheeled away, a coroner’s van close by the cameras shooting the action.
Even through all of this, Violet’s attention was snagged by the headline streaming across the bottom of the screen with its ‘breaking news.’
Victim identified, it read. Andrea Gallucci, well-known fashion designer of Gallucci Fashions and wife of suspected mobster Alberto Gallucci.
It took several times for Violet to read the headline rolling through over and over before she finally processed it enough to know what it meant, and what Kaz was trying to tell her.
Whenever he thought he might hurt her, he always did the same thing.
He shut down.
His emotions blinked off.
He delivered the pain bluntly and unapologetically.
Violet believed that was simply her husband’s way of protecting himself from her anger, or worse, her hatred.
But this …
This was not the same.
Violet came out of her daze when she felt Kaz’s hand press to her lower back. He’d moved across the room to stand at her side without making as much as a squeak of a floorboard.
She could see it in his eyes—the worry that this would be that one unforgivable thing.
Violet reached up and patted her husband’s cheek softly, wanting him to know it was … fine.
Maybe that was cold of her.
Maybe she should have felt something.
Maybe someone else would have thought they married a monster.
Violet didn’t believe any of those things.
Kaz had been pushed too far by too many things. He’d finally struck back in a big way, and he was only protecting what he loved the most.
She would never fault him for that.
That was no monster.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him again.
Kaz met her gaze, nodding. “Starved.”
“Say good morning to Anastasya; I think she knew you were gone last night as she didn’t sleep well.”
“Sure, krasivaya.”
Violet turned away from the television. Even knowing that it was her mother’s body inside the body bag, she didn’t feel the need to dwell on the events more than she already had. This day had been a long time coming. Standing up on her tiptoes, she pressed a kiss to Kaz’s injured cheek.
In his ear, she whispered, “You did well.”
She would always tell him that—no one else would.
He deserved to hear it.