Chapter 25 Aleksei
ALEKSEI
By the time the attorney arrives, I’m already on my second drink.
The city beyond my office windows has gone dark, all glass and lights and ambition, but none of it settles me.
The office floor is mostly empty now. The dates are lined up on Zatanna’s calendar, the women are texting, the deadline is closing like a fist, and all I can think about is the way she looked up at me from her desk when I sat on it like I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
A knock comes at the door.
“Come in.”
The attorney slips in with his usual air of apologizing for his own existence. Thin tie, thinning hair, expensive briefcase clutched too tightly. He shuts the door behind him and pauses, taking in the glass in my hand, the loosened tie, the fact that I am clearly not in a mood for legal theater.
“Mr. Vasiliev.”
“You can sit,” I say. “Or stand there and tremble. I don’t care.”
He chooses the chair.
Smart enough.
I stay where I am by the bar cart, one shoulder against the cabinet, drink in hand. “Well?”
He clears his throat. “I thought it might be prudent to discuss where things stand. The timeline is… increasingly tight.”
No shit.
“I’m aware of the timeline.”
“Yes, of course. But given your father’s renewed interest, and the attention this matter seems to be attracting, it would be wise to clarify your intentions.”
I take a slow drink. “My intentions.”
“With respect, sir, you must understand that if you are unable to present a legally valid engagement, followed by a marriage within the month, your father’s challenge becomes significantly—”
“I know what happens.”
The words come out flatter than I intend. He shuts up immediately.
I set the glass down and move to the desk, not sitting, just bracing both hands against the polished wood. “Ask what you came to ask.”
He adjusts his glasses. “Very well. What is your plan?”
For a second I almost laugh. Because a week ago, I had one.
Simple. Mechanical. Find a woman with the right pedigree, the right discretion, the right appetite for a contract dressed up as a marriage. Make the offer. Secure the future. Produce the heir. Claim the inheritance. Survive my father.
Clean. Now nothing about it is clean. Now every candidate gets measured against a woman who should never have been in the equation at all.
I turn away from the desk and go back to the window. “The plan is to keep moving.”
“That is not particularly specific.”
“It doesn’t need to be.”
He shifts, nervous enough to try for diplomacy. “Sir, with all due respect, your… assistant’s efforts seem ambitious. But marriage is not a procurement process. Even a favorable match takes time.”
My mouth twists.
No. It isn’t procurement.
That’s the problem. Zatanna has made every match impossible.
Not intentionally. If anything, she’s trying too hard. Three dates in one day, candidates in every category, enough options to populate a small monarchy. Efficient, determined, maddeningly competent.
And useless.
Because none of them are her.
None of them look at me and see through the mask.
None of them go pale at my scars and stay anyway.
None of them would push me out of the way of a bullet.
None of them would ask if my life hurts.
The attorney clears his throat again. “Mr. Vasiliev?”
I realize I’ve gone silent too long.
“I heard you,” I say.
He presses on carefully. “Then may I advise urgency. Your father is already positioning himself publicly. He is implying to certain investors that a transition in control may be inevitable.”
I turn back slowly. “What did he say?”
The attorney wets his lips. “Only that you are… unsuited to domestic stability. That you will never settle. That your preferences are too volatile to produce a timely marriage.”
My grip tightens around the glass.
The attorney sees the danger in my face and tries to soften the moment. “It may be a bluff.”
“No,” I say. “It’s an insult.”
He doesn’t answer.
I know exactly what my father thinks of me. Ruthless enough to build, reckless enough to ruin it. Too much of him to be trusted, too much of my mother to be contained. A son who could inherit power but never peace.
Usually, I don’t care what he thinks.
Usually, I would already have solved this.
Now I have Zatanna standing in the middle of it, rearranging the women, adjusting the venues, trying to help me marry someone else while every time she looks at me my entire body remembers exactly what she feels like.
I drain the rest of my whiskey.
The attorney notices. “Sir… are you genuinely prepared to go through with this?”
I look at him. “What do you think?”
He hesitates. “I think you are trying to.”
That, annoyingly, is honest.
I set the empty glass down. “Trying is enough for now.”
