“You look wonderful,” Alberto praised, taking Violet’s hand as she approached him. “I see you managed to find a dress.”
Violet smiled, and pretended like there wasn’t a hell of a lot of eyes watching her at that moment. The long stage meant for the runway and models was lined on either side by six rows of seats from one side to the other. The ballroom had been converted for the fashion show’s use. Black and chrome accents hung from the ceiling. Music pumped through the place courtesy of the high-profile DJ set up near the entrance of the runway where the models would come out of. Media people, flashing their badges and cameras to keep out of the hands of security, bombarded the venue from every angle.
While this very scene of high-life and socialites was exactly her mother’s thing, it wasn’t Violet’s. She didn’t feel comfortable in front of a large crowd being photographed and asked questions about her mother’s latest designs and the event that was sure to turn heads.
But her father demanded she show, and so she had.
“Thank you,” Violet told her father.
“Where are your friends?” Alberto asked.
“Coming. They got caught up in all the pretty lights outside.”
Alberto caught onto what she was saying, and chuckled. “For some people, the shininess of a red carpet and paparazzi doesn’t wear off, Violet.”
It wore off for her about ten years ago.
When she was a kid, it mostly just scared the hell out of her.
“Sit,” Alberto said, waving at one of the empty chairs beside him.
Violet followed her father’s demand. It wasn’t long before Nicole and Amelia joined her in the front row, along with her brother on the other side of her father, and a few familiar faces behind them. They had some of the best seats in the house nearing the very front of the runway.
Taking a quick look around, Violet picked out a good dozen celebrities that had been handpicked for invitations from her mother, a few musicians that had a taste for fashion, as well as high profile individuals from all across New York. Each event was a little more important than the last, Violet knew. Her mother’s name only grew, and her celebrity status lifted higher with it.
Gallucci was more than just a dynasty.
It was a goddamn brand.
When the lights dimmed and loud voices turned into hushed murmurs, Violet relaxed a little more. She didn’t have a lot of interest in her mother’s shows, but she did enjoy watching the models.
Once, she had even entertained the idea of becoming one. She certainly had a way in, if she wanted to try.
The music changed tempo slightly, just enough to signal something was about to happen. Lights flickered, drawing in the crowd’s attention to the entrance of the runway. Andrea stepped out of the sheer black curtains with her blood red smirk and a single hand held high. Her hair had been piled high on her head in a messy up-do. She wore one of her signature black dresses, detailed along the smooth lines with chrome to fit the theme of the event.
Then, as quickly as her mother had come, she was gone.
The music changed again just as the first model stepped onto the runway. Andrea Gallucci fashions weren’t about being crazy and out there. Her mother liked class, and style. Simple was sometimes the sexiest. She wanted to see each and every woman in one of her designs … if they had the luxury of being able to afford one of the pieces.
Violet figured they were probably half-way through the first run of the collection when her father tensed in his chair beside hers. She shot him a curious glance, noting he was looking down at the phone in his hand. Instantly, his confusion melted into a simmering rage that danced across his scowling lips and narrowed eyes.
She tried to look at his phone, but he quickly hid it.
What was wrong?
Alberto leaned to the side, toward his son. Violet watched her father’s lips move fast—too fast for him to be happy.
It wasn’t like Alberto to cause a fuss on a day that was meant to spotlight and showcase their mother, never mind the public attention on their family.
Something had to be bad for him to do that.
People were taking his picture, catching his visible anger.
Alberto would never risk that being caught—not like this.
“I didn’t,” she heard Carmine say.
“Bullshit.”
The one word from her father might as well have been spit from his mouth. And it hadn’t been quiet, either.
“Daddy,” Violet said softly. “People are watching.”
Alberto straightened in his chair, glanced around and fixed his jacket.
“Papa,” Carmine started to say.
Alberto held up a hand, silencing his son. “I warned you.”
Violet still didn’t understand what was going on. Her father stood from his chair, seemingly oblivious to the people watching him all over again with their curious gazes. People knew who they were—who her father was.
“Apologize to your mother for me,” Alberto said.
He had directed his comment to Violet only, not Carmine.
“Sure,” she said.
Her father offered nothing else before he disappeared into the crowd. Carmine cursed on the other side of Violet, but she ignored him. A heavy feeling had settled in her gut.
“What was that all about?” Nicole asked from Violet’s right.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
And she didn’t know if she wanted to.
Kaz was on his back in nothing more than a pair of jeans, as he lifted the cigarette to his lips, dragged in a lungful and held it, letting the nicotine burn before releasing it. It was rare that he smoked, only indulged a handful of times when he wanted to take the edge off.
The day had come and gone, filled with long hours of business with the men that answered to him, and some that didn’t. Now that he was finally home, he was ready to call it a night. Try and get some sleep before he needed to be back up and doing that shit all over again.
