Gangster's Empire: Leeza & Havel (PAPERBACK)

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?”