Where the Wind Whispers (Seasons of Betrayal Book 3) (26 page)

Violet couldn’t dwell on that for now.

She had more important things to consider.

Things like her child—what if they took her?

Violet’s panic came up fast and harsh, knocking her from that calm state and bringing her back down to reality.

What if he took her baby?

“Fuck!”

She heard the driver utter that one word just a single second before glass blew out the driver’s side window. He’d already had his gun out, and ready, but it did no good. Blood and brain matter painted the passenger side window and the seats as the bullet exited the right side of his head, and his body slumped over the seats.

Violet, watching men begin to slide out rather gracefully from their vehicles, scrambled for her daughter. Her hands shook as she unbuckled the baby’s harness, and she pulled a now crying Anastasya from her car seat.

“
Mama’s
here,” Violet told her, holding the baby closer and grabbing the fluffy blanket to wrap her tightly inside. “I’m right here, sweet girl.”

It didn’t help.

The noise from the gunshot and breaking glass had stunned the baby. It pissed Violet off.

Anastasya was just a
baby
.

She didn’t understand these people or why they were doing these things.

She was innocent.

Nearer the men came …

Violet hit the lock button on the SUV, hoping to at least deter them for a bit longer. Just enough for her to dig in her purse, her hand still trembling as she searched for the item that would likely do her no good.

She was far outnumbered.

There were too many men for her one.

Still, she grabbed her gun as she watched an arm come up and smash the back passenger window, blowing out the glass.

Violet already had her hand raised, her gun aimed and ready. She whispered an apology to the baby as she pulled the trigger, knowing it would only scare her daughter more.

Anastasya cried loudly as Violet watched heated metal plug into the man’s forehead. She was already cocking the hammer back and aiming again as another man came up to the window.

Fuck them.

If they were going to take her—or her baby—they were going to have to fucking
work
for it.

Violet just pulled the trigger a second time when the glass from the back window behind her was punched out, too. She hit her target, the bullet plowing into the man’s left eye, but then her gun flew from her hand when someone grabbed her hair and yanked hard, sending her flying backward in the seat.

Cursing, Violet held tight to her child as doors were opened and men were climbing in. She heard their Italian, and their English. They warned her, and another promised.

“Give us the child,” she heard.

“Stop fighting, princess,” another told her.

“Fuck you,” Violet spat.

Violet didn’t listen. She broke every single fingernail against the faces that shadowed her vision. She felt the heel of her stiletto stab into the soft flesh of one of the men’s groins hard enough to make him vomit down the backseat.

And then …

Then Anastasya was gone.

Ripped from her arms as another man grabbed her ankles and pulled her the opposite way. Violet flipped over onto her stomach, kicking her foot out at the man and hitting him in the face as she clamored back toward the way her daughter was going.

Doors were slammed closed on her, and she crashed into it as the man walked away, her daughter’s bright gray eyes filled with tears over the man’s shoulder.

No.

No, no, no.

The words were screamed inside her head, but Violet didn’t even realize she was screaming it out loud too until her throat ached.

“Please don't take my baby!”

Didn’t they understand what they were doing?

Didn’t they
know
what Alberto would do to her baby?

By the time Violet was able to get out of the SUV, the cars were already pulling away, disappearing far faster than they had come, and leaving her screaming on her knees for what they had taken.

Something so precious …

They had no idea they were driving her baby girl to her death.

None at all.

Violet, tear-stained, bloody, and sobbing, stumbled back to the SUV. She searched for her phone, but it took far too long for her to find the fucking thing. Dialing Kaz’s number, the call rang and rang and
rang
. It was rare for him not to pick up a call—rarer for him not to answer one from her. Her hands shook so badly that she almost dropped the phone when she ended the call and tried again.

He still didn’t answer.

Where was
he
?

Violet let out a sound that could only be described as pure agony when Kaz’s voicemail picked up, and she screamed into the phone for him to fucking
pick up
.

Her words were just a vomit of pain.

The baby, the baby, the baby.

Took my baby.

The voicemail cut off, and the call dropped.

Violet’s tears flowed freely as the phone sat in her hands. She had never felt more useless in those moments—never more incapable.

But there might be
one
thing she could do.

Maybe
.

Violet wiped her tears away and turned on the phone again. She dialed a number that she hadn’t willingly called in longer than she could remember.

She sucked in a deep breath, willing the shakiness from her tone to leave so she could speak.

Unsurprisingly, the call went to voicemail.

The familiar voice spoke his message to the caller. “Alberto Gallucci.”

That was all his voicemail had ever said.

When it beeped, Violet started talking.

“Her name is Anastasya Liliya Markovic.”

And she kept talking.

Even when the voicemail time ended and she had to call back.

Five messages, then six.

Eight.

Nine.

