Page 8 of Where the Wind Whispers

Violet shook her head, her grip tightening around the gun even more, though her father couldn’t see it inside her bag. “I’m not yours to have. You don’t get to come into this hospital where my husband is recovering to make demands or threaten me, Alberto.”

“I have done neither of those things, Violet.”

Yet.

She knew that unspoken word was meant to be tacked on there.

With Alberto, it was always tacked on.

“Your Russian … He’s not doing well, is he?”

Violet forced herself not to respond. She wouldn’t give her father a goddamn thing where Kaz or his current condition was concerned.

“Is he even awake yet?” Alberto asked. “Will he be the same when he is awake, girl?”

Violet’s heart ached. How dare he throw those statements at her as though they were nothing—like they meant nothing—when he had to know how real those possibilities actually were for Kaz.

“Fuck you.”

Alberto didn’t even flinch at her words; he merely smiled again. “This can all go away, Violet. That offer is still there—nothing is unfixable. Don't you remember when I told you that, sweetheart? I meant those words, and I still do.”

“I don’t care.”

“Is that what you want—an invalid for a husband, useless in all things and incapable of caring for you? I’m sure he was wonderful before, but how wonderful will it be when—”

Violet moved fast, pushing past her father to hit the button that would force the doors to open on the next floor. It was one higher than the one she would need to be on, but that didn’t make a fucking difference to her. She’d take the damned stairs as long as she could get away from Alberto and his vileness.

The elevator jerked suddenly as it came to a stop, doors flying wide open to an empty hallway. Alberto’s hand closed tightly around Violet’s arm before she could get out of the elevator, his fingers digging hard enough into her skin that he would surely leave a bruise.

“I’m not finished,” her father snarled.

Too fucking bad.

Violet was done.

The hand that she’d kept hidden inside her messenger bag lifted, exposing the handgun she held as she pointed it right at Alberto’s face without hesitation. There was no loosening of her grip as her father moved back an inch, no shake to her hand as his eyes widened.

No, she just flicked the safety off and pulled the hammer back, letting the click echo between them.

“Let me go,” Violet said quietly.

Alberto’s grip tightened momentarily before it loosened.

It still wasn't enough.

“If you think I’ll come running back to you, wanting your praise and approval in exchange for your love and affection, then you’re sorely fucking mistaken,” Violet told her father, never once letting the gun move even a fraction of an inch. “And if you think for one second that I won’t blow your face off if you don’t let me get out of this elevator so I can get back to my husband’s bedside, then keep touching me and I’ll get to see what kind of art we can make on these walls, Daddy.”

Alberto let her go, and she stepped out of the elevator.

Violet didn’t lower the gun until the doors closed.

Darkness …

It surrounded him, engulfed him to the point that he didn’t know where one thing began, and where it ended. There was just … nothing, until his consciousness came rushing back and Kaz Markovic woke, choking as he tried to breathe.

Barely able to open his eyes, he reached blindly for the contraption covering his mouth, ready to rip the thing free so he could finally breathe, but he was weak, weaker than he had ever been in his life. He could hardly lift his own arms, let alone try to remove the hose in his throat.

And fuck if his throat didn’t hurt.