Where the Sun Hides (Seasons of Betrayal #1)(75)

Something had happened, and her father panicked, calling her to the mansion. He wanted to make sure she was safe from any possible action—no matter how slight it was—they might face.

“Of course,” Carmine said, scoffing as he tried passing Violet in the doorway.

She didn’t move, confused by the bitterness in her brother’s tone. Looking up at him, she found his cold, brown eyes boring down into hers.

“Always worry about poor, little Violet, right?” Carmine asked, shooting his father a look over his shoulder.

Alberto’s gaze passed between his son and daughter. “Now is not the time for that, Carmine.”

What had she missed?

“It’s never the time, but your favorites are showing, Dad.”

Alberto’s back stiffened like someone had shoved a stake there. “Carmine.”

Carmine sneered as he pushed past his sister. “I bet had Kazimir Markovic put his hands on your daughter’s throat like he had mine, he’d already be in a grave.”

Violet swallowed the lump in her throat, looking back at her father.

Alberto was watching her, too. And she could plainly see his unspoken confirmation written in his posture and shining in his gaze. Yes, if her father thought for even one second that Kaz had touched her, the man would be dead.

He didn’t know it, but those hands had already been on her throat.

And everywhere else.

More than once.





“Where’ve you been?” Ruslan asked as he oversaw the men bringing in his new shipment of vodka—they had a tendency to go through it rather quickly.

Kaz shook his head at his brother. “Most of you gossip more than women.”

Leveling his eyes on him, Ruslan said, “Any change to your routine, no matter how minute, will be noticed by somebody. Careful there, little brother, you don’t want someone digging into your secrets—you won’t like the result.”

Kaz didn’t dismiss his words as easily as he had Abram’s, not when he knew how true that statement was. They had both suffered the consequences of someone being a little too curious.

Ruslan still was.

“That’s not why I’m here.” Avoidance was his friend at the moment.

“No? What do you want?”

Scratching at the hair covering his jaw, Kaz considered his words before he asked what he wanted to know. “Gavrill.”

Ruslan frowned. “Our uncle? What about him?”

It was no secret that Ruslan had been closer to their uncle than any of their siblings. Truthfully, his relationship had been far better with Gavrill than it was with Vasily. Wherever Gavrill went, as long as there was no business involved, then Ruslan was on his heels, never too far behind.

He had been older at the time of their uncle’s death, so there was a stronger possibility that Ruslan remembered the details better than he did.

“January 21st—never forget that day. It was cold as shit, and the streets were silent because of that car bomb that nearly took your life. Someone—and even to this day we still don’t know the face behind the gun, just that he was Italian—walked up to him in the middle of the street and shot him, point-blank in the face. I don’t think they actually found all of his teeth.”

Fucking hell. Kaz hadn’t known any of that. He knew Gavrill died, or was murdered, rather, but he hadn’t known it had been so brazen.

“I’m confused. Why didn’t Vasily ever do anything about it? If you know it was the Italians, he had to know, too. Could probably find the gunman, too, if he asked the right questions.”

“There was a girl, Italian, left raped and murdered behind a pizza parlor in Hell’s Kitchen, all fingers pointed back to Gavrill,” Ruslan said. “Whether by his word or action, Gavrill had to answer for it.”

Something about the tone of his voice gave Kaz pause. “But …”

“But?”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

Ruslan signed off on the slip, sending the men on their way, gesturing with a tilt of his head for Kaz to follow him inside. “Gavrill was a lot of things, but even he had limits.”

Kaz shook his head, agreeing. From what he could remember of the man, he had been rather loud, quick to anger depending on who was speaking, and had a tendency to act before he thought. Was he a murderer? Yeah, weren’t they all? But a rapist … Kaz couldn’t see that, nor could he ever think of a time when Gavrill had even used that as a threat.

But he had been a child …

“And Vasily didn’t question this?”

“He was more concerned with ending the war. Men were dying—you almost died. If Gavrill’s death meant it all came to a stop, he couldn’t retaliate.” Rulan paused. “At least that’s what Vasily says.”

It didn’t have to be asked whether Ruslan believed that, the contempt in his voice told his true feelings. Everything he’d said only made Kaz more curious—it wasn’t meshing with the shit Carmine had said. Of course, it could have meant that he was just trying to get a rise out of him, say what he needed to push his buttons, but Carmine had been too arrogant in the way he spoke for Kaz to believe that.

“Why are you asking about all of this anyway?” Ruslan asked, peering over at him as though he could read the answer on his face.