Alberto Gallucci
“And he loves her, so much …”
Alberto Gallucci reached over and hit the pause button on the phone, hearing footsteps just outside his office. A knock on the door came as soon as the footsteps stopped.
“Enter,” he said, resting back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest.
One of his men—Francis, a friend of Carmine’s but with less mouth and more teachable—stepped inside the office, letting the door close quietly behind him.
It was a new thing for Alberto.
He usually didn’t mind noise and movement, as his whole life had been nothing but moving from one thing to another, while the beautiful loudness of the world surrounded him.
Now, it was different.
He wanted quiet when he was alone and even when he wasn’t.
The beauty of life was not important to him.
Francis went about explaining what’d he’d learned, and Alberto, pleased that his plans had gone off without a hitch, for the most part, stared out the tall windows.
Manhattan was always a sight to see, no matter the time of day or season. It was a bustle of activity with people from all walks of life. Alberto had long enjoyed Amityville because it was private, but he had been using one of his many penthouses for a while as a safe house of sorts.
“How many did she get?” Alberto asked suddenly, interrupting whatever Francis had said.
“Pardon, boss?”
“My daughter—how many men did she kill?”
Alberto had long since learned, after many missteps with Violet, that he was not to underestimate her strength and ability to do something when she wanted to or to get something when she loved it enough to fight for it.
And God knew …
God in heaven knows she loves the baby, Alberto told himself.
“Two,” Francis said. “She shot two.”
“Oh?”
“Both in the head.”
“She’s a good shot then,” Alberto stated.
Francis nodded once. “They said she didn’t flinch.”
Alberto smiled absently, his gaze returning to the window, but now, he was staring at his reflection. A strange pride curled in his chest, warming him for the moment.
How much she had changed, he knew.
How amazing she could be, he mused.
Alberto had never said the Russian would be bad for Violet; he’d simply said the bastard was not proper for her.
“And the child is …?” Alberto never took his gaze off the window as he posed the question.
“On her way.”
“Wonderful.” Leaning forward, Alberto’s finger hovered over the button to resume one of Violet’s many voicemail messages. “Leave me until she arrives.”
The moment Francis was gone from the office, Alberto hit the button for the message to continue and rested back in his seat as he listened to his daughter’s voice become progressively more emotional, higher in tone, and in the thick of it all, the catching sobs echoing in her words.
He knew these would be the last words his daughter ever spoke to him, and so, he wanted to commit them to memory.
And he had loved her—he’d wanted the world for her once.
Now, though … now, Violet needed to learn from him. Alberto needed to teach her that the life she had chosen and the world she’d walked away from was not freely given or taken away. She could not make those types of choices without consequences.
She was not exempt from punishment.
As the message ended, and the recorder came on asking if he wanted to delete the recording, Alberto chose to save it.
He could listen to it again another day.
Just as he did for all the others.
Reaching over, he tipped a downturned picture frame up to set it back in its proper spot. The photograph of Violet, one of her many high school graduation pictures, stared back at him. In the corner of the frame, stuck inside the wood to keep it in place, was another photo. A wallet-sized photo of Violet as a baby.
He’d always kept her so close.
Pictures in his many offices.
Several in his wallet.
He’d thought, over the many years, that he needed to make up for what his wife could not give their child. That he, as her father, owed Violet more love, more attention, and more care. Because if not him, then who would give it to her?
Alberto never thought it would all lead to … this.
Still, he knew this was for the best.
Violet was learning. She was learning that life was not her chessboard—too many other Kings were on the board that had to decide where to move before the Queen could come out, too. She was learning that the things she held dear could be ruined, taken from her without so much as an apology, and she would be left watching it all, hurting and unable to do anything.
Pain was a good teacher.
He’d taught her so many things as she grew, many important lessons, and then stepped back as much as he could with the hope that it was enough.
Alberto quickly realized it wasn’t. She needed more, she had more to learn.
His phone beeped, signaling a text message. Checking the device, he found a message from his lawyer, letting him know the coroner’s office would be releasing his wife’s body later that day.
Alberto didn’t bother to respond.
He had nothing to say.
When all of this was over, he would finally grieve for Andrea, though his love for his wife was not what it had been when he first met her all those years ago. Still, he would grieve for what they once had together before life, the business, and family got in the way.
Another thirty minutes had passed before the footsteps started to echo outside his office again. Three sets this time, not just the one. Alberto stood from his desk before the knock even came, and he allowed them entrance.
The men chatted, greeting their boss with the learned respect that had been, at times, literally beaten into them.
Alberto’s attention was on something else.
Little Anastasya slept in the arms of the tallest man, swaddled tightly in a fluffy pink blanket that shimmered under the office lights. She seemed entirely unaware of her surroundings, never mind the fact she had been ripped from her mother’s arms in the most violent fashion.
Silently, Alberto waved at the baby, and she was handed over without protest.
“Cried most of the day and night,” his man said. “She fell asleep on the elevator up here.”
Alberto wasn’t listening.
He was too busy mapping the face of the baby his photographer hadn’t been able to get a clear picture of, recognizing the similarities between Anastasya and her mother.
That dark hair, curling at the ends, was her father.
But the features were a perfect mirror of his Violet.
To be safe, in case the Russian had somehow managed to find where he was, Alberto had kept Anastasya away from his penthouse in Manhattan for a good day and night, wanting this part of his plan to go off without a problem. The Russian could have found him, but he simply wouldn’t have found the child with Alberto. Now, it was safer to bring her to him. There were very few men involved in his plan, and that way, there was less of a chance that things may go wrong.
He’d been planning this for a while, to be sure.
“Leave,” Alberto said, “and I will call you back when I’m ready.”
