A Silent Reckoning: Sinner's Empire by Nikita Slater (ereader iphone .txt) 📗

gave him a worried glance when he didn’t move. She’d tried not to hit anything vital, but she wasn’t an expert in anatomy.

She leapt over his prone body, Kristoph held tightly in her arms. Before she could leave, Adam shouted from the top of the stairs.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Leeza whirled around and gaped up at him.

“No one told you what was happening?” she asked incredulously and then started laughing. “Oh my god, that’s hilarious. No one thought enough about you to tell you we’re under attack.”

“Who shot Igor?” he demanded, pounding down the stairs to check on the prone man.

Leeza sighed. She’d been so preoccupied with getting Krystoph and herself to safety she hadn’t thought of Adam. Fuck. She chewed on her lip. Decisions. Decisions. She could leave him, shoot him or take him with her.

She thought about lifting her gun and putting a bullet through his head. The satisfaction she felt rushing through her was heady, and it was what convinced her not to do it. She’d wielded vengeance once. It had been satisfying, but the consequences were what had led to this moment. To her family splintering and attacking each other.

She wouldn’t act on such an impulse again. Not without a great deal of thought.

“Do yourself a favour,” she told her husband coldly. “Leave Prague. Go far away and retire somewhere sunny. If you stay loyal to Krystoff Koba, you will die. Probably tonight.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and hurtled toward the front door, jerking it open and running into the night. She could hear Adam calling after her. He wasn’t in good enough shape to catch her though. She ran to the family garage, passing by men rushing around the estate with enough weapons to outfit an armory. They really were preparing for war.

Leeza loved her cousin, but she knew she was a target. Her father might underestimate the vicious dog, but Leeza knew better. He was a killer, born and bred. He would take the whole family out for this infraction and he would walk away from the carnage without a backward glance.

Leeza grabbed a set of keys off the wall and opened the back door to her father’s Marauder; a rugged truck designed to withstand mine explosions. She sat her son in the child seat. She’d convinced Krystoff to install one in case they ever needed a safe getaway. Krystoff had laughed at Leeza’s over-precaution but had allowed the seat to be installed.

She belted Kristoph in, tightening it across his small body and shaking the seat to make sure it was secure. She grabbed the blanket she’d brought along and tucked it around him.

She kissed his cheek and then his closed eyelids. “Stay asleep, baby. You’re not going to like this next part.”

She slammed his door shut and climbed into the driver’s seat. She secured her own seatbelt and then hit the garage door opener. As soon as the door began sliding open, men ran toward it, guns pointing into the garage. The estate was crawling with men. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy to get off the grounds.

She hit the accelerator before the doors finished opening and smashed through them.

Bullets thunked into the side of the vehicle and she winced. They clearly hadn’t seen her behind the wheel, or they wouldn’t be trying to kill her, which made her escape even more dangerous. She’d assumed they would know it was her trying to leave the grounds. That they’d try to stop her but ultimately pull back so as not to hurt her.

She hurtled down the driveway, ignoring the men who were chasing her and accelerated toward the big, reinforced iron gates at the head of the property. There were men waving at her and shouting, but she didn’t slow down. They were forced to leap out of her way as she smashed through the gates. The truck jolted and slowed for a second, then picked up speed.

She guided her vehicle onto the highway leading away from Prague. She had another vehicle, one that would blend in better than the Marauder, waiting for her in a nearby car park. She would abandon the truck and take the other vehicle into Poland where she had a hideaway.

She glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure the jolt of hitting the gates hadn’t disturbed Kristoph. He remained asleep.

Reaching across to the passenger seat, she opened the zip of her bag and dumped it. She picked up the burner phone she’d activated before leaving the mansion and dialed her father’s number.

Chapter Forty-One

Krystoff stared at his man.

“Both of my daughters?”

“Yes, they left when we tried to collect them. We don’t know where they are. They might’ve collaborated on this.”

Krystoff was stunned. His daughters had betrayed him?

He stared down at his wife and tried to make sense of the situation. His entire family. Gone in a single evening. He hadn’t truly known a single one of them.

His wife had tried to kill an innocent woman. His daughters scattered when the family was threatened, and that threat was coming from the one person Krystoff thought would remain loyal until the end.

He wanted to sit down and think, work out what’d happened. Saskia had told him he wasn’t a good father, yet he’d provided everything they’d ever needed and then some. Hadn’t he?

He didn’t have time to think about it. Maybe later he could work out what happened, see if he could repair his relationship with his youngest daughter. He wasn’t sure where Leeza had gone but he had a difficult time believing his obedient eldest daughter had betrayed him. Except when it came to her son, she was compliant to a fault.

Wasn’t she?

Fuck, he didn’t have time to think about it. He had to set his mind to his next move. Jozef wouldn’t be taking a time out. He’d be planning his attack. Which meant Krystoff had to beat him to it.

Pain blossomed in Krystoff’s chest as he finally allowed himself to accept the inevitable. He