He had just ground out the cigarette in the ashtray on his bedside table when his phone’s vibrations cut through the silence. He contemplated ignoring the call for only a handful of seconds before he saw who was calling.
Ruslan.
The party had gone well a few days ago. Vasily had left him be, though he hadn’t spoken to him once. Even the monthly meeting had been easy enough. And while they didn’t talk every day, Kaz and his siblings, when they did call, he never ignored their calls.
“Rus, what’s up?”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Kaz sat straight up, already on his feet before Ruslan could get out another word. It was his tone, the hardness that was twined around his words, that made Kaz move without question. His brother was fully capable of handling himself, had been for far longer than Kaz was alive, so if Ruslan was calling him, it was serious.
“Talk to me.” Kaz grabbed a shirt from the closet, not bothering to pull it on as he snatched his keys from the counter and practically ran out of his apartment. “Are you at the club?”
“Yeah. I got a call from one of my guys, said they saw an Escalade driving around. I didn’t think much of it until he called again and said he saw it again circling the club. Once is a coincidence, and twice …”
He didn’t have to finish that statement for Kaz to know what he meant. Twice meant somebody was trolling.
But who the fuck was stupid enough to be so obvious about it?
“I’m on my way.” Climbing in his car, Kaz started it up and sped out of the parking lot, ignoring the speed limit as he gunned through traffic. “You armed?”
“I’m not a fucking idiot, Kaz,” Ruslan returned, sounding as though he was walking. “I got this.”
“I’m ten minutes out, brat.”
“Probably somebody trying to flex their shit,” Ruslan returned. “By the time you get here, I’ll be out back to check the perimeter. It’s probably not—who the fuck are you?”
Kaz knew the question wasn’t aimed at him as Ruslan’s tone had changed from annoyance to outright anger. There were only certain people that inspired that kind of reaction in him. His father and Italians.
“You fucked up, Russian,” someone said, their voice carrying over the line loud and clear.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ruslan asked, his voice softer, as though he’d taken the phone away from his ear.
Whatever response that might have been said was lost as a grunt sounded, then the phone dropping. Kaz heard all of this, and knew with absolute certainty that it was Ruslan’s grunt that he’d heard.
Fuck.
Pressing down on the gas pedal a little further, Kaz’s back hit the seat as he did ninety the rest of the way.
His tires screeched as Kaz came to a stop in front of the club, barely putting the car in park as he jumped out, grabbing his M9 from the middle console as he went. Abandoning his car—even with the keys inside—Kaz ran, throwing caution to the wind.
At this hour, there was only a few drunk stragglers left, but they seemed oblivious to anything and anyone around them, including the fact that Kaz was carrying a gun for anyone to see.
Kaz was just rounding the corner, spotting the giant lump on the ground that he immediately could see was Ruslan, his face bloody and nearly unrecognizable.
It felt like a punch to his chest, the rage that filled him, and though his first instinct was to go to his brother and make sure he was breathing, the sound of peeling tires and the smell of burning rubber made his head jerk up. He just caught sight of the Escalade driving out of the lot, and when he did, his gun was up and aimed without a thought, bullets splitting the air as he fired.
He ran, even as he pulled the trigger, shattering the back windshield with a bullet, embedding another in the trunk, and a final one in a tail light before the truck disappeared out of view.
“Rus!”
Kaz jogged back to his brother, two fingers already going to his pulse as he carefully rolled him over, scanning him for any bullet wounds, but it seemed the blood coating his shirt was mostly from his face. Feeling the firm, but slow heartbeat beneath his hand, Kaz sagged in relief, using his free one to tug the phone out from his back pocket.
“You’re going to be all right, Rus,” Kaz said, dialing the number for the man they kept on their payroll for this kind of thing. Ruslan hated hospitals and avoided them as much as he could.
“What the fuck happened?”
Kaz let go of Ruslan only to pick up his gun and point it back at Nathaniel as he appeared at the back entrance, holding the door open. At least until he saw Ruslan on the ground, then a rage the likes of which Kaz had never seen fell like a mask over his face as he ran over.
“What—”
Before he could repeat the question, Kaz asked one of his own. “Where the fuck were you?”
Nathaniel blinked, then blinked again as he seemed to become aware of the gun that Kaz had trained on him. He was no stranger to Kaz’s surly nature, but never had Kaz blatantly held a gun to the man’s head.
“I was doing inventory in the freezer,” Nathaniel explained, sounding far too calm in the face of Kaz’s anger. “I didn’t hear shit—not until the shots.”
Hanging up—the good doctor hadn’t answered—Kaz finally withdrew his weapon, already dialing another number, getting to his feet.
