Page 57 of Gangster's Empire: Leeza & Havel

Her lark as the Phantom was the closest she’d ever come to bucking the system.

Havel placed the file folder on the table as he sat down next to Leeza. When she reached for it, he captured her hand and held it still on top of the folder. “Once you see what’s in here, there’s no going back. Be sure you’re ready for this, sweetheart. There are things about your ex-husband you don’t know and if I’d done my job, you would never have known.”

She pinned him with an irritated look. “If you expect our relationship to work, you have to stop hiding things from me – good and bad.” She placed her hand on top of his and squeezed. “You can stand between me and the rest of the world, but don’t ever keep secrets from me. Okay?”

His eyebrows lowered. She knew that look. He was such a stubborn man. She supposed making her feelings clear was as much as she could do for now. She would work on equality within their relationship later.

She moved his hand away, took a long, deep breath, and opened the folder. Absorbing herself in it, the rest of the world fell away as she learned about her husband of eight years. Things she didn’t know. Couldn’t have known or even suspected because it was unimaginable.

Some of it she already knew. His name, Adam Horácek. Age, forty-five. Height 178 centimeters, the same as Leeza. Weight, 98.8 Kilograms. Brown hair, interspersed with grey. Blue eyes. Parents: deceased. He had an uncle, Stellan Jovanovich, who was high up in the Bratva and still alive, though estranged from his nephew.

Then things got weird in a way that made Leeza wish she’d hadn’t opened the file. It documented Adam’s life from birth until they married. Adam had been a lonely, isolated child. Violent and sociopathic, which made him a bad fit for school. He was kept home with his mother, who tried to beat his violent tendencies out of him.

Leeza was appalled at the things her ex-husband had suffered in his youth, but she only pitied the child he had been. She felt nothing but contempt for him now. She’d been raised by a mother who had almost no scruples and a stepfather who used his family as pawns, and she had no urges to go out and kill people.

It wasn’t Adam’s early childhood that held her attention though. It was the police reports outlining grisly murders, accompanied by graphic crime scene photos.

She sucked in a breath as she stared down at his first victim. “Adam was only thirteen when he killed this woman,” she whispered, a shudder making its way down her spine. “How is that even possible?”

“He lured women who were vulnerable and wouldn’t be missed right away. Prostitutes,” Havel supplied, his tone flat. “Took them by surprise. The first one he did in the ally where he found her, but after, he got smarter. Started moving them to secondary locations so he could spend more time with them.”

“Those poor women,” she whispered, touching the deceased face of one of his victims. She looked eerily like Leeza, but Adam couldn’t have known Leeza back then. She’d been a child. She flipped through the photographs, her stomach growing queasier with each one. They all looked like her. Same long brown hair and pale skin. Same cheekbones and lips. “Why would he do this to them?”

Havel glanced at the photos, his expression reflecting pity. “There’s no logic to this sort of thing. Even if he has a reason, it’s probably not one we’ll understand.”

Leeza’s hands trembled as she stacked the photos and turned them over, trying to give the women a little more dignity in death. “How was he able to hurt them like this?” She had to force the words out. She wanted to throw the file across the room, take a bath in bleach and never think about her ex-husband again. It was too late for wishful thinking though. She was embroiled in a nightmare scenario and she had no choice but to go down the rabbit hole of his past. She turned her gaze to Havel. “He’s hemophobic in a way that can’t be faked. I sliced open my finger cutting pineapple a few years ago and when he saw the blood he vomited, then fainted.”

Havel held her hand between them and kissed the finger that still sported a thin white scar. “I remember.”

She shivered, but this time from the tingling his lips evoked.

She remembered the event vividly. The way Havel had rushed to the house when he found out about her injury and barked orders like a drill sergeant at everyone in the vicinity. He’d driven her to the hospital himself and hovered over her as she was sutured. On the ride home, he’d ordered her to never touch a knife again. Then he’d followed the order up by having all the knives removed from her house. At the time, Leeza had been annoyed at having to replace them, but now she saw his protective gesture in a different light. He hadn’t thought she was too stupid to use sharp implements; he’d been terrified that it would happen again and he wouldn’t be there to save her.

She loved him.

It hit her like a thunderbolt.

She stared at him, wanting to say the words he longed to hear, but they stuck in her throat.

“You want to know how he was able to kill them without passing out?” Havel asked.

She nodded, letting her moment pass. She would tell him she loved him later when they weren’t poring over her ex-husband’s horrific past.

Havel continued. “He doesn’t cut them. He breaks them down, shattering bones and puncturing organs, but he’s careful not to make them bleed.”

She felt faint. “What about the head in the box? There would’ve been blood when he…” Her stomach heaved and she paused, breathing through her nose until the nausea passed. “When he cut her head off.” Her voice trailed away to a whisper.

Havel gazed past her, his eyes unseeing. “Maybe he froze the body and used a chainsaw or something.”

“Or maybe he hired someone to do it for him,” Leeza suggested tentatively.

“Could be,” Havel agreed. “Pay a person enough and they’ll do anything. We won’t know until we get the forensics report.”

Havel’s criminal ties gave him access to police resources like the forensics lab.

Finally, she asked the question she didn’t want to know the answer to, “How many victims are there?”

“Twenty-seven that we know of. All before he left Russia.”

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