Page 91 of Where the Wind Whispers

He hadn’t explained to her what had come before the shooting, or why it occurred. There was really no time, and there were too many people around listening and wanting information.

Now … now, she understood.

“He made you choose,” Violet whispered.

Kaz looked away, refusing to meet her eyes. “My mother—what’s she thinking—is right. Vasily wouldn’t have made the choice I did. No matter how much he loved his wife, she could be replaced with another. One of his daughters? Fuck, he has three. He can afford to lose one. But one of his men—his sons? Even the one who disobeyed him, shamed him … no, he would have never made that choice.”

Violet let out a shaky breath. “It’s ok—”

“Don’t. It’s not.”

“You’re not Vasily.”

He nodded, though it looked a little sardonic with the way he sneered. “You’re right, I’m not. Because I’m that fucking selfish, yes? I couldn’t pick my wife because I can't live without her, and I didn’t pick my daughter because I couldn’t stand the thought of living with you knowing what I’d done. So I picked someone else—even if I love him, too—because that was the easy way out. And she ...”

Kaz choked out another laugh, waving wildly again at the doors. “She doesn’t understand because I wouldn’t ever say these things to her to explain. I would never want to make her understand just how much of a bastard her husband really was; I wouldn’t want her to feel the way I feel right now.”

“Kaz …”

Violet saw the way his hands shook, and his face hardened, though pain filled his gaze. She stepped forward, close enough to grab him and force him to stop moving; close enough to hug him tight, so tightly that her arms ached. She just wanted to hold him together.

Because that was what was happening …

He was falling apart.

She felt his hands find her sides, squeezing painfully hard, but she didn’t say a thing or ask him to stop.

When his face buried into her shoulder, his words and sounds muffled from the thick fabric of her ruined, bloodstained coat, Violet shivered.

Not because he was close … not because he had calmed a bit.

No, because he used her, the closeness, the elevator, and the privacy to scream, letting her coat muffle a shout filled with so much rage and agony. She held on to him tighter, wrapping one arm all the way around his back and letting her other hand tangle into his hair to weave within the strands.

She had never hated her father more than she did at that moment. Alberto was still, in a way, doing what he had promised. Violet was stuck, not quite knowing what to do or how to help her husband when he was so clearly struggling to maintain control over the events happening around them.

It was killing him, and if it didn’t, it eventually would.

Violet would be the one watching all the while.

Her heart hurt.

“You made the right choice,” Violet told Kaz.

For him, he had.

His choices didn’t have to reflect what others would have decided.

“Should I tell Ruslan that, too, yes?”

Violet didn’t respond.

She didn’t know how to.

Five minutes later, Violet walked out the elevator with her husband like nothing had happened. They looked no different than they had when they’d gone in, dry-eyed and expressionless masks firmly back in place.

What else could they do?

He would do anything for her. How many more times did he have to prove it?