He folds his hands over the briefcase. “And if no suitable match presents?”
I laugh then. Quiet. Bitter. There are suitable matches everywhere. That is the entire problem.
But suitable is not the same as possible.
I’m half-tempted to explain it to him in the cruelest possible terms: that the more efficiently Zatanna does her job, the more impossible the job becomes.
That every woman she places in front of me only clarifies the shape of what I actually want, and what I actually want is exactly the one thing I cannot have.
“You wanted a plan. Here it is. I go on the dates. I evaluate the candidates. I make a decision before the week is out.”
The attorney visibly relaxes. “Good.”
He shouldn’t. Because the decision I’m trying not to make is the only one that feels like one at all. And that decision would be catastrophic.
“You should also prepare a draft agreement,” I say. “Prenup. Ownership structures. Succession language.”
His brows rise. “You have someone in mind?”
I hold his gaze just long enough to make him nervous again.
“No,” I say.
Lie.
He nods quickly and opens the briefcase to take notes. “Of course. A draft, then, broad enough to adjust when the bride is selected.”
Bride. Such a harmless word for something that feels increasingly like a weapon.
He goes on talking. Clauses. Liability. Public timing. Press management. All practical. All necessary.
And all I can think is that somewhere on this floor, Zatanna is probably still at her desk, still answering those women, still trying to solve me.
If I were a better man, I’d let her. If I were a smarter one, I’d fire her.
Instead, I pour a third drink while the attorney drones on about timelines and signatures and witnesses, and I stare at the city until his voice becomes background noise.
I know I’m running out of time. I know exactly what’s at stake.
But Zatanna has made every match impossible.
And if I don’t get her out of my head soon, she’s going to make one more thing impossible too:
Surviving this with any part of me still intact.
By the time I step out of my office, the floor has thinned to that late-evening hush corporate spaces get when ambition has gone home and only obligation remains.
I’m dressed for the date.
Dark suit. Fresh shirt. Cufflinks my grandfather used to wear when he wanted a room to remember his name after he left it. I know exactly how I look because I made sure of it. Controlled. Untouchable
It feels like armor. Useless armor but armor all the same.
Zatanna is at her desk with her screen glowing in front of her and three open windows on it. Calendar. Messages. A restaurant confirmation. She hears me before she looks up. Of course she does.
When she finally does look at me, it’s only for a second.
But that second tells me everything.
She’s upset.
Not theatrically. Not enough that anyone else would clock it.
She’s too proud for that. Too good at pretending to be busy, to be competent, to be professional.
But I see the slight tightening around her mouth, the way she straightens a fraction too much, the way her fingers pause over the keyboard before starting again.
She’s doing what I did in the hallway after the suite. And she’s better at hiding it than she should be.
“Your car is downstairs,” she says, voice even. “Adriana confirmed again. No dietary restrictions. She asked whether you prefer white or red wine, and I told her you can probably survive either.”
I stop by her desk. “Very reassuring.”
She keeps her eyes on the screen. “I do what I can.”
I should leave it there. Thank her, maybe. Walk away. Go be the man I need to be for the next two hours.
Instead, I keep looking at her.
At the soft line of her neck where her hair falls back from it.
At the blouse she wore because it was office-appropriate and therefore had no business making me imagine my hands on the buttons.
At the quiet determination in her face while she arranges my future like she isn’t bleeding a little over every piece of it.
And suddenly the office drops away.
Not completely. Just enough for a vision to hit me hard and whole.
Her in black silk and diamonds. Her at my side at the head of a table built for kings.
Her hand resting on the arm of my chair like it belongs there.
Men twice her age lowering their eyes when she speaks because she is mine and more dangerous for being soft.
Zatanna in my home, in my bed, in my name.
My queen.
The thought is so immediate and so absolute it nearly knocks the air out of me. I blink once and the office comes back into focus.
She’s still talking, something about the reservation being moved to a quieter room, but I barely hear it over the echo of that one impossible image.
Dangerous. Stupid. Too late.
“Mr. Vasiliev?”
I realize she’s stopped and is looking up at me now, wary because I’ve gone silent too long. “Yes,” I say.
