Page 50 of Gangster's Empire: Leeza & Havel

“On Kris’s life,” he growled in annoyance. “Now start talking.”

Trust Havel to start off a conversation all sweet with good intentions and then take a hard left into a security breach that needed instant fixing. Still, as much as he frustrated her, Havel acting like himself also made her feel better, more secure. Like she was truly home.

“Fine.” She took another long sip of her wine, bracing herself for the inevitable explosions that were soon to come. “It was my mother who first introduced me to Hannah and helped me connect with her outside of family surveillance channels.”

“Why would she do that?” he demanded, his frustration clear. “Your mother understood security protocols better than any of us. She was the one who insisted her children have no less than three bodyguards everywhere they went.”

Leeza nodded. “Yeah, security was extremely important to her, but so was keeping her secrets and Hannah was her therapist too.”

“Why did—”

Leeza cut him off. “You want to know why she kept Hannah a secret? Take a wild guess. What would Krystoff have done if he’d found out his wife was in therapy?”

“He would’ve either killed the therapist or found a way to get his hands on her notes.”

“Exactly. And mom wasn’t willing to take that risk, not with her secrets.”

“Jozef’s parents.” His voice was grim when he mentioned Dasha’s darkest secret.

“Among other things,” Leeza admitted.

“So your mother created a back channel to speak to the woman. That doesn’t explain why she had you talking to this therapist.”

“I found out about Vasiliy.” She cast her eyes downward. It was still a difficult thing to process. She knew she’d done nothing wrong by being born, but in the mafia, family pride was everything. It was a shameful thing to be born outside the family.

“So you confronted your mother and she turned you onto her therapist.” He placed his hand on her thigh, wrapping his fingers around it and sending her heart into flight. “Now back to your ex-husband.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, enjoying the tingles pooling in her in her core. “I hate talking about him.”

“Me too, sweetheart.”

She started trembling and had to draw in a deep breath to calm herself. Her therapist described it as a flight response to the trauma inflicted by Adam. If she even thought of the things he used to do to her, she would start shaking. “I’m going to say this quickly so I can get it all out, but I don’t want you to interrupt and you’re going to want to. Okay? I talk, no interruptions.”

He nodded, his fingers tightening on her thigh.

“I guess we may as well start at the beginning,” she said, her voice taking on a robotic quality as she tried to get the words out without breaking down. “The day I was informed that I would be marrying Adam Horácek was the first time I met him. The second was on our wedding day. On our wedding night, he called me a whore for wearing makeup to our wedding before forcing me to clean myself from head to foot. I didn’t understand what was happening. Nothing in my life had prepared me for him.”

“Did he rape you?” Havel asked, anger vibrating in his voice.

“Don’t interrupt!” she admonished sharply. “No, he didn’t rape me. I knew my duty as his wife was to give myself to him on our wedding night. It wasn’t rape because I didn’t fight him, but there was nothing good about it either. He was cold and clinical, rough because I wasn’t ready. He called me names like whore and slut. I cried and he beat me for ruining our wedding night. He got pleasure from beating me. He wasn’t angry, more like vengeful, gleeful almost. He said the pain would purify me.”

Havel made an animalistic noise of rage but kept his promise not to interrupt.

She continued quickly, because if she stopped now she wouldn’t get it all out. “After that night, he didn’t touch me for several weeks and we never once shared a bedroom. He watched me, followed me, but rarely spoke to me. I remember thinking it was strange and wondering if he hated me or resented our marriage as much as I did, but I don’t think that was it. Then, about two months after the wedding, he summoned me to his bedroom and repeated the same things he did on our wedding night, only it was much worse because he… because he…” Because he took pills that made him able to fuck me for hours and hours without mercy and it was awful and painful and humiliating and as much as I know it’s not my fault, the shame still burns like a fire that will never go out. “As time passed, the beatings grew progressively more severe until Krystoff started noticing the bruises. I thought it might end when he confronted Adam, but Krystoff didn’t care. He told Adam to be more discreet and go easier until I produced an heir.”

Bitterness filled her heart as she remembered she and Adam standing in front of Krystoff, the man she’d always known as her father, telling her husband it was okay to hit her. Any love she’d had left for Krystoff died that day and when she discovered he wasn’t her birth father, she’d rejoiced.

“There’s not much else to say,” she continued. “I had Kris about a year after that conversation. Not much changed with Adam, but the beatings and the sex grew more and more infrequent. I don’t know why, but I was grateful for the reprieve. Our last encounter was shortly after Shaun arrived and everything around us went to shit.”

“Do you think everything went to shit or do you think maybe things are being set right again?” Havel’s deep voice soothed the frantic beating of her heart as terrible memories assailed her.

She finished the last few drops of her wine as she thought about his words. “I guess it’s too soon to tell.”

He took her the wine glass from her and set it on the floor next to his water glass, then took her hand in his. Leeza he could feel the heat of his anger, but she knew it wasn't aimed at her. Maybe he sensed it wasn't the right time to explode. Maybe he understood that she needed to heal.

And maybe the person she needed to heal with was him. Maybe he was right, maybe the universe was setting things to right. It was hard to see things that way, since she lost her mother and nearly lost her own life, but things did seem to be working themselves out.

“Okay,” she said, staring out the window.

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