Page 103 of Where the Wind Whispers

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.