Chapter 19 Aleksei #2
“I need cleanup,” I say. “Now. Stone & Vale, north service road. Three men. One alive.”
A pause. Then, “On my way.”
I end the call and finally turn.
Zatanna is standing a few feet away, pale as winter, one hand gripping her own elbow so tightly her knuckles are white. Her eyes are huge. Wet.
She looks like she’s still trying to understand what just happened.
I lower the gun and cross the distance between us in three seconds.
The moment my hands close on her shoulders, something in my chest unclenches.
“You hurt?”
She shakes her head once, fthen swallows. “I… I don’t think so.”
I scan her anyway. Face. Arms. Throat. Knees. Looking for bruises, blood, anything.
When I find none, relief hits so hard it almost makes me dizzy.
Her lower lip trembles. “They said my name.”
The fury comes back instantly.
They weren’t guessing. They were sent for her.
I cup the back of her neck and pull her against me before I can stop myself. She comes without resistance, all soft heat and shock, her hands clutching at my jacket as if I’m the only solid thing left in the world.
“You’re safe,” I say into her hair, my voice rougher than I mean it to be. “I’ve got you.”
She makes a small, broken sound against my chest.
And that’s it.
That’s the moment something irreversible settles in my bones.
This is no longer an inconvenience. No longer a distraction. No longer a stupid, dangerous obsession I can outthink.
Someone came for her.
Which means from this second on, anyone who wants to get to her has to go through me.
And I will bury them for trying.
She pulls back just enough to look up at me.
Her eyes are huge. Glassy. Still stunned. And then she says, in a voice so small it cuts deeper than any bullet, “Who are you?”
The question lands like a blow.
Not because I don’t have an answer. Because honestly, I have too many.
I look at her, at the fear still shaking through her, at the way she’s trying to put together the man who kissed her in an elevator, the man who ate her out in a restaurant bathroom, and the man who just put a gun under someone’s chin like it was second nature.
My hand is still at the back of her neck. I force myself to loosen it, to make the touch gentler.
“Zatanna,” I say quietly, “not here.”
Her throat works as she swallows. She nods, but I can see it in her face. She’s shaken badly enough that if I say one wrong thing, she’ll bolt.
Sergei’s car turns onto the road in the distance, headlights cutting over the scene, but I keep my attention on her.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” I ask again.
“No.” Her voice trembles. “I just… I want to go home.” The words come out flat, exhausted, like she’s reached the end of what she can process tonight.
“Alright,” I say immediately. “I’ll take you.”
That makes her tense. “No.”
I go still.
She wraps her arms around herself, glancing once toward the men on the ground and then away again, like she can’t bear to look. “I want to go on my own.”
Every instinct I have hates that answer.
Under different circumstances, I wouldn’t even pretend to consider it. I’d put her in my car, post men outside her building, and ignore whatever argument she made.
But she’s looking at me like she barely knows which part of me is real.
If I push now, I lose her.
So I keep my voice even. “I’m not letting you walk.”
Her eyes flash, more fear than defiance. “I didn’t say walk.”
I exhale slowly. “I’ll have a car take you.”
She hesitates. I can see the calculation in her face. The part of her that wants to refuse everything connected to me tonight. The part that knows she’s too shaken to stand at a bus stop alone.
Finally, she nods once. “Okay. A car.”
“Good.”
Sergei gets out and takes one look at my face before wisely saying nothing. Anton is already moving toward the men, handling the bodies, the blood, the mess. The kind of cleanup I’ve lived with so long it should feel normal.
Tonight, it doesn’t.
Tonight, all I can see is Zatanna being dragged toward that sedan because she left the bathroom alone after I told her to wait.
Because I let her out of my sight. Because I brought her here.
The guilt sits ugly and heavy in my chest.
I pull my phone out and call my driver. “Bring the car to the north service road. Now.”
Zatanna is shivering. I shrug off my coat and move to drape it over her shoulders.
She flinches at first. Just slightly. But I feel it.
The tiny recoil slices through me more cleanly than any knife.
Still, after a second, she lets me settle the coat around her. It nearly swallows her whole. She grips the lapels with both hands, eyes dropping, like she doesn’t want me to see the tears still clinging to her lashes.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Her head comes up.
I almost never say those words. Not like this. Not and mean them so completely.
“This happened because of me.”
She blinks, startled by the rawness in my voice. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Because I know my world. I know how men like that move. I know how damage spreads when enemies can’t reach you directly.
She looks away. “I just want to go home.”
I nod once. “You will.”
The car pulls up a minute later, black and silent. My driver steps out, opening the rear door without a word. Good man. Knows when silence is the better option.
Zatanna takes one step toward it, then stops and turns back to me. Her face is pale, drained, but there’s still something searching in her eyes. Confusion. Hurt. Questions she can’t even frame yet.
For a second I think she’ll ask again, Who are you?
Instead she just says, “Thank you.”
The gratitude makes me feel worse, not better.
I incline my head. “Call me when you get home.”
She hesitates, then gets into the car.
I close the door gently behind her.
As the sedan pulls away, I stand there in the road and watch until the taillights disappear completely.
Only then do I turn back to the wreckage of the night, jaw tight, blood cold, guilt settling into something much more dangerous.
