by Bethany-Kris
She barely spared him a glance, though only because she was too busy directing. “A mother’s job is never done. Besides, this is a gift for your family. Violet only needs to worry after that darling little girl. This, I can handle.”
His mother had always been good at hosting—probably where Vera got her instincts.
It almost felt like they were back to where they once were.
“We appreciate it.”
“And how are you, Kazimir?” she asked, laying a hand on his cheek as she stared up at him. “You look tired.”
“That’s what a newborn will do to you,” he returned with an absent smile.
Nothing could truly prepare a person for the long nights, though he’d had some practice with the twins. He remembered all too well the way they had cried up until the moment they were fed. That had been a long few months. Though, back then, it had felt like ages.
Anastasya, his beautiful little girl, didn’t give them that kind of trouble. She was a dream come true, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t up at all hours of the night when it was time to feed her.
Though, if he were honest, he didn’t mind it so much.
“You were a pleasant baby, you know,” Irina said with an affectionate smile, as though recalling a fond memory. “Never gave me any trouble until you learned to crawl. I couldn’t keep you in one spot for long.”
Kaz chuckled. “Sounds about right.”
“Such a curious boy, you were. And do you know where I would always find you?”
“Where?”
“Following after Ruslan … and your father.”
Kaz lost his easy smile, not knowing what to say.
Irina too lost her smile, but she also didn’t look as sad as Kaz thought she would. “Things were simpler back then.”
Tucking his hands in his pocket, he glanced back through the entryway at his wife, his daughter, and the family he hadn’t been able to see in so long. “I am sorry.”
“Are you?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“I’m sorry for your loss, not for what I did.”
She swept her thumb over his cheek, turning her eyes away. “I’m sorry that you were the one to do it.”
And that would just have to be good enough.
“It’s time for presents, I think,” Irina said, effectively changing the subject. “Take these into the other room and start.”
Kaz didn’t get a chance to respond before she was waving for one of the servers to pass him the first stack, this one topped with a rather small white box, wrapped in red ribbon. Deciding it was best not to argue, he did as he was told, carrying the lot back out to the party.
He set the towering presents on a nearby table, reaching a hand for Violet as she neared. She passed Anastasya off to Vera who seemed rather smitten with her new niece.
“Thank you all for coming,” Kaz said once Violet was close. “And thank you for all of your gifts. I’m sure Violet will thank you all individually, but consider this my one.”
Most laughed as Violet rolled her eyes at him, though even she had to admit that he was right. Smiling, Kaz reached for the present on top—the box with the bow.
It took all of a few seconds to get the ribbon undone and tossed on the table, the top quickly following, but to his surprise, there was nothing inside but a small card, barely bigger than a business card.
It was blank, or so he thought before turning it over in his hands and reading the one word written there.
“Auguri?” He tried pronouncing it, not recognizing the word.
No one else seemed to understand what he was trying to say, either—all except one.
Violet was no longer smiling.
Violet couldn’t breathe.
She was well aware she needed to do something—speak, move, or damn, anything.
Instead, all she could do was stare at that white box with its blood-red ribbon tied in an intricate, beautiful bow. The card in Kaz’s hand dropped to the floor, its congratulatory word already forgotten in his mind as he stepped toward her, probably with one of his reassurances that all was well and fine … or it would be.
But the Italian phrase that had been written in familiar, broad script was not lost on her.
Auguri.
Best wishes, it had read.
Kaz’s Russian accent had, of course, obliterated the word. He had zero interest in pronouncing Italian correctly, or for that matter, learning how to when it came right down to it.
And maybe that all would have been a little funny had Violet not looked at the white box with the red ribbon and saw a man’s heart being cut out all over again. Perhaps it would have been amusing had the innocuous, seemingly innocent note inside not been written in writing by a hand she would recognize anywhere.
Her father.
Their calm before the storm was over, Violet knew.
She’d known it the moment Kaz had pulled out the card.
The peace of their daughter’s birth, welcoming her into their happy, loved world, was shattered just like that.
And now … now, Violet couldn’t breathe.
“Take it away,” she heard Kaz demand.
No one moved at first.
They were still staring at her.