The men went without question.
Alberto settled back into his large office chair, taking his time to carefully unwrap the baby girl from her blankets as she rested in his embrace. He traced the tip of her nose with the pad of his finger, committing her beautiful features to his memory.
This would be the one and only time he ever saw her.
After today, she would be separated from his life forever.
But he wanted this moment first.
“My, my, ragazza, you look just like your mamma, bambina,” he told the baby.
He wondered if she behaved like her mother did when Violet was brand new, always keeping them awake and never giving them rest.
He did, of course, know quite a bit about the child. The right amount of money shoved into a nurse’s hand had gotten him copies of the child’s few hospital records.
Twenty-two hours of labor.
Born at six AM in the morning.
No complications.
Eight pounds, two ounces of precious life.
Amazing, really.
“Did you know, little one,” Alberto said to the sleeping baby, “that you have quite the parents, hmm? Although it will do them no good, I have no doubt they will burn the city down to have you back.”
Anastasya didn’t react, her nap uninterrupted.
So Alberto stayed like that. Holding the baby while she slept, talking to her, and then when she finally awoke, he opened the drawer in his desk and pulled out one of the few premade bottles of formula he had picked up for her. He fed her then changed her dirty diaper from the supplies he’d put in the same drawer.
Wide awake, the baby’s gray eyes stared at him in amazement.
“Hello,” he said softly, “I’m your grandpapa, child.”
The baby smacked her little pink lips, a smile forming.
This could have been different, he knew.
This whole situation could have been better.
If only …
Alberto sighed, reaching over to grab his phone off the desk. Putting it on speaker, he dialed the number for Francis, waiting for the younger man to pick up.
All too soon, Francis did, and Alberto said, “Find my son and tell him he’s needed.”
“Carmine is—”
“I’m aware he’s in a bad state; do as I asked.”
Carmine, as he usually did, made his father wait even after he’d been given an order to appear. Hours, actually. Alberto allowed it to pass, if only because his son was injured, and he had little desire to listen to the boy whine about it.
When Carmine did finally darken the office’s doorway, he passed the child his father was holding a look, recognition drifting over his face. “Tell me you didn’t take the Russian’s child.”
Alberto handed the now sleeping baby over to her uncle. He hadn’t made many people aware of his entire plans—Carmine was one of those people who did not know. “I made a promise.”
Carmine barely passed the baby a glance. A new father himself, Alberto thought Carmine might have some affection for the newborn, but he didn’t seem to care.
That was fine.
He only had to do his job, after all.
“Take her to the airport. All the information is in this folder,” Alberto said, digging through his desk. He found what he needed, a small folder filled with documents of a new identity for Anastasya. “Katie is waiting; she will take her for the first leg of the trip.”
Carmine nodded, taking the documents Alberto handed over.
He was a monster, to be sure.
He was angry.
He hurt.
But he’d harmed a child once, nearly killed an innocent boy with a bomb he had ordered to be set. And if not for that bomb, if not for his choices all those many long years ago, this all could have been so different.
Alberto knew that too well.
And so while he would take his daughter’s child from her, as he had promised to do, and while he would kill her husband so that she could finally understand the full consequences of her actions, he would never end the life of an innocent child.
It might have seemed like that was his plan—he was sure Violet would go on after all that had happened thinking her baby was dead by her father’s hand.
But no …
After all, she only needed to think it was true.
The pain was the very same.
It was time to finish out his promises.
Alberto Gallucci always kept his word.
“Where’s my daughter?” Kaz demanded the second the call connected.
Alberto’s laughter felt like nails on a chalkboard. “How does it feel, hmm?”
“Do not fuck with me.”
“I’d like an answer to my question,” Alberto said, amusement dripping from his tone. He was enjoying this—whether the kidnapping or Kaz’s panic—the Italian was thrilled.
“What question?”
“How does it feel to lose? How does it feel, after coming this far, to still be one step behind? I would be tired if I were you, Russian.”
Kaz’s fingers tightened so hard around the device in his hand that he feared he would shatter it before they’d even finished the call. Every step he’d made … it had all been to avoid this.
The moment when his plan had to change …
The moment when he felt a slice of fear through his gut at how this could end …
Hadn’t this been what he meant to prevent—the very thing he’d hoped to avoid?
His concentration wasn’t meant to be lacking, especially with what he intended to do, and the only way he could ensure that there wouldn’t be a problem for him was if he knew that Violet and Anastasya were safe. Alfie had already sent Vera and Irina out of the country.
One last step.
It was supposed to be one last step.
Tamping down the anxiety he felt, Kaz asked the one question he hoped to never have to. “What do you want?”
“She’s a beautiful girl, you know. Looks just like her mother, and like you, unfortunately. Babies, such precious gifts. It hurts when they grow up.”
Kaz was losing his patience. “Just tell me what the fuck you want.”
“A life for a life seems fitting.”
Kaz didn’t have a single clue what he was going to do, or even how he was going to win this one, but there was still no hesitation as he said, “Done.” There was nothing he wouldn’t give to have his daughter back.
His own life be damned.
“Time and a place, Gallucci.”
Alberto’s response was immediate. “I’ll see you where we first met all those years ago.”
Three beeps in his ear told him the Italian had hung up, leaving him standing there with his phone in hand as he resisted the urge to break it, the weight of his decision bearing down on him. It was easy, at the moment, to agree. It wasn’t about him, he reasoned.
It was about his daughter.
His wife.
Kaz had vowed to protect them—to do everything in his power to make sure they stayed that way. The good life was what he had promised them, and he still planned to deliver.
Violet wasn’t going to be happy with what he would say, but it had to be done.
For her and Anastasya.
It had to be done.