by Bethany-Kris
Rus slammed his door shut, driving off almost immediately. “All gate codes were taken care of, the boys are already in place, and the only thing we need now is the ‘okay.’”
How many times had he thought about venturing out of Brighton to find Alberto or even just one of his men? But with the truce in place, he’d been forbidden. It was amazing, the difference a year could make.
Kaz hadn’t given much thought to what the Gallucci family home looked like—he only cared that once he left it, the patriarch of the family would no longer be breathing.
His heart rate kicked up a bit as Rus entered the code on the panel—the guard inside already having been shot before they rolled up—and Kaz watched the rolling gates slowly slide back a moment before they were driving up the hill toward the sprawling mansion that was at the top. Two other cars followed.
It was quiet as they exited the cars one after the other, too quiet in fact. He wouldn’t put it past Alberto to have a trap waiting for him, knowing that he was next on Kaz’s shit list. That was why he was being cautious, taking his time rather than barging in.
There was no need to rush.
Alberto would be dead soon enough.
Rus used his skills to get the lock undone, and the door opened, and then he stepped back for them to go on ahead. The minute they were inside, chaos erupted.
The rapid-fire gunshots exploded, screams started, and the coppery scent of blood quickly filled the air. Kaz ducked out of the entryway, barely missing a bullet to the side. But spinning around just as fast, he aimed and fired, watching heated metal burrow a hole into a man’s head, taking a chunk out of it as it ripped free from the back.
Going up the stairs, Kaz cocked the hammer back as he went. The minute he cleared the landing, a door was thrown open violently. A girl around the same age as Violet came stumbling out, her wild eyes settling on Kaz as recognition flared.
It took a moment for Kaz to remember who she was—Nicole, he thought her name was. The one with Carmine.
Kaz almost smiled—two birds, one stone.
“Where’s your man?” he asked Nicole, pointing the gun at her face.
Very slowly, she raised a finger, pointing to the room she had just come out of. When Kaz took a step toward her, she took one back, and he continued this dance until they were back in the room and he could just see the gun Carmine had aimed in his direction.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Russian? Do you have any idea what my father will—”
“Good, actually. Where is the man? I have a bone to pick with him about that fucking bruise he left on my wife.”
A muscle worked in Carmine’s jaw as he glared at Kaz, but he didn’t once look at the woman Kaz was aiming his gun at.
Interesting.
“Where’s your father?” Kaz repeated the question, his finger wrapping around the trigger.
“None of your fucking business.”
Kaz sighed. “Wrong answer.”
Shifting his aim, he fired, the bullet tearing the flesh of the girl’s thigh. Kaz was careful, making sure his aim was just right. The thigh was a safer place to hit when it was only a flesh wound. It bled more, but the look of it was more pressing than the actual damage.
Nicole screamed Carmine’s name as she crumpled to the floor, though she did her best to catch herself with one arm and the other was wrapped protectively around her middle. And with her arm there, he could see the swell of her stomach.
It seemed Violet wasn’t the only one that was pregnant.
“You shot my goddamn wife!”
“Your father,” Kaz said, unaffected by the venom he heard in the other man’s words. “Where is he? I won’t ask again.”
Though it sounded like the words were ripped from him, Carmine finally answered. “He’s gone.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could—”
“Don’t you think if I fucking knew where he fucking was, I would be standing here dealing with your bullshit? You want him? You have to find him your-fucking-self.”
This was the last thing he needed. He was in no mood to play fucking cat and mouse games all over again.
“But you may not have to worry,” Carmine said pulling Kaz from his thoughts, that subtle bite of arrogance back in his voice. “He’ll find you first.”
Kaz wouldn’t give the man the opportunity.
“Curious, don’t you think? That he would choose to skip town now?” Kaz shook his head.
Carmine frowned. “What are you going on about?”
“He knew the second Vasily was in the ground, I would be paying him a visit, and if he knew, why would he leave you here knowing what I would do?”
Maybe Carmine was the trap.
Maybe Alberto thought Kaz would have been reckless and killed his son without thought, and if he did, there would be an all-out war and no one was safe.
Carmine had been his pawn.
As Kaz’s smile grew at the thought, it appeared as though Carmine was figuring this out as well.
“Seems you have a choice to make there, no?” Kaz asked, holstering his weapon. If he was right, he wouldn't need it. “One day, you’ll have to make a decision as to whose life matters more—yours or his.”
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.”