Page 70 of Where the Wind Whispers

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.