Where the Snow Falls (Seasons of Betrayal #2)(17)

Viktoria turned her sights on Violet. “Why, what?”

Violet’s upbringing made it difficult for her to be put in any sort of situation with confrontation. She had been taught to sit down, be pretty, and stay quiet. There was no need for her to go causing trouble when there were enough people who would do that for her.

“Why come over?”

Viktoria shrugged. “Old friends—it’s the right thing to do. And Kaz is always causing … some sort of ruckus. I enjoy the entertainment.”

Maya pursed her lips, eyeing her sister-in-law from the side. “Cut it out, Vik.”

Violet didn’t like the sound of that, either.

Viktoria acted like she hadn’t heard Maya at all. “And it seems, this time, he’s really gotten himself mixed up in something fun. My brother—Kon—he talks. Maybe too much.”

Stiffening, Violet asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The girl smiled in that cool, unbothered way of hers. “Welcome to Chicago, Violet Gallucci. I certainly hope you’re worth the trouble you’re about to cause.”





Kaz didn’t know what to expect when he came down from the roof with Konstantin and Kolya trailing, but it definitely wasn’t the girls sitting around the island. Maya was at the front door, collecting the delivery bags from the man standing on the other side.

Like any good guard dog, Kolya broke away from them to help his wife—if help meant scowl at the man who was merely trying to get her to sign the receipt.

When he reached Violet’s side, he scanned her face even as he dropped his hand to the small of her back. While she might not have looked upset, he knew Violet had a way of hiding what she was thinking from him. She did offer a smile, no matter how fleeting, before her attention returned to their guests.

Kaz also didn’t miss Viktoria glaring at him from out of the corner of his eye.

Most people mistook her surly disposition for being a bitch, but Kaz was one of the few who knew her well enough to know it was all a part of the wall she put up to keep people away—not to mention all the shit that happened sixteen months ago between her and her then boyfriend.

One of the few times no one tried to call Kolya off someone.

Beneath his touch, he could feel Violet stiffen, and when his eyes snapped back to her, she was looking back and forth between the pair of them, a thinly veiled accusation in her expression.

Bending slightly so he was at her ear, Kaz said, “It was never like that.”

“Not even once?” she asked in return.

“You don’t stick your dick in a boss’ daughter,” Kaz said then added, “at least not a Russian one.”

Rolling her eyes, she shoved him, looking back at Maya, who was grabbing plates from a cabinet. Konstantin took the seat next to his sister, but it wasn’t as innocent as he tried to portray, not when he hadn’t lost his smile.

“So … is someone going to address the Italian elephant in the room, or nah?” he asked, glancing at each of them in turn.

When Kaz leveled a look at him, he ignored it.

But Violet sat up a little straighter, staring over at him. “Go ahead. Address me.”

Konstantin wasn’t taken aback by the challenge in her tone—it merely spurred him on.

“How did the two of you meet? I highly doubt you cross paths often.”

“It was my birthday,” Violet said, glancing down at the plate Maya set on the table in front of her. “My friends and I went to his brother’s club by mistake.”

“You’ve met Rus then …”

“Yes.”

“And he approves?” This, Konstantin asked in Russian, knowing Violet wouldn’t understand what he was saying.

Kaz shrugged. “Couldn’t have gotten here without him.”

That much was true, but that didn’t mean Ruslan approved of Violet. He was the kind of person who liked someone simply because Vasily didn’t—he and his brother shared that trait—but as to whether Ruslan actually thought anything of Violet, Kaz had never thought to ask.

It wasn’t as if he had much chance to do so before he was sitting in a jail cell.

“Curious,” Konstantin said as his gaze shot back to Violet. “What do you see in Kaz?”

“A part you’ve never seen.”

Maya’s surprised laughter cut through the room, and even Kolya cracked a smile though it only lasted a few seconds. Even Konstantin was laughing softly at Violet’s remark as he reached for the food in front of him.

“Have you always been so selfish?”

The laughter in the room came to a halt as Viktoria’s question pierced the air. She hadn’t even paused her eating when she asked, cutting into her omelet with a little more force than necessary.

But while Kaz had thought to entertain this interrogation since he knew Violet could handle her own, he knew it was no longer innocent, not with the way Viktoria had asked that question with too much lilting innocence woven through it.

He didn’t have time for that shit. “Vik—”

“I’m just asking,” she was quick to say. “Maybe she actually cares about you, or maybe she’s never had Russian cock, but I would like to know what I’m dealing with. Girls like her don’t give a f*ck about what happens to everyone else their drama touches.”