Page 102 of Where the Wind Whispers

So be it.

Raising his arm, he fired two more shots, silencing Andrea’s cries once and for all. She hung like a limp doll, blood starting to pool at her feet.

“You’re a dead man, Markovic. You hear me? You’re dead.”

Kaz shook his head in the face of Carmine’s rage and anguish. “You should think very carefully about how you respond to me—especially when I hold your life in my hands. You knew someone would have to answer for everything Alberto has done. You knew this. I knew this. So if we both know, why did he leave you to be found? While he remains hidden away, it only took an hour to drag your ass from bed and get you here. Have you asked yourself why?”

He waited for a response but didn’t get one.

“Alberto doesn’t give a fuck about you, or me, or anyone else—except Violet. So as long as I’m in the picture, he’s going to destroy the city just because he’s a child who’s lost his favorite toy. So tell me, are you ready to die for your father’s obsession?”

Carmine ground his teeth, his gaze cutting over to his mother a moment before turning back to Kaz. “What do you want, Markovic?”

Music to his ears. “Hand him over and swear to no retribution, and I’ll let you leave this room alive.”

Carmine cursed, jerking his head. “You’re asking me to—”

“Take the same deal our fathers made before us,” Kaz cut in before he could finish. “You heard the man. He doesn’t care whether you live or die—do you? Besides, who will your organization fall to with him in the ground?”

“And my mother?” Carmine asked a question of his own.

“I won’t cut off her fingers and toes,” Kaz offered obligingly.

The Italian didn’t look like he contemplated the offer very long. “Fine.”

“Good man.” Kaz waved for one of his men to hit the lever and drop Carmine back onto his feet. “When I finish with him, dump them both out in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“What the fuck, Markovic?” Carmine demanded. “We had a deal!”

“And we do, but you wouldn’t think it would look suspicious if you just walked out of here.” Kaz shook his head, even as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “No, you have to look like you earned it.”

By the time Kaz stopped laying into the man, Carmine was barely breathing.

Alive when he made it out of those doors, Kaz had promised him.

He never said he would stay that way.

Violet moved around the kitchen with ease, making sure to peek around the island occasionally to make sure Anastasya was still enjoying her rocking cradle. The flat screen droned on in the background with some news program she had turned on, though she was more interested in getting breakfast cooked rather than watching television.

She didn’t notice Kaz slipping into the room until he was leaning against the far wall, watching her.

Violet hesitated in her work but continued to stir the scrambled egg mixture as she took in her husband. He’d been … strange for a while, progressively going further inside his head and trying to fix the hell that was all around them. She thought—maybe—she had helped that night in the shower, if only for a short while, but she couldn’t be sure.

And now, looking at him wearing the same clothes he had the day before, and knowing damn well he hadn’t spent the night in bed with her like he usually would, she thought perhaps she hadn’t helped him at all.

“You hungry?” she asked.

Kaz didn’t reply.

Violet sighed. “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer that time, either. She peered over her shoulder at him, only to find he was watching the television. That distance in his gaze never really left, though it killed her to see it staring back at her every day.

They needed their normal back.

She hated her father for taking it from them for even one second.

“Kaz.”