Page 10 of Gangster's Empire: Leeza & Havel

“Doesn’t matter what you want,” Havel grunted. “We’re staying.”

He pushed her toward the house, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and unlocking the door.

Wait, did he say ‘we’? “You’re staying here too?”

He ignored her, pushing her over the threshold and into the house she swore she would never again step foot in.

It still smelled of the bleach Adam had insisted she use to clean. She would scrub and scrub, but she’d been unable to erase his presence from the house.

When Havel flipped on the light, Leeza could see a fine layer of dust on the furniture and light fixtures. She’d have to spend days scrubbing the place clean again. Her mother used to tease her about not employing any house staff to help, but Leeza was a private person and didn’t like people in her business.

A pang sliced through her heart as she thought of her mother. Dead now at Jozef’s hands. Or so she assumed. The news story that had filtered down to her a few weeks after Dasha’s death had said that she’d grown ill in prison and had to be moved to the hospital where she’d been killed by an unknown assailant. Police believed her illness was a setup, but they couldn’t prove it and had no leads as to who the perpetrator was.

Leeza knew, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her mother had signed her own death certificate when she’d tried to kill Jozef’s wife. In a way, Leeza agreed with her mother; Shaun didn’t belong in their world. On the surface, she didn’t seem tough enough to survive the mafia. Yet, she was somehow still a good fit. Or at least, she was a good fit for Jozef. If Dasha had allowed their romance to blossom naturally, the whole family could still be together. Nothing would have changed.

Except that wasn’t entirely true. Leeza had sparked off a runaway chain of events when she’d had Krystoff kidnapped in Kiev. It had been meant as a vicious prank to get back at an uncaring stepfather in a way that would resonate with the mafioso kingpin. Make him look weak as the head of his organization. Her plan had worked, but the fallout was not something she had anticipated.

“Take Kris upstairs and get him settled,” Havel said in a low growl. “He must be tired.”

“Being kidnapped will do that to a person,” Leeza replied frostily, then urged Kris up to his bedroom where she helped him into a pair of clean pajamas before settling him in bed.

He was hyper from their sudden change in location and from playing with his energetic aunt. It was also earlier than his standard bedtime, so it took longer than usual to get him to lay down and close his eyes. Leeza read him two stories before his small chest was lifting and falling in an even rhythm and his breaths were coming out in long, peaceful puffs.

She left Kris’s bedroom and crossed the hall to hers, sighing deeply as she ran a finger through the dust on her nightstand. She wanted nothing more than to take a long, hot bath, then slide beneath the sheets of her bed. Tomorrow was soon enough to sort through her various life catastrophes.

She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear Havel enter the room until the sound of a drawer opening caught her attention. When she looked up, Havel was rifling through her dresser drawers, tossing items over his shoulder onto the bed.

She stalked up to him and slammed the drawer shut. “Don’t go through my things.”

“Everything that belongs to you, now belongs to me.” He opened another drawer.

“We aren’t married yet,” she snapped bitterly, trying to push it shut. He retained his hold on it, forcing her into a tug-of-war.

“Soon enough.”

Not if she could help it.

Giving up the drawer to his superior strength, she stomped to the walk-in closet and jerked it open. Rifling through the rows of clothing, she picked out a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and tossed them on the bed.

“This is your room, isn’t it?” Havel asked.

“Very clever, Sherlock,” she snapped.

Havel lowered his eyebrows and gave her a hard stare. “I mean, your ex-husband didn’t share this room with you, did he?”

“No.” She scowled at him, wishing he would leave so she could run a bath.

“Where did he sleep?” Havel asked.

“Down the hall.”

“Then that’s where we sleep.”

He wanted to sleep with her in Adam’s room? What kind of twisted mind game was this? “Over my dead body.”

His lips compressed in a grim line. “Not tonight, sweetheart. I have better uses for that body.”

He gathered up the clothes on the bed, including the sweatpants and T-shirt she’d tossed on it, gripped her arm and dragged her down the hall to the master bedroom. Logistically speaking, Adam’s room was bigger than hers, but the memory of his sweaty body weighing her down as he fucked her without a thought to her pleasure made her stomach heave with nausea. She tried to stop on the threshold, but Havel dragged her into the room before releasing her.

---