Where the Sun Hides (Seasons of Betrayal #1)
Read Where the Sun Hides (Seasons of Betrayal #1) Online
Authors: Bethany-Kris,London Miller
For
Kaz. We love you, you little shit.
T
here were days when
Alberto Gallucci thought it would be easier to have the mind and ideals of a
child. Children didn’t concern their little selves with worldly things or the
issues of men. As long as their tiny hands were filled and their mouths were distracted
with food or talk, the rest was unimportant.
The small things didn’t bother children.
Alberto couldn’t remember what that felt like.
Except for his Violet.
She was not like most children. She wanted to know
everything—all things. Her questions never ended, and her innocent curiosity
couldn’t be contained. Most times, he didn’t mind indulging his daughter with
her constant chattering, or giving into her demands when she stomped her foot
and pouted.
Violet stood at her father’s side; her bob of golden curls
haloing her features. She barely reached above his knees in height. Sometimes
he worried that her tiny size was a sign of some health problem, as his son had
stood nearly to his waist at the same age, but the doctors assured him that
Violet was completely, entirely normal.
He didn’t think she was at all—she was far too special for
that.
She grabbed a fistful of his slacks and tugged hard.
“Daddy?”
Alberto patted Violet’s head, hoping she would stay quiet
for just a little while longer.
He shouldn’t have bothered.
“Daddy?” Violet asked again, pulling firmly on his pants.
“Hush,
topina
,” Alberto murmured, running a hand
over her hair.
There was a chill in the air, the shifting colors of leaves
giving way to the promise of fall. And even the rolling gray clouds, obscuring
the sun on what was meant to be a clear day, were a grim reminder as to where
Alberto and his daughter waited.
Cross Hills Cemetery—the poor man’s graveyard.
Over the years, there had been a number of meets, many of
which had taken place in far worse locations than the one he was currently
standing in, but Alberto would wager this was one of the most important.
How long had they stood there already? Watching. Waiting.
But above all, anticipating. His first attempt at reaching out to the man he
was meeting had gone unanswered. And why wouldn’t it? They were on opposite
sides, both fighting for a piece of something each wanted to possess. It wasn’t
until much later, with a simple spark in the air, that both men had ultimately
been brought around.
The rules for this meet were simple. No weapons, no men,
and as a show of good faith, Alberto suggested bringing along the children. No
man, not even those as unstable as the Russians, would dare plan an attack at
the risk of a child being hurt.
It’d been the harming of a child that had ultimately
brought them to this place …
The familiar wave of guilt washed over Alberto, knowing the
error he had made and what it nearly cost another man.
Children were so important in
la famiglia
, much like
wives, mothers, and grandmothers. Hurting children was unacceptable, even in
the midst of a brutal, bloody street war that had no time or concern for loss
of life. After all, that was the only thing street wars were really good for,
in the end.
He was regarding a tombstone to his left, a bouquet of
dying roses resting in the vase beside it, when something—or someone
rather—caught his attention, forcing his gaze from the stone to the man that
was now entering the graveyard.
Alberto’s hand found the fur-trimmed hood of his daughter’s
coat as the other man came a bit closer to his spot. He wanted to keep Violet
still for the moment. She had been bouncing and chattering away, ready to jump
out of her damn shoes. She very well might bolt forward, at the presence of
someone new. His daughter was open in that way. She was too young to understand
that their visitors were not friends.
Russians and Italians could never be friends.
At the man’s side, a young boy stayed close. The boy’s hand
was firmly enclosed within the man’s, and he wore a pair of black, thick-rimmed
glasses with shades too dark to see beneath.
Alberto winced internally, knowing the cause of those
sunglasses on the boy, who had been just one part of his men’s mistake.
“Daddy?” Violet asked.
For what, the millionth time?
Alberto touched the back of Violet’s head gently. “What is
that game we always play,
topina
? The one when we need to be quiet,
hmm?”
Violet’s gaze drifted between her father and the newcomers.
At four, she was far too perceptive for her own good. He hoped that later in
life, her inquisitiveness would be a virtue, and not something liable to get
her into trouble. As it were, he already knew there would be no hiding his
activities from his children.
But he would like for Violet to stay ignorant for a while
longer.
Once the newcomers were only a few feet away, the man
released the boy’s hand. He bent down and muttered a few low words—Russian
words—to the boy. His hand skimmed the dark, short hair of the boy, and then he
patted him on the side.
With a nod and nothing more, the boy walked a few steps off
the stone pathway, his hands held out, as he couldn’t see with those sunglasses
of his, and came to a stop at a cracked, weather-beaten, marble bench. The boy
sat down, and stared off to the side, silent.
“How’s his eyesight?” Alberto asked.
The Russian man’s gaze cut to Alberto with a flash of pain.
“Better, but it’s difficult when he’s outside. The brightness of the day makes
his eyes hurt. Frankly, the brightness of
any
light hurts his eyes.”
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.
“I assume,” Alberto said, still watching the two children,
“... that if your interests are not tied in with your brother’s, then that will
be a problem you’ll have to deal with. Won’t it?”
Vasily sighed, tossing his hands into his pants pockets.
“Perhaps, but I don’t want to keep fighting for possession of something that
doesn’t belong to us. And if I did, at what cost will it come to me? You nearly
took my son from me the last time.”
Alberto flinched. “That was a mistake that never should
have happened. The bomb was intended for your brother.”
“A mistake that would have resulted in a war far greater
than you could imagine.” Vasily’s tone never changed from one of casual
indifference, but Alberto could still hear the warning behind his words. “And
you call us Russians savages.”
Alberto was on guard, waiting for the moment when the
Russian would strike. The Markovic brothers were volatile by nature. It didn’t
take much to set one off.