“Stay with him.”
Nathaniel didn’t question the command, just did what was asked of him and remained where he was. Just as Kaz had done, Nathaniel checked him over for injuries.
Turning away, Kaz was brimming with fury by the time Vasily picked up, and when he did, he didn’t waste a second. “We’ve got a fucking problem.”
Once again, Kaz found himself with a cigarette between his lips, fighting the urge to do violence. He had expected the nicotine to help, if only for a spell, but it did nothing. But he wasn’t out committing murder, so it must have been doing something.
Back inside his house, Ruslan was getting checked out by Marcus Fray, their resident doctor, and one of the few men that knew secrets about them but wasn’t officially a part of their organization. Kaz had stuck next to Ruslan the entire time, at least until his brother had demanded he go away once he’d come around.
That’d been ten minutes ago, before Kaz’s cigarette, and—as the door to his place opened—before Vasily’s arrival.
Tossing the butt over the railing, Kaz headed back inside.
Ruslan’s face was clean of blood, though the bruising was bad, as was his chest. Now that his clothes were gone—doctor’s orders—it was far easier to see what all had been done to him, considering he was already bruised and it had only been an hour.
It wasn’t just fists that had been used on him—Kaz knew firsthand the kind of impressions those made on the body. A bat, probably, judging from some of the large markings, especially along his back. But despite the obvious pain he had to be in, Ruslan didn’t complain. That wasn’t his style.
Vasily glanced in Ruslan’s direction, taking in the multitude of his bruised body before he frowned. “What happened?”
Ruslan, who had grown used to Vaily ignoring his presence entirely, was slow to realize that Vasily was asking him the question. Kaz leaned against the island in his kitchen, folding his arms across his chest as he waited for the answer he wanted to know as well.
“There were five of them in front,” Ruslan explained. “One came at me from behind with a fucking aluminum bat.”
It seemed Kaz was right about that. “Did you recognize them?”
“Not immediately, but they were fucking Italian. That was clear enough before the idiot in the front introduced himself. Can you believe that shit?” Ruslan ran a hand over his mouth, scowling when he caught sight of the blood on the back of it. “Said his name was Franco.”
Kaz was mildly impressed. Even he didn’t go about announcing his name when he came to make a point, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with arrogance—which Kaz had in spades—but more to do with stupidity. “What the fuck was his problem?”
“Something about a girl—his girl, apparently.” Now, it was to Kaz that Ruslan looked, a hint of accusation there. “The girl, whatever the fuck her name was, that I took home that night, she told him I drugged her.”
No one spoke a word—there was no reason to. If there was one thing they all knew, even Vasily, the likelihood of him drugging a woman was nonexistent.
“What are we doing about it?” Kaz asked, cutting to the chase.
All eyes turned to Vasily, waiting for his response.
After a brief hesitation, he gave them their answer. “Nothing. You’ll do nothing.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Kaz asked pushing off the island to cross the floor and stand toe-to-toe with Vasily. He didn’t care that the others were quick to excuse themselves, knowing what was coming next. “You make your point about boundaries and lines, getting on my ass about it, but now you want to let this go? Fuck that.”
“I’ve allowed your blatant disrespect—ignored your petulant behavior. If you want me to treat you like a child, Kazimir, I will. When I say stand down, that’s exactly what I mean. Stand down. I am not to be questioned. This is not a fucking democracy. You do what I say, when I say it, or so help me, Kazimir—even if it breaks your mother’s heart—I will put a bullet in your fucking skull. Now mind me and leave it.”
With that parting remark, Vasily took his leave.
Once the door was shut, leaving Kaz and his Ruslan alone, Kaz looked to his brother. Before he could speak, Ruslan shook his head, coming over to sit on the couch, wincing as he slowly sat.
“One day he’s not going to be so nice,” Ruslan warned, grabbing the remote and reclining back like he hadn’t just had the shit beat out of him. “You shouldn’t goad him.”
“Fuck him.” This wouldn’t be the first time Kaz had said those words. “You know I’m right.”
“You may be, but you can’t change his mind. I don’t see why you try.”
Ruslan was always the rational one, imploring logic even when Kaz didn’t like to hear it. That was why, after all, he was the older brother.
“How are the ribs, brat?”
“They’d feel better if someone pried them the fuck out of me,” Ruslan admitted.
Damn.
Kaz took a seat beside his brother, careful not to drop down too fast and cause Ruslan more agony. “The girl, they said.”
Ruslan didn’t take his gaze off the television. “That’s what they said—he said. Just the one spoke.”
“Franco, yes?”
“Apparently. What kind of fool goes around introducing himself like that?”
“One that believes he is just and untouchable,” Kaz said.