Every moment of her daughter’s life from the second she’d taken her first breath to the moment she was taken away.

The most private moments, and the cutest seconds.

The struggles, the exhaustion, and the laughter.

Things she didn’t think her father deserved to know.

Things he could have been a part of had he just
loved her enough
.

Things he missed.

Things that proved her daughter was human.

Beautifully innocent, so entirely loved, and
human
.

Alberto Gallucci

“
And he loves her, so much
…”

Alberto Gallucci reached over and hit the pause button on the phone, hearing footsteps just outside his office. A knock on the door came as soon as the footsteps stopped.

“Enter,” he said, resting back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest.

One of his men—Francis, a friend of Carmine’s but with less mouth and more
teachable
—stepped inside the office, letting the door close quietly behind him.

It was a new thing for Alberto.

He usually didn’t mind noise and movement, as his whole life had been nothing but moving from one thing to another, while the beautiful loudness of the world surrounded him.

Now, it was different.

He wanted quiet when he was alone and even when he wasn’t.

The beauty of life was not important to him.

Francis went about explaining what’d he’d learned, and Alberto, pleased that his plans had gone off without a hitch, for the most part, stared out the tall windows.

Manhattan was always a sight to see, no matter the time of day or season. It was a bustle of activity with people from all walks of life. Alberto had long enjoyed Amityville because it was private, but he had been using one of his many penthouses for a while as a safe house of sorts.

“How many did she get?” Alberto asked suddenly, interrupting whatever Francis had said.

“Pardon, boss?”

“My daughter—how many men did she kill?”

Alberto had long since learned, after many missteps with Violet, that he was not to underestimate her strength and ability to do something when she wanted to or to get something when she
loved
it enough to fight for it.

And God knew …

God in heaven knows she loves the baby
, Alberto told himself.

“Two,” Francis said. “She shot two.”

“Oh?”

“Both in the head.”

“She’s a good shot then,” Alberto stated.

Francis nodded once. “They said she didn’t flinch.”

Alberto smiled absently, his gaze returning to the window, but now, he was staring at his reflection. A strange pride curled in his chest, warming him for the moment.

How much she had changed, he knew.

How amazing she could be, he mused.

Alberto had
never
said the Russian would be bad for Violet; he’d simply said the bastard was not proper for her.

“And the child is …?” Alberto never took his gaze off the window as he posed the question.

“On her way.”

“Wonderful.” Leaning forward, Alberto’s finger hovered over the button to resume one of Violet’s many voicemail messages. “Leave me until she arrives.”

The moment Francis was gone from the office, Alberto hit the button for the message to continue and rested back in his seat as he listened to his daughter’s voice become progressively more emotional, higher in tone, and in the thick of it all, the catching sobs echoing in her words.

He knew these would be the last words his daughter ever spoke to him, and so, he wanted to commit them to memory.

And he had loved her—he’d wanted the world for her once.

Now, though … now, Violet needed to learn from him. Alberto needed to teach her that the life she had chosen and the world she’d walked away from was not freely given or taken away. She could not make those types of choices without consequences.

She was not
exempt
from punishment.

As the message ended, and the recorder came on asking if he wanted to delete the recording, Alberto chose to save it.

He could listen to it again another day.

Just as he did for all the others.

Reaching over, he tipped a downturned picture frame up to set it back in its proper spot. The photograph of Violet, one of her many high school graduation pictures, stared back at him. In the corner of the frame, stuck inside the wood to keep it in place, was another photo. A wallet-sized photo of Violet as a baby.

He’d always kept her so close.

Pictures in his many offices.

Several in his wallet.

He’d thought, over the many years, that he needed to make up for what his wife could not give their child. That he, as her father, owed Violet more love, more attention, and more care. Because if not him, then who would give it to her?

Alberto never thought it would all lead to … this.

Still, he knew this was for the best.

Violet was
learning
. She was learning that life was not her chessboard—too many other Kings were on the board that had to decide where to move before the Queen could come out, too. She was learning that the things she held dear could be ruined, taken from her without so much as an apology, and she would be left watching it all, hurting and unable to do anything.

Pain was a
good
teacher.

He’d taught her so many things as she grew, many important lessons, and then stepped back as much as he could with the hope that it was enough.

Alberto quickly realized it wasn’t. She needed more, she had more to learn.

His phone beeped, signaling a text message. Checking the device, he found a message from his lawyer, letting him know the coroner’s office would be releasing his wife’s body later that day.

Alberto didn’t bother to respond.

He had nothing to say.

When all of this was over, he would finally grieve for Andrea, though his love for his wife was not what it had been when he first met her all those years ago. Still, he would grieve for what they once had together before life, the business, and family got in the way.