Someone came for her.
And I almost lost her before I’d even figured out what she is to me.
By the time I get home, I’ve made the decision.
I need to stay away from her.
Not because I want to. Not because it’s easy. Not because any part of me believes distance will make me want her less. But because last night made one thing painfully clear: anyone tied to me becomes a target.
And Zatanna is already too exposed.
So the next morning, I do what I should have done from the start.
I ignore her.
It starts the moment I walk onto the floor. Her desk is in my line of sight, as always. She’s already there, too, sitting stiffly with a coffee in both hands, like she didn’t sleep much. Her eyes flick up the second I appear.
Our gazes meet.
Something in her face shifts—some quiet, involuntary softening, like part of her is relieved to see me alive and standing and real after last night.
I kill that look immediately by walking past her as if she’s any other employee on the floor.
I don’t slow down. I don’t say good morning. I don’t let my eyes linger.
The silence behind me feels heavier than if I’d shouted.
I have to let her be angry. Confused. Offended.
Anger is safer than attachment.
I keep moving, heading straight for my office, aware of every set of eyes on the floor trying not to follow the tension crackling behind me. The door closes with a soft click, but it doesn’t seal out the awareness of her. It never does.
An hour later, Lina comes in with paperwork and mentions, too casually, “Zee asked if you needed anything this morning.”
I don’t look up. “I don’t.”
Lina hesitates. “Should I tell her that?”
“Yes.”
She leaves looking unsettled.
By midmorning, an internal memo needs approval. Normally Zatanna would bring it in herself. Instead, I send it back through Vivian. When she knocks to inform me the revised file is ready, I say, “Leave it with my secretary.”
Her mouth tightens. She nods. And walks away.
Every small rejection tastes like acid.
But I keep going.
At lunch, I see her across the floor laughing faintly at something Owen says, and the sound cuts through me because it’s lighter than the one she gave me this morning. I tell myself that’s a good thing. That means she’s settling back into normal. That means I’m doing the right thing.
Then Owen touches her elbow.
Not inappropriately. Barely at all.
Still, something ugly and possessive rears its head so fast I have to turn away before I do something insane.
Distance. That was the plan.
By late afternoon, I’ve ignored three separate opportunities to speak to her.
She knocked once with a folder, and I took it without looking at her.
She asked if I wanted coffee, and I said I’d already had some.
She hovered near my office after a meeting, clearly waiting to catch me alone, and I took a phone call in the hall just to avoid stopping.
Cruel. Deliberate. Necessary.
By the time the office starts thinning out for the evening, I can feel the damage. Not just in her, but in myself. The whole day has been a grind of resisting every instinct I have.
Then, as I’m signing off on a contract, there’s a quiet knock.
Not Vivian. Not Lina.
Her.
I know it without looking.
“Come in,” I say.
The door opens. Zatanna steps inside and closes it behind her. She’s not holding a file. Not carrying coffee. Not pretending this is work.
Maybe she’s angry enough to help me.
“What did I do?” she asks.
I keep my eyes on the page in front of me a second longer than necessary before setting the pen down. “Nothing.”
“That’s bullshit.”
My gaze lifts.
She’s standing in the middle of my office with her arms folded, her expression somewhere between hurt and furious, and for a brief, treacherous moment all I can think is that she’s beautiful when she’s mad.
I smother that thought.
“You were almost taken last night,” I say evenly. “I’m adjusting.”
Her face changes. Just a little. “By pretending I don’t exist?”
“By reducing unnecessary contact.”
Her laugh is short and disbelieving. “Unnecessary.”
“Yes.”
“You mean like kissing me in elevators and dragging me to dates and telling me I complicate things?”
Every word lands exactly where it hurts.
I say nothing.
She takes a step closer. “You don’t get to do all of that and then act like I imagined it.”
“I’m not acting.”
“No,” she says quietly. “You’re hiding.”
That snaps something in me.
I stand fast enough that her breath catches. “You think I’m doing this for me?”
She blinks, but doesn’t retreat.
“I’m doing it because men tried to put you in a car last night,” I say, my voice low and controlled and far more dangerous than I intend. “Because my enemies are paying attention. Because the closer you are to me, the worse this gets for you.”
The fight in her expression falters.
I hate the hurt that replaces it.
“I didn’t ask for protection,” she says, but it’s softer now.
“No,” I agree. “You didn’t.”
Silence settles between us.
I can see her turning the words over, trying to decide whether to be angry or understand, and God help me, I want her to do neither. I want her to walk out and let me finish this cleanly.
Instead, she looks at me with those dark, searching eyes and says, “You can’t protect me by making me feel like I did something wrong.”
That lands even harder than the rest, and I don’t have an answer for it.
Because she’s right.
And because staying away from her is supposed to make this easier, but all it’s done is make the whole office feel colder.
I force my jaw to unclench. “Go home, Zatanna.”
Her face closes off at once. A defense. A mask.
Fine. Maybe that’s better.
She nods once. “Right. Of course.”
Then she turns and leaves, quiet and dignified, closing the door behind her without another word.
I stand there for a long moment staring at the place she was.
I told myself distance was for her own good.
But as the silence spreads through the room, all I can think is that I may have just traded danger for something worse.