Page 3 of Gangster's Empire: Leeza & Havel

Leeza was dead to the world asleep when her phone started blaring. She sat straight up in bed, blinking for a couple of seconds before her brain made its way back from dreamland and into her head.

She’d been woken from the same reoccurring nightmare she’d been having for months. The one that transported her back to the night her family was thrown into chaos. She was desperate to get Kris away from the action, but she had to save her mother. She’d put bullets in three men that night and her actions had haunted her dreams ever since. She dreamed about the families, the mothers who now hated her, the wives who wanted her dead, the sons who would one day come after her own son in retaliation.

The blaring sound coming from her phone reminded her that she had more pressing things to think about than a bad dream.

The sound was her perimeter alarm, set to go off if anyone stepped food in her yard.

Leeza leapt from her bed, reaching for her blue silk robe as she rushed into the room next door. She wrapped the robe around herself and hastily tied the belt, leaning over her son’s bed.

Sadly, he was getting used to being moved from one place to another in the middle of the night.

Leeza had hoped they would be able to make this home semi-permanent, but it would seem someone had found them. Even if it was only an animal that had set off her alarm, she wasn’t taking any chances. They would have to move and it had to be right now.

“Kris, sweetheart, it’s time to wake up.”

He blinked sleepily, then reached blindly for her as she lifted his small body from the bed. They’d celebrated his sixth birthday a few weeks earlier. Leeza had finally felt safe enough to give him the party he deserved. She’d gone into a nearby village on the island of Sumatra to buy a cake and decorations.

Kris had been ecstatic, clapping along and making noise with her as she sang happy birthday and urged him to blow out the candles. He was such a sweet, happy little boy. Though he preferred routine and missed his school tutor, he was mostly okay with his mother dragging him around the world so long as he got to be with her.

What’s wrong? he signed as she hefted him against her chest and carried him from the bedroom, his stuffed teddy tucked under his arm. Though he could speak, he often chose sign language because it was easier for him to articulate than verbal language.

“We have to leave again, baby,” she whispered, trying to erase the sadness from her voice. She knew the score when it came to the mafia world she’d been born and raised in. She was expendable and the fastest way to get dead was to hang out where her enemies could find her.

Enemy.

She knew who was hunting her and it was a knife to the heart every time she thought of him, so she pushed the big enforcer out of her head and rushed to the rug in her living room, sweeping it aside with her bare foot to reveal a hatch. Bending, she grabbed the handhold and yanked, pulling the wooden door up.

“We have to find a new home again,” she explained. “But first I need to check and make sure it’s safe for us to leave. Are you going to be okay in here for a few minutes?”

Without waiting for his consent, she lowered him into the hole. It wasn’t very deep. Only three feet by three feet. Just big enough to hide a child. She reached for the shelf she’d installed in the hole and grabbed a flashlight. Turning it on, she handed it to Kris who took it from her.

Dark, he complained with a frown.

“Which is why you have the light.” She kissed him on the head before pushing herself up onto her hands and knees. “You remember this game? Not a peep, no matter what sounds you hear, and I’ll give you the biggest chocolate bar you’ve ever seen.”

His eyes lit up with excitement and he nodded emphatically.

Another alarm went off on her phone, startling her. The intruders were just outside the house now, likely preparing to breach. Definitely not a monkey, then. She took one last, long look at her child, absorbing his beautiful angelic face, still round with youth, but with eyes that were older than his years. His light brown curls created a halo around his head and she couldn’t resist leaning into the hole to kiss him again. Just in case this was the last time she saw him.

“Remember, baby, if I don’t come get you, then you wait until you can see daylight coming in through the cracks and if everything is quiet, then you push with all your strength until you can crawl out. Once you’re out, you run to the village and ask for help. You understand?”

Yes, mommy, he signed impatiently. Like we practiced.

She closed him inside the hole, dropping the trapdoor into place before smoothing the rug over it. It had been a calculated risk giving Kris a flashlight, but she couldn’t bring herself to close him away in the dark.

She had a matter of seconds before the mercenaries outside would break through the exterior windows and doors. She sprinted through the house to the laundry room, reaching for the lockbox over the washing machine. Entering the code, she opened it and grabbed her pistol and two clips. It wasn’t much, but she hadn’t been able to bring any weapons into Sumatra. She’d purchased this from a local whose punishment would be death if anyone found out what he was selling.

She’d purposely picked a country with strict weapons laws, making it more difficult for the people coming after her to come into the country armed. Of course, that meant she wasn’t particularly prepared for an armed conflict. The home that she’d shared with her husband in Prague had weapons hidden all over the house. All out of Kris’s reach of course. Her husband hadn’t even known they were there.

Loading the gun, she crept into the hallway, readying herself for the assault. The minutes stretched as Leeza stood frozen, waiting for five solid minutes, wondering if she’d mistaken the sound of the alarm. Where were the mercenaries? No, it had definitely been the perimeter alarm that had woken her up, then the proximity alarm had gone off a few minutes later. The cabin was surrounded and she and Kris were vulnerable to attack.

Not vulnerable, she reminded herself. She’d worked damn hard over the past decade to become a master markswoman. She could hit a target dead center, in the dark, at fifty paces. She just needed a target to hit.

So where were the targets?

She waited another two minutes, breathing slowly in and out as she counted the seconds ticking by. She was proud of Kris for doing as he was told and not making a peep. It was a game they played often for this exact scenario and Kris had become quite good at it. The prize of a chocolate bar at the end of the hiding-and-making-no-noise game made it that much more doable for him.

Needing to be sure it wasn’t animals setting off the alarm, Leeza crept along the hallway toward her bedroom to peek out the side of her blinds and see if she could spot anything in the yard. It was mostly jungle with plenty of hiding places, but the moonlight washing across the yard might give her a glimpse of movement.

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