Where the Sun Hides (Seasons of Betrayal #1)(2)

Alberto cleared his throat. “Your other boy, why not bring him?”

“He’s too old. He understands much more. He favors his uncle.”

Alberto nodded. “Your girl, then? I heard you had a daughter, Vasily.”

The Russian’s stare dropped to the blonde, green-eyed girl at Alberto’s side.

“She was occupied,” Vasily murmured.

Alberto chose not to push, but he believed Vasily’s reasons for not bringing another one of his children to the meeting were different from the ones he had given. Perhaps because the sight of a ten-year-old boy wearing sunglasses to protect his damaged eyes caused by a bomb that Alberto had ordered to be set was enough to cut at even the hardest and coldest of men.

Children should not be brought into the affairs of the mafia, if it could be helped.

After half a decade of fighting between the Markovic Bratva and the Gallucci Cosa Nostra, a street war that killed nearly thirty men between their respective organizations, a single bomb had quieted the streets.

But not in the way Alberto wanted it to.

He’d intended to stop the fighting, to reclaim part of the Brooklyn streets leading into Little Odessa that had always been the Gallucci grounds. A great portion of his family’s business was tied into the warehouses and connections they had made. When the Russians started to push back against the Gallucci’s demands, it had all snowballed from there.

A shouting match led to a sit-down.

The sit-down led to name-calling.

Italians and Russians simply didn’t work well together. They were two entirely different criminal organizations, following codes that might have seemed similar on the surface, but were actually quite different in some ways—from family dynamics both in and out of their respective organizations, and even from the way the two conducted business. Cosa Nostra was steeped in tradition and smothered by rules. Working with other organizations outside of their systems and beliefs was practically impossible.

Alberto brushed off his inner thoughts, knowing they weren’t important now. “Violet, what’s that game I asked about?”

His green-eyed daughter was staring at the quiet boy twenty feet away on the marble bench.

“Counting clouds,” Violet said in her childish, sweet voice. “We count clouds to be quiet.”

“Why don’t you go do that for a bit, huh?” Alberto was going to tell his daughter to leave the boy alone and find her own spot to play—Violet had a knack for annoying others at times—but she was already making a beeline for the bench. “Well, at least they will be entertained.”

Vasily’s lips curled up at the corner in what seemed to be disgust, but he quickly tampered back the reaction when his son patted the bench as Violet approached with her quiet hello.

“Kazimir is a guarded boy … even for his age.” Vasily glanced to the side and took in his son, who was openly chatting away with Alberto’s daughter. “Or he usually is, anyway.”

“Violet doesn’t let people have walls,” Alberto replied, chuckling. “She barrels right through them with a smile.”

For a moment, one second of suspended time, they were just two fathers taking in the sight of their children enjoying the company of each other. It was simple. It was innocent. It was peaceful, something both had longed to provide them with.

But in the end, the pair had come to this place with a purpose. One that Alberto could no longer put off.

“Why were you the one to finally accept my offer of a meeting?” Alberto asked. “I expected your brother. He is the boss, isn’t he?”

Vasily bared his teeth when he flashed a smile. A cold smile. “Gavrill has no intention of backing down against your family.”

That was not what Alberto expected to hear. It set him on edge instantly, and he once again found himself sweeping the graveyard with his gaze, looking for something he might have missed. Had he made the wrong choice in doing this with the Russian?

“Worry not, comrade,” Vasily said like he could read Alberto’s mind. “The graveyard was a good choice to meet up. No one would ever desecrate the final resting place of so many souls, no? And our children, of course. I wouldn’t have brought my boy along, had I thought for a second that you might hurt him.”

Again, Alberto added silently.

“Forgive me,” Alberto started to say, shrugging, “but we haven’t exactly been amicable in the past.”

Vasily tipped his head to the side like he was brushing the statement off. “I accepted your offer because I believe the best thing to do is stop the fighting.”

Alberto had to agree.

When street wars got to the point that innocents were involved, it had already gone too far.

“You just said—”

“I came here without my brother’s knowledge or permission,” Vasily interrupted before Alberto could finish. “I know his intentions, and that he wishes to open the Markovic Bratva territory beyond the streets of Little Odessa. To do that, the feud between our families will have to continue. My interests are not aligned with my brother’s, but at the moment, it seems ours are, Alberto.”

“So it seems,” Alberto echoed.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Violet point to an oak tree filled with colorful leaves that were just beginning to fall from the thick branches. The boy at her side shook his head, and Violet frowned with her pout firmly in place.