Chapter 23 Aleksei
ALEKSEI
“Can we go now?” she asks. It’s been an hour since the bullets were fired.
Her voice is quiet, thinner than usual after everything that’s happened tonight, but steady enough that another man might believe she’s alright. I’m not another man.
I’m watching the way her fingers keep flexing at her sides, the way her pulse jumps in her throat, the faint tremor she’s trying to keep out of her breathing. She’s running on nerves and stubbornness.
“No,” I say.
She looks up at me. “What?”
“It’s not safe yet.”
That part, at least, is not entirely a lie.
The noise outside has died down. No more shots. No more breaking glass. Just the muffled thud of movement somewhere below and the distant bark of men calling to one another. My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Sergei. I already know what he’s going to say before I answer.
I take the call, keeping my eyes on her. “Yes.”
His voice comes through low and efficient. “Perimeter is secure. Two shooters down, one gone. We’re sweeping the grounds now. You’re clear.”
Clear. I glance at Zatanna.
She’s hugging herself slightly, pretending she isn’t waiting on my answer, pretending she isn’t watching me with those big dark eyes that make me want to tell every other truth except the one she asked for.
No. I’m not done having her to myself.
“Understood,” I say. “Keep sweeping.” I end the call.
“Well?” she asks.
I slip the phone back into my pocket. “Not yet.”
A tiny furrow appears between her brows. Suspicion. Or maybe just exhaustion. “It sounded like something changed.”
“Not enough.”
That isn’t a full lie either.
The room is too warm. Too intimate. Her perfume is still in the air, mixed now with gunpowder and broken glass and the clean scent of hotel linen. I can hear the rain against the windows. I can hear her breathing.
And for the first time all night, the violence has receded just enough for me to notice something else.
Blood. My blood.
There’s a sting across my left shoulder and another lower on my side where glass must have caught me when the window blew. Nothing serious. Barely worth naming.
She notices the second I do.
Her eyes widen, dropping to my shirt. “You’re bleeding.” I look down. A thin line of red has soaked through the white fabric near the shoulder seam, another darker patch low near my ribs.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
She gives me a look that would be almost funny if it weren’t so sincere. “That does not look like nothing.”
“It is.”
She takes a step closer before she can think better of it, gaze fixed on the blood. “You’re cut.”
I almost smile. “Yes. That’s generally how bleeding works.”
She doesn’t laugh.
“It’s superficial,” I say, already reaching for my cufflinks. “Glass.”
She watches my hands. I undo the cuffs. Peel the jacket off. Let it fall over the arm of a chair. Then I start on the buttons of my shirt.
Her eyes go wide. “What are you doing?”
I don’t look up. “Taking this off.”
Her gaze darts toward the door as if maybe some invisible chaperone is going to appear and rescue her from this situation. “Why?”
“Because it’s covered in blood.”
“That seems…” She swallows. “Unnecessary.”
I get halfway through the buttons and stop just to look at her. “Unnecessary?”
“Yes.”
“Zatanna.” Her name comes out lower than I intend. More intimate. It stills her instantly. “Open your eyes.”
She blinks.
Only then do I realize she’s actually closed them. Squeezed them shut like if she can’t see me shirtless, then whatever is happening between us becomes manageable again.
It’s absurd. And deeply charming.
Her cheeks color. “I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know exactly what you’re doing.”
Now I am amused. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
I finish the last button and shrug the shirt off, wincing once as fabric drags over broken skin. “Then tell me.”
Her eyes stay closed, but I can see the way her throat moves when she swallows. “You’re being… manipulative.”
“Interesting accusation.”
“You know perfectly well it is.”
I toss the shirt onto the back of the sofa. “Open your eyes.”
Slowly, like she’s indulging a man she does not trust one bit, she opens them.
And there it is. That moment.
That helpless, involuntary flicker in her face when she sees me standing there bare-chested a few feet away, fresh lines of blood crossing skin, shoulder taut, abs tightening. Her eyes go straight to the cuts first.
Then lower. Then lower again. Then snap back up to my face like she can somehow erase the fact that she looked.
I enjoy that far more than I should.
“Well?” I ask.
I know what she’s seeing. The cuts from the glass are the newest damage, thin and red across my shoulder and side, but they’re not what catches her.
It’s the old scars. Pale lines and thicker knots of ruined skin across my ribs, one near my left shoulder, another low on my abdomen.
The kind of marks a man doesn’t get from one bad night.
