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Havel turned and looked at Kris with a raised brow. “Your mother asked you a question.”
Leeza frowned. “You know he’s mostly non-verbal. He rarely responds to questions.”
Havel leveled his thick-browed frown at her and she had to stop herself from squirming. “You, sit.” He pointed at the stool next to Kris’s, then looked at the child again. “And you answer your mother.” His gaze softened as he switched to sign language. You don’t disrespect your mother by ignoring her. You answer her questions in any language you like, but you answer.
Kris furrowed his brow like Havel had and Leeza thought it was like watching mirror images. One as a boy, the other as a man. Her heart twisted because it made her wish for a different past, one where Havel was Kris's father.
Silence grew as man and boy held each other's eyes, waiting for the other to make a move.
Then to Leeza's surprise, Kris blinked first. He put his fork down and turned in his seat to glance at Leeza. He didn’t meet her eyes, but he signed, Blueberry pancakes! Yum!
She smiled at him. They look yummy.
They are! Then he turned back to his meal, ignoring her once again. It was more than she usually got and she appreciated it, though she didn’t like that Havel had corrected her son.
She opened her mouth to tell him so, but he set a plate of steaming pancakes in front of her with a fork and a bottle of syrup. “Sit,” he ordered.
She shouldn't be doing anything he demanded, but fluffy blueberry pancakes were her weakness, so she slid into the chair and settled for glaring at his back as he continued cooking.
In all the years she’d known him, she had never seen him cook, but, as she took her first bite, she had to admit, he could really cook. This was no mix either, he’d made these pancakes from scratch.
Leeza cleaned her plate and opened her mouth to ask if there was more. She didn’t need to though as Havel turned around and matter-of-factly dropped another stack onto her plate and a few more onto Kris’s. A few minutes later, a glass of orange juice landed in front of her.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” she said awkwardly. “This is really good.”
He ignored the compliment, saying, “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
Her temper flared. “There’s plenty about me you don’t know either.”
He shook his head. “I’ve had a bead on you from the moment I started working for the Kobas. You’ve done very little that I don’t know about.”
She glared at him. “You didn’t know that I was… ” She glanced at Kris but he was diligently ignoring them as he licked the last remnants of syrup from his plate. Leeza’s lips twitched in amusement. She loved when he did ‘typical’ kid things.
“You didn’t know that I was responsible for Krystoff’s kidnapping,” she continued in a hushed voice.
He looked grim. “True, but we figured it out, and you’re damn lucky it was me and Jozef who unraveled that little mystery and not Krystoff. If he’d gotten hold of you before Jozef’s takeover, you’d have gone into the Shed and not come out. Doesn’t matter that he raised you as a daughter.”
A shiver slid down her spine and she glanced away. Havel was correct, Krystoff was utterly ruthless that way. It wouldn’t have mattered that she’d spent two decades as his devoted daughter. If he’d found out she was the one who betrayed him, she would have been killed.
“He deserved what he got,” she said coldly.
He threw the apron on the counter and faced her, his hulking tattooed form another reminder of how scary he was.
“What’s done is done,” he finally said. “Though your actions sparked a war, Jozef is top dog now and things will change around here. We’ll move forward and become good little soldiers to the new Koba empire.”
“By playing house in the cottage I shared with my ex-husband,” she said bitterly.
He came around the side of the island and slid his hand behind her neck, gathering her hair into his hand. He forced her head back until she was looking up at him.
“That’s exactly what’s happening here.” He pressed his lips to hers.
As he moved away, her eyes caught on the tattoos on his chest, specifically the ones over his heart. One had the letters L-E-E-Z-A with flowery vines creeping over and through each one. There was a smaller tattoo underneath her name that said K-R-I-S with the vines weaving the two names together. Her astonished gaze met his. He crossed his arms and stared blankly back.
CHAPTER SIX
The monster was coming.
Danika could hear the heavy tread of his footsteps outside the door, then the scrape of the lock. In a few seconds he would flood the dungeon with light and then he would start torturing her again.
