security as Konstantin was.
“You’ve been here a week, no?” Konstantin asked as he circled his desk to take a seat. “What’s the word?”
“Nothing.”
Konstantin didn’t answer, just gave him a look.
“Yeah,” Kaz responded. “I know.”
Kaz wasn’t foolish enough to believe his father would never find him. He wasn’t Pakhan just because of lineage. So that Vasily had yet to contact him by now troubled him. His lack of contact only meant one of two things.
Either he knew exactly where Kaz was and was making preparations to send some of his guys to say hello …
Or he was stalling for Alberto Gallucci.
It wasn’t like the pair of them hadn’t been willing to make deals before … And from the way they could come together to set Kaz up, he wouldn’t put it past them to be working together now, each with their own incentive.
“Right. What are you going to do about it?”
He was going to have to force a reaction.
His plan could only work if he were able to make Vasily slip.
“I’ll make the arrangements tonight, that—” Kaz paused as the phone in his pocket vibrated, alerting him to a call.
The phone was new, a burner, whose number he had specifically given to Violet and only Violet—if Rus or Vera ever had need of him, they could have called Konstantin to relay a message.
Digging it out, he connected the call and placed the phone to his ear. “Vi—”
“Vasily called.”
Kaz tensed, hearing the fear in her voice, but he was more concerned with the situation at hand.
So, as he had thought, Vasily knew where he was—and who he was with—but he had chosen to make a phone call instead of making an appearance to deliver whatever the fuck he had to say in person.
Alberto was definitely involved.
Kaz knew his father. Vasily loved grand theatrics when it came to delivering his warnings or punishing someone who crossed him. And while he might not have been able to do it in person, he could still have his fun with a phone call.
That phone call was probably meant for him, and knowing Vasily, he hadn’t just made a point to say he knew where they were. He had probably said much more.
“What did he say?”
“He said something about my father or … it was a lot and—”
“Violet,” Kaz cut her off, his voice a little sharper than he meant it to be, but he needed her to focus. “I need you to tell me what he said. Everything.”
“He hinted that my father would be coming to get me, and that, when he did, I needed to be worried about what would happen to you.”
Fucking Vasily.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Violet.”
“But—”
“Trust me. He would put a bullet in my head long before he ever gave Alberto the honor.” Kaz looked at Konstantin, who was paying rapt attention to their conversation and gave a nod, letting him know that this was what they’d been waiting for.
“And he threatened me—that if he had to, he would drag me back to my father himself.”
“Don’t—” Kaz had the sudden urge to put his fist through a fucking wall, even as he was trying to remain calm. “That’s not going to happen, Violet. Believe that.”
“When are you coming back?”
In the time they had been in Chicago, whenever he had left to attend to business with Konstantin, she had never asked that. Perhaps it had been an unspoken rule in her household not to ask questions that wouldn’t be answered, so for her to be asking him this now … it told him exactly how freaked out she was.
“I’ll be there within the hour. Just hang tight.”
He hung up before she could give an answer, the grip on his phone tightening as he looked at Konstantin. “It’s time to move.”
The leaves could change colors, time could transcend all things, but Vasily Markovic knew that life was a funny thing—which was why he was exiting his car at the crack of dawn and heading for the graveyard a few blocks down.
How often had he passed this very one, barely sparing it a glance as he continued, the visual of it fading to the back of his mind, but today, he was forced to view it again … for the same reason he had stepped foot in one all those years ago.
From what he could see, Vasily was alone in the graveyard, but one glance at his watch let him know that he wouldn’t be this way for long.
Finding a bench off the pathway,