Sometimes, Violet wondered if these people blamed her for the terror that always seemed to be a constant in their life. Her presence caused it, after all.
Now, it wasn’t just her but her child, too.
Her father’s innocent gift was nothing of the sort.
It was his declaration.
A reminder.
He was not done with her just yet. He’d not finished what he started where she was concerned.
Her heart. Her soul.
Those words still rang heavily in the back of Violet’s mind whenever she thought about her father.
Violet’s heart was just a few feet in front of her, saying something in Russian to another man, but Kaz’s gaze was still firmly stuck to her. She imagined she was quite a sight standing there, probably as white as a ghost and feeling about the same.
Dead inside.
Or damn well nearly there.
Her soul, however, was off to her right, sleeping comfortably in her aunt’s arms and so entirely unaware of the hell that was promising to be unleashed.
All because she was here—born and alive.
All because her mother loved her.
“Violet,” Kaz said, moving to stand in front of her, “it’s—”
“Please don't say that it’s fine.”
Her voice barely broke the level of a whisper.
It still, somehow, made her throat ache.
She didn’t want to be afraid.
She was not fragile—not weak under a man’s thumb.
Certainly not her father’s now.
Yet that all-consuming terror she had only felt once before when her husband lay in a coma, his future uncertain, was exactly what she felt at that moment.
For her child.
Her husband.
Not a single bit of it was for herself, though.
Alberto didn't want harm to come to her.
He wanted to hurt her in a different way.
“Let’s call this—”
Violet pushed past Kaz, not bothering to let him finish whatever he was trying to tell the guests of the small welcoming party. At first, she had appreciated that they had thought to put something like this together since Kaz was so very careful about letting people into their lives, even if they were familiar with the people.
Now, she wanted the eyes off her.
She wanted her child and her husband safe.
She wanted them all out of her house.
Vera barely said a thing when Violet carefully took a sleeping Anastasya from her arms without so much as a word as to why she was doing so. Violet didn’t bother with a goodbye to the guests as she cradled the baby close and left the main room without a look over her shoulder.
She could hear the chatter begin behind her
as soon as she was gone.
She caught bits and pieces.
The Italians.
A message.
Violet didn’t need the obvious stated. She was not naïve; she was far from a dumb woman who stuck her head in the sand. But that didn’t mean she needed to face her anxiety and panic with all of them watching.
She headed to the one place in their large home that always, no matter what, made her feel safe and happy. Their bedroom.
Violet finally felt as though she could take a real breath when she had the door closed behind her and curled up on the reclining chair that also acted as a rocking chair. Anastasya barely reacted at all to being moved and now, rocked. Violet felt her daughter’s small lips smacking against her neck a second before a tiny hand replaced the feeling, telling her she’d found her thumb.
Her third favorite thing in the world next to her mother and father.
Violet settled for a moment, her heart calming and her fears beginning to leave. It wasn’t all gone, but it was better than it had been moments before.
It was only when Kaz slipped into the bedroom with a frown etched into his handsome features, and then kneeling down in front of her did Violet’s world finally begin to turn again.
All was right.
In those few seconds, as his one hand curved her bare knee and his other came to rest on their child’s back, Violet’s world was calm and good and right.
“I’m not going to say it’ll be fine,” Kaz said.
Violet nodded, thankful. “Okay.”
“But whatever it is, it will not last long, and then we’ll be back to our normal again. Yes?”
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe their normal was just constant chaos.
“Violet?” Kaz pressed gently.
“Back to normal,” she echoed.
“We have people downstairs—a party for the baby.”
Violet heard his unspoken question, though she knew he would never demand she do what was appropriate or respectful if she didn’t truly want to. He was not that kind of man. He didn’t treat her like property to be used when he felt like it.
She was one of the faces of their family, and she understood that all too well.
But she was his wife first.
Still, Violet stood, letting Kaz take the baby as she smoothed her dress and checked her makeup in the mirror. Some of the color had returned to her face, and she smiled, knowing that was needed, too.
She didn’t have to go back downstairs and pretend as if nothing had happened, as if nothing was wrong when it so clearly was.
Yet Violet still did it.
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 li
ke 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.