Her brows draw together slightly. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
“Enough.”
Which is not an answer, and she knows it.
I see the irritation flicker. Good. Irritation is easier for her than whatever else is sitting underneath it.
I straighten my cuffs. “You did well.”
She nods once. Her eyes do not quite meet mine when she says, “Of course.”
That is somehow worse than if she’d snapped at me.
I lean one hand on the back of her chair, close enough to smell her perfume, not close enough to touch. “You don’t have to sound like you hate me.”
That brings her gaze up fast. “I don’t hate you.” Then she looks away and adds, “It would probably be easier if I did.”
Yes. It would.
I step back before I say something ruinous. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Her laugh is soft and sharp at once. “Please don’t.”
That almost makes me smile.
I then leave before I can change my mind about the date, the office, the week, the whole goddamn future.
The driver is waiting downstairs. Rain glosses the street in black and gold as I slide into the backseat and give the address she arranged.
The car pulls away from the curb in a smooth glide, rain stippling the windows, the city all wet light and blurred reflections. I loosen my tie a fraction and stare out at the street, watching the building disappear behind us.
The date is still on the calendar. The woman is still waiting. The future is still supposed to look exactly the way I planned it. So why does it already feel like I’m driving in the wrong direction?
I take out my phone, turn it over once in my hand, then say, “Circle back.”
The driver glances at me in the mirror. He’s learned better than to ask questions. “Yes, sir.”
The car keeps moving another half block, then eases into the next turn and starts heading back toward the office.
I look down at the phone again.
There are things I need arranged. Quietly. Efficiently. Not the kind of things I can hand to an assistant by email and pretend they mean nothing. Travel, timing, privacy, security, a route that does not look like a route until it’s already underway.
Not for tonight. Soon.
I type one message to Sergei.
I may need transport and accommodations arranged on short notice. Outside the city. Discreet. I’ll confirm.
He replies almost immediately.
Understood. How many nights?
I look back out at the rain.
TBD. Keep it flexible.
I lock the screen before he can ask the question he’s smart enough not to ask directly. Because if I say too much, even in text, then I have to admit I’m already planning around her. Not just the dates. Not just the week. Her.
The car rolls to a stop across from the building again.
I can still see the upper floors lit in neat squares, still imagine her at that desk pretending to be composed while sending other women into my evening one by one.
No. Not tonight.
“Wait here,” I tell the driver.
Then I type.
Come down.
I stare at the message for one beat, thumb hovering, then hit send before I can do something sensible like delete it.
The dots do not appear immediately. That gives me time to reconsider.
I do not reconsider.
A minute passes. Then two.
Finally, my phone lights up.
Why?
The single word makes the corner of my mouth twitch.
I type back:
Because I said so.
I watch the screen.
Her reply comes fast.
That is not an answer.
I lean back in the seat, looking up at the building, picturing her reading that with her brows drawn together, half-annoyed, half-curious.
I type:
Then consider it a request. Come down.
A longer pause this time.
Then:
You’re already late for your date.
My fingers rest over the screen for a second.
Then:
I’m aware.
No response. I wait.
Another thirty seconds pass before the lobby doors open and she steps out under the awning, looking around for the car.
There she is.
Dark hair, coat pulled close, expression already suspicious. The streetlight catches her face in gold for a second before she spots me through the back window and narrows her eyes like she’s not sure whether to be irritated or worried.
Probably both.
The driver gets out and opens the rear door for her.
She bends slightly, looking in. “What are you doing?”
“Getting back in the car,” I say.
“That was not the question.”
“No,” I agree. “It wasn’t.”
She hesitates just long enough to prove she knows this is a bad idea.
Then she gets in anyway.
The door closes. The rain keeps tapping at the glass. She turns toward me with that same wary, beautiful irritation she seems to reserve just for me.
“Well?”
I look at her for one quiet second before answering. “I changed my mind.”
About the date. About the evening. About a great many things, probably.
But I only say, “I need you with me.”
Her eyes narrow at once. “For what?”
I glance out at the road ahead. “Something that can’t be handled from your desk.”