Page 47 of Where the Wind Whispers

If there was anything in this life that Violet had learned, it was to trust no one.

No one was out to help or benefit her.

Not when they had to look out for themselves.

Yet Caesar had said nothing about Violet’s pregnancy so far. In fact, that same morning he figured out her secret, he and his father had joined her family for breakfast before Angelo said goodbye and caught a flight back to Philadelphia. The whole time, Caesar kept the conversation going between her family and his own father like nothing was amiss.

But before Angelo had left for his flight, her father finally said the word she had been dreading.

Marriage.

At first, it was shocking, even if she had already known from spying.

Alberto had posed the offer of marriage without even the air of suggestion, as though he didn’t intend to argue about it at all with her. Her refusal fell on deaf ears, and she’d been left not knowing what else to say.

Her opinion didn’t matter, according to her father.

She had done this to herself—to him.

Her current marriage would not be of any importance soon.

Violet was left struck silent and panicked.

It was only a matter of time, apparently.

She had never wanted Kaz more than in those moments, during that short, stiff conversation when she was left feeling like her father’s possession to do with what he wished whenever he wished to do it.

All the while, Caesar had stood across the room, sipping on whiskey and looking as blank as a piece of paper. He hadn’t shared an opinion as to what was happening, almost as if he didn’t care that it was going on right in front of him.

His father, on the other hand, could not have looked more pleased.

At some point, Violet figured the best thing for her to do was to play her father’s game like she intended to win it. Whatever game her father was playing, of course. She was already married—she was not marrying someone else.

Kaz was hers.

She was his.

And even if she hadn’t been pregnant, she still wouldn’t do any of this.

There was only one other person who seemed as though he too had his own end game where Alberto and Angelo’s plans were concerned, and that was Caesar. If she was to believe what Caesar had alluded to, then he did not intend to marry anyone ever—certainly not Violet, anyway.

So what other choice did she have?

Caesar’s way of playing their games was to make them believe he was compliant to their wishes.

Until Violet had a better plan of action, or finally got word from Kaz that he was coming for her, she would have to do the same.

It still felt bad, though.

Unsafe.

The snakes were everywhere.

Violet didn’t want to be the idiot who stepped on one.

“So it’s true then,” Violet heard her father say.

Her steps faltered, and she stopped just outside the dining room’s entrance, where the people inside couldn’t see her. Only a few minutes earlier, one of the maids had come to find her in the library to say dinner was waiting and so was her father.