Her eyes move over them slowly, the flush in her face fading into something quieter. Something more searching.
For once, she has nothing to say.
I let her look. I’m not shy about my body. Never have been. But I am aware of what it says before I open my mouth. Violence. Survival. A history I do not usually put on display for women like her.
For women like anyone.
She finally turns around, marches into the bathroom and returns with a first-aid box.
“It’s not as dramatic as you’re making it in your head,” I say.
That draws her out of it. She blinks, then looks up at me. “You don’t know what I’m making it in my head.”
“No?” I tilt my head. “Go on, then.”
She steps closer instead of answering. That surprises me more than the gasp did.
She is still nervous, I can see it in the way her fingers curl slightly at her sides, but curiosity wins. It usually does with her. That, more than anything, may be what undoes us both. Her hand lifts slowly. She looks at me first, checking. Asking without words.
I don’t stop her.
Her fingertips touch the scar high on my shoulder. Too lightly to hurt, but enough to make every muscle in my body go aware.
“This one,” she says softly, “wasn’t glass.”
“No.”
Her fingers trace the edge of it, careful, reverent almost. The tenderness of it unsettles me in a way gunfire never has.
“What was it?”
“Bullet.”
Her eyes flick to mine. Wide. Then back down. She follows another line, lower, flatter, uglier. “And this?”
“Knife.”
Her breath catches. She looks at the old scar over my ribs. “And that one?”
“Bullet.”
She goes very still.
The room is quiet enough that I can hear the rain against the windows. Her fingers stay on my skin, warm and hesitant, and I realize I am letting this happen because I want to know what it feels like when she touches something damaged and doesn’t recoil.
Most people look at scars and see threat. She looks at them and sees questions.
“Who are you?” she asks again. Not the shaken version from the road. Not frightened this time.
This is quieter. More deliberate. She wants the truth now, or something close enough to it that she can stand in the same room with me and understand what she’s touching.
I could lie. I should lie. I should give her some polished version of danger she can digest. A hard childhood. Business rivals. Security concerns. The kind of vague rich-man nonsense that keeps girls curious but not informed.
But she’s standing in front of me with my blood on her fingers and my secrets already halfway under her skin.
So I say, “I come from a family that does things outside the law.”
She looks up at me at once.
My tone stays even. “My grandfather built an empire. Real estate, ports, logistics, money moving through the right hands. Some of it legitimate. Some of it…” I shrug once. “Less so.”
Her hand drops from my side. “How less so?”
I hold her gaze. “Violence isn’t unusual where I come from.”
Her face changes. Not panic. Not yet. “The men with you,” she says slowly. “At the office. Last night. They’re not just security.”
“No.”
“And your father.”
“What about him?”
“He’s part of this, too?”
“Yes.”
Her throat works. “This is organized crime.”
There it is. The real word. I don’t answer immediately, which is answer enough.
She takes a small step back. “Jesus.”
I let her have the silence she needs.
She turns away from me for a second, collecting herself, then looks back. “You could have told me before.”
“I could have.” But I didn’t want to scare you away.
“So what are you, exactly?” she asks. “Because right now I’ve got billionaire, criminal, bodyguards, guns, attempted kidnapping, and a father who apparently wants your life. That’s not a normal Venn diagram.”
Despite the situation, I laugh. “No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
Her mouth twitches, just once, then flattens again. “This is not funny.”
“I know.”
She looks at the old scars on my shoulder, then lower. “These are all from that life.”
“Yes.”
“Bullets. Knives.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze lifts back to mine. “Have you killed people?”
The question is blunt. Honest. Very her. I think about giving her a less direct answer. I don’t.
“Yes.”
She goes very still.
I watch it happen. The flicker of shock, then the effort to hide it. Her hands press into her own arms. Her lips part slightly. She is not na?ve enough to think men like me are dangerous only in theory. But hearing it is different from suspecting it.
For a second, I almost tell her to leave. To go now, while fear still has a chance to do the work distance couldn’t.
But that’s not what comes out of my mouth. “You should be afraid of what this means.”
She looks at me for a long time. Then, very quietly, “I think I am. Just not enough.”
That goes through me harder than any accusation could have. Because I know exactly what she means. She should be frightened enough to keep away from me, enough to stop looking, enough to stop wanting.
And she isn’t. Neither am I.
I take one slow step toward her.
She doesn’t retreat. “You don’t get to decide that for me,” she says, even before I speak.
“I do when my world reaches for you.”