Page 110 of Where the Wind Whispers

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.