Where the Wind Whispers (Seasons of Betrayal Book 3) (22 page)

Violet cried.

So
hard
.

“I’ll have someone take you home,” Kaz told Violet. “You can change out of those clothes and relax for a bit. There’s nothing you can do here, yes?”

She heard him, of course, but her mind was not cooperating enough for her to give him a response.

“Let me through! I need to see my son!
Please
!”

Kaz stood fully, spinning fast on his heel at the sight of his mother forcing her way past two large men who had been standing in the family waiting room of the OR.

“
Mama
,” Kaz said, a thickness coloring his words.

He’d been so carefully managing his emotions, Violet noticed. From the moment he’d arrived on the scene to the point when Rus had been shoved into the back of an ambulance, Kaz barely gave away a thing. Schooling his features, he had shouted for someone to call his lawyer when the cops had shown up on the scene only seconds after the ambulance left.

Irina was let through, the twins following right behind their mother with red, watery eyes and with matching expressions of fear. At Violet’s right, Vera stood from the seat she’d been seated in, baby Anastasya in her arms.

Alfie, a man Violet rarely spent time around, put a hand on Vera’s shoulder, and pushed her back into her seat with a quiet, “Sit, dovie, you’ll do no good for her like you are. Let your brother handle it, yeah?”

“But—”

“Arguing is fucking pointless today, innit?” Alfie asked, seemingly emotionless despite the affection implied in his words toward Vera. “Not the best time, luv.”

Violet took her daughter from Vera. The two stepped off to the side, and the harsh whispering began as they settled in a set of seats in the far corner. She was too focused on her husband approaching his stunned, heartbroken mother.

“Ma,” Kaz said, his arms outstretched toward Irina, “he’s in surgery, we’ll know more—”

“You have
one
job that matters,” Irina interrupted softly.

Kaz’s back tensed, his next words hesitant. “You don’t understand what happened, Ma.”

Violet doubted he was about to explain it to his mother.

He hadn’t even explained it to her yet.

“One job, Kazimir,” Irina repeated, “and that is to protect your family—
all
of them.”

Kaz said nothing, but Violet could see the pain reflecting in his profile as he glanced away.

The twins began to ask questions, shooting one after the other.

“What happened?” Dina asked.

Nika’s question came at the same time. “Will Rus be okay?”

“How long before we know something?”

“Can we see him as soon as he’s out of surgery?”

Dina peered over at Violet. “Why is she all bloody?”

“Was she there too?” Nika asked.

The questions kept coming.

One after the other.

Violet could see Kaz’s control beginning to wane with each one.

Finally, he said, “That’s enough.”

His words came out quiet but forceful.

It was a tone she rarely heard Kaz take with his younger sisters.

Still, it did the job, and the girls quieted.

Irina pushed the girls toward a line of chairs, ordering them to sit and be quiet for a while. Once the twins settled, phones in hand, she turned her attention back to her son.

“What
will
you tell me?” Irina asked.

Kaz’s gaze traveled over the people around them. Many watched the exchange, but they were too far away to get the full conversation.

“Things happened,” Kaz offered blandly.

“Your brother was nearly kill—”

“I
know
, Ma.” Letting out a harsh sigh, Kaz scrubbed a hand down his face. “I just … mind the girls, I have calls to make.”

His cold, sterile response gave away nothing.

Irina only stared at her son, sadness dawning her gaze. “I’m so tired of doing this, Kazimir. I have been doing this—getting these calls and spending nights in these same rooms—for
years
. You have one job that truly matters, do it
well
.”

Kaz hadn’t even allowed his mother to finish talking completely before he was walking away, leaving the waiting room entirely without so much as a look over his shoulder.

But Violet had seen something his mother probably hadn’t noticed in her spiel.

His fist, shaking, had been shoved in his pocket.

His jaw, tight with stress, clenched.

Kaz was hitting his limit.

Violet didn’t know
why
exactly, but she knew that look on her husband.

He was losing his control.

Entirely.

Violet was on her feet, passing her daughter off to Irina before she followed behind her husband. She only saw his back a second before he disappeared behind locked doors that lead out of the OR floor.

“Kaz, wait!”

He didn’t stop.

Violet jogged to catch up, pushing through the doors in time to see Kaz take another corner, one she knew led to a line of elevators. She only caught up with her husband once she was in front of the elevators, the door just closing as she slipped in, making sure to put her hand up to keep a woman from entering the elevator as well.

“Take another one,” she told the scowling lady.

The doors closed, and Violet turned to face Kaz. His back was to her, and his whole body was tense, as though he were readying for a battle and fit to kill.

“Kaz.”

“Let me
think
.”

Violet flinched at the venom in his tone.

She wasn’t accustomed to this Kaz.

“I want to
help
,” Violet stressed.

Kaz barked out a laugh, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes as he turned around and leaned against the elevator wall. “You can’t help. You, like my mother, have no idea—”

“Because you’re not explaining it, Kaz! I don’t know what’s wrong beyond Ruslan, but something is, and you can’t blame us for not understanding when you’re not giving us the ability to. Don’t you get that?”

He dropped his hands, that flashing darkness back in his eyes as he waved toward the elevator door. “I can see it on her face, you know? It’s all there, even if she’s not saying it. I can
fucking see it
.”

Violet’s brow furrowed as she took a hesitant step closer. “What do you mean?”

“My mother—she’s thinking if this was Vasily, if this had been him today, this wouldn’t have happened. Rus wouldn’t be nearly dead in an OR. And the worst fucking part is she would be
right
. She would be entirely right, Violet.”

She still didn’t understand.

“How would Vasily have made a difference?”

Kaz spat out another bitter laugh. “Because he would have made a different choice. See, I had a choice today—you, my child, or my brother. Do you get it yet? Do you
understand
the choice I had to make?”

Violet just blinked, feeling so unsteady on her feet.

Like the floor was about the swallow her whole.

“My father.”

It didn’t even come out as a question.

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?

She could do this for him.