He filed the Italian’s name away. Before morning, he would know exactly who this Franco was. Regardless of Vasily’s opinions, Kaz wanted to know why the Italians thought they had any right to be in Coney, never mind attacking Ruslan.
A boss would have needed to give some kind of approval for that, considering it could start a damn war.
“Stop,” Ruslan said.
Kaz’s knee quit bouncing instantly. Sometimes, when he was overthinking shit, he got that way in his daze. “I’m not doing anything, Rus.”
“You’re thinking about doing something. That is enough.”
“I’m supposed to be okay with my brother being jumped by a bunch of Italians over some female’s lies? You want to be like Vasily and tell me to look the other way?”
Ruslan grunted under his breath. “Leave it alone. Maybe now they’ll fuck off, yeah? They made their point, Kaz.”
Kaz didn’t think it was that simple, but given the state of his brother, he wasn’t about to argue the point with him. Ruslan was all about keeping the peace where other people were concerned. He didn’t put himself into shit that would cause problems, and he didn’t like to make others uncomfortable if he could help it.
While Kaz typically appreciated that in his brother, he didn’t find it to be a virtue when Ruslan looked like he’d just gotten stomped on by a bunch of horses.
A bit of guilt swam through Kaz as he looked his brother over again. It was, in a way, his fault that Ruslan had been put in this situation at all. If it hadn’t been for him ordering Ruslan to take the girl home, she wouldn’t have been able to lie about who had drugged her.
Following that guilt was a hell of a lot of irritation and rage.
Her friends had to have known the truth. She was fucked up in that office, and long before she entered it, too—if their stories that night were any indication to go by. While he didn’t know much about the other two girls, Violet Gallucci didn’t seem like the type to throw others under the proverbial bus to save her own ass.
But if she knew her friend was lying to her boyfriend to save face, then that’s exactly what she had done to his brother.
And that pissed him off.
“If you’re going to keep that bouncing shit up,” Ruslan said, still flicking through channels on the television, “then I am going to make you leave.”
Kaz stilled again. “You’d think after having your face beat in, you’d be a little quieter.”
Ruslan laughed, a wince following right behind. “Yeah, you’d think.”
But that wasn’t Ruslan’s style.
Out of the corner of his eye, something on the television’s guide caught Kaz’s attention. “Wait, go back.”
“I am not watching fashion shit, Kazimir. If you suddenly took possession of a vagina between your legs, feel free to go home and watch it on your own flatscreen.”
“Shut the fuck up. No, there was one—Gallucci Fashions, it said. Go back.”
Grumbling under his breath, Ruslan did what he was told. Sure enough, it was a live shot of Andrea Gallucci’s latest collection she had released. Beside him, his brother sighed and muttered on, but Kaz was too busy scanning the faces in the crowd behind the models.
Front row and center, he found her.
Violet.
The camera quickly left her position as it continued following the model’s walk, but what he had seen was enough for him to consider a few things.
Her friends had been sitting on one side of her. Her brother on the other. An empty chair was between them, probably reserved for Alberto himself.
Except the man wasn’t there.
Fury filled Kaz’s throat with a sickening taste all over again, and he clenched his fists tight enough that his fingernails bit into his palms.
Had the Italian boss decided to forgo his wife’s show because he had better business to attend to, say like making sure his orders were followed through?
Kaz wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like the look of it.
“Are you done watching this?” Ruslan asked.
“Yeah, whatever.”
Ruslan changed the channel, but not in quick enough time for Kaz to miss the camera’s next shot landing directly on Violet and her friends again. It lingered a bit longer the second time—long enough for him to see her perfectly coiffed like she always seemed to be whenever she was out in public.
That wasn’t what irritated him the most, however.
It was seeing her with the other two—mostly the one who lied and caused his brother to be beaten like an animal. She had to have known her friend was saying falsehoods about what had happened that night, and yet, she didn’t correct the lies.
And those who didn’t correct other’s lies were just as bad as those who spoke them.
No, she was sitting right there with the other girl, even as she wore that fucking red dress that he’d chosen at the boutique. It was almost like she was taunting him, even if she couldn’t have possibly known that he was going to see her wearing it.
He wanted to know why.
If Kaz wasn’t allowed to go after the Italian who attacked Ruslan because of his father’s orders, Vasily had said nothing about Violet.
… for once.
Kaz stood from the couch, still simmering in his fury and settled on his decision. Manhattan might be a warrant for his death, but he was willing to risk it after tonight.
“You’ll be all right, yes?” Kaz asked his brother.
Ruslan glanced up, a knowing glint burning behind his eyes. “Stay in Brighton, Kaz.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere. You heard Vasily—I was told no … and called a child.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ll listen.”
“I’m going home, brat.”
Ruslan let out a heavy breath, turning back to the television. “Sure you are.”