Another thirty minutes had passed before the footsteps started to echo outside his office again. Three sets this time, not just the one. Alberto stood from his desk before the knock even came, and he allowed them entrance.

The men chatted, greeting their boss with the learned respect that had been, at times, literally beaten into them.

Alberto’s attention was on something else.

Little Anastasya slept in the arms of the tallest man, swaddled tightly in a fluffy pink blanket that shimmered under the office lights. She seemed entirely unaware of her surroundings, never mind the fact she had been ripped from her mother’s arms in the most violent fashion.

Silently, Alberto waved at the baby, and she was handed over without protest.

“Cried most of the day and night,” his man said. “She fell asleep on the elevator up here.”

Alberto wasn’t listening.

He was too busy mapping the face of the baby his photographer hadn’t been able to get a clear picture of, recognizing the similarities between Anastasya and her mother.

That dark hair, curling at the ends, was her father.

But the features were a perfect mirror of his Violet.

To be safe, in case the Russian had somehow managed to find where he was, Alberto had kept Anastasya away from his penthouse in Manhattan for a good day and night, wanting this part of his plan to go off without a problem. The Russian could have found him, but he simply wouldn’t have found the child with Alberto. Now, it was safer to bring her to him. There were very few men involved in his plan, and that way, there was less of a chance that things may go wrong.

He’d been planning this for a while, to be sure.

“Leave,” Alberto said, “and I will call you back when I’m ready.”

The men went without question.

Alberto settled back into his large office chair, taking his time to carefully unwrap the baby girl from her blankets as she rested in his embrace. He traced the tip of her nose with the pad of his finger, committing her beautiful features to his memory.

This would be the one and only time he ever saw her.

After today, she would be separated from his life forever.

But he wanted this moment first.

“My, my,
ragazza
, you look just like your
mamma, bambina
,” he told the baby.

He wondered if she behaved like her mother did when Violet was brand new, always keeping them awake and never giving them rest.

He did, of course, know quite a bit about the child. The right amount of money shoved into a nurse’s hand had gotten him copies of the child’s few hospital records.

Twenty-two hours of labor.

Born at six AM in the morning.

No complications.

Eight pounds, two ounces of
precious
life.

Amazing, really.

“Did you know, little one,” Alberto said to the sleeping baby, “that you have quite the parents, hmm? Although it will do them no good, I have no doubt they will burn the city down to have you back.”

Anastasya didn’t react, her nap uninterrupted.

So Alberto stayed like that. Holding the baby while she slept, talking to her, and then when she finally awoke, he opened the drawer in his desk and pulled out one of the few premade bottles of formula he had picked up for her. He fed her then changed her dirty diaper from the supplies he’d put in the same drawer.

Wide awake, the baby’s gray eyes stared at him in amazement.

“Hello,” he said softly, “I’m your
grandpapa
, child.”

The baby smacked her little pink lips, a smile forming.

This could have been different, he knew.

This whole situation could have been better.

If only …

Alberto sighed, reaching over to grab his phone off the desk. Putting it on speaker, he dialed the number for Francis, waiting for the younger man to pick up.

All too soon, Francis did, and Alberto said, “Find my son and tell him he’s needed.”

“Carmine is—”

“I’m aware he’s in a bad state; do as I asked.”

Carmine, as he usually did, made his father wait even after he’d been given an order to appear. Hours, actually. Alberto allowed it to pass, if only because his son was injured, and he had little desire to listen to the boy whine about it.

When Carmine did finally darken the office’s doorway, he passed the child his father was holding a look, recognition drifting over his face. “Tell me you didn’t take the Russian’s child.”

Alberto handed the now sleeping baby over to her uncle. He hadn’t made many people aware of his entire plans—Carmine was one of those people who did not know. “I made a promise.”

Carmine barely passed the baby a glance. A new father himself, Alberto thought Carmine might have some affection for the newborn, but he didn’t seem to care.

That was fine.

He only had to do his job, after all.

“Take her to the airport. All the information is in this folder,” Alberto said, digging through his desk. He found what he needed, a small folder filled with documents of a new identity for Anastasya. “Katie is waiting; she will take her for the first leg of the trip.”

Carmine nodded, taking the documents Alberto handed over.

He was a monster, to be sure.

He was angry.

He
hurt
.

But he’d harmed a child once, nearly killed an innocent boy with a bomb he had ordered to be set. And if not for that bomb, if not for his choices all those many long years ago, this all could have been so different.

Alberto knew that too well.

And so while he would take his daughter’s child from her, as he had promised to do, and while he would kill her husband so that she could finally understand the full consequences of her actions, he would never end the life of an innocent child.

It might have seemed like that was his plan—he was sure Violet would go on after all that had happened thinking her baby was dead by her father’s hand.

But no …

After all, she only needed to
think
it was true.