Chapter 34 Zatanna
ZATANNA
I wake up in a bed that is too soft, under sheets that probably cost more than my old couch, and for one glorious second I have no idea where I am.
Then I remember.
The hospital, and the attack. Aleksei carrying me into his house like I weighed nothing. His mother, pale and kind and far too perceptive. The room in the east wing. The locked doors. The fact that I am somehow sleeping in a mafia mansion while eight months pregnant and emotionally compromised.
Wonderful.
Then the nausea hits.
Not dramatic. Worse. Slow and mean and familiar, rolling through my stomach until even breathing feels like a negotiation.
I sit up too fast, regret it immediately, and press a hand to my mouth.
Morning sickness, my ass. There is nothing “morning” about it. This thing works overtime, and didn’t stop in the first trimester, like everyone said it would.
By the time there’s a knock on the door, I’m sitting very still on the edge of the bed, trying not to die with dignity.
“Come in,” I say weakly.
Aleksei walks in carrying a tray. He’s dressed already, dark trousers, shirt open at the throat, face composed in that way that should annoy me and usually does. Today I’m too nauseous for proper annoyance.
He takes one look at me and stops. “You’re sick.”
“No, this is just my morning personality.”
He ignores that and sets the tray down on the small table by the window. “What do you need?”
I blink at him. It is too early for this level of directness. “Nothing,” I say automatically.
He gives me a look that says he has met me before and knows exactly how useless that answer is. “Zatanna.”
I close my eyes for a second. “It’ll pass.”
“Did you eat?”
That almost makes me laugh. “Do I look like someone who can eat?”
Instead of pushing, he crouches in front of the minibar fridge, opens it, then starts taking things out with surprising focus. A bottle of water. Plain crackers. Ginger ale. A bowl of green grapes from yesterday’s fruit tray.
I watch him, suspicious even through the nausea. “What are you doing?”
“Trying things.”
“That’s not how medicine works.”
“No,” he says calmly. “It’s how mothers do.”
That stops me.
He glances up at my face and must see the surprise there, because he adds, quieter now, “Mine used to say that when she was pregnant, the only thing she could keep down for three months was cold grapes and dry bread. I know you’re further along, but it’s worth a shot.”
He rinses the grapes in the small bathroom sink, chills the water first, then comes back and sets the bowl in my hands like this is the most natural thing in the world.
“Try one.”
I should refuse on principle. I really should.
Instead, I put one in my mouth because the bowl is cold and my stomach is a violent tyrant and somehow the grape does not immediately make me want to throw myself out the window.
I stare at it in my hand. Then at him.
He notices. “Well?”
“That was annoyingly helpful.”
He looks almost pleased with himself, which is deeply irritating.
He opens the ginger ale, pours it over ice, and hands it to me with one cracker balanced on the rim like some absurdly careful butler.
“Small sips.”
I take the glass. And because I am tired and hormonal and still too easily moved by him when he is like this, I have to look away for a second.
This is dangerous.
Not the attack kind of dangerous.
The other kind.
The kind where a man remembers what his mother used to feed pregnant women and somehow that lands harder than any grand declaration. So of course, my brain does what it has gotten very good at doing with Aleksei.
It ruins it.
He doesn’t really care, I tell myself.
Not like that.
This is management. Guilt. Control. He is making me comfortable because he needs me calm and compliant and under his roof. That’s all. Men like him do not suddenly become gentle because they are moved by your suffering. Men like him do what works.
There. Much better.
I eat another grape.
“Better?” he asks.
“A little.”
He nods once, standing again. “Good. My mother wants breakfast outside. She said fresh air might help.”
“Your mother sounds very pushy.”
“Yes.”
“Runs in the family.”
His mouth twitches, but before he can answer, his phone starts vibrating in his pocket. He checks the screen and his face changes just slightly. Business. Problems. War. Whatever dark machine is always moving behind his eyes.
He looks back at me. “Can you walk downstairs?”
I lift a brow. “I am pregnant, not ornamental.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“Yes,” I say. “I can walk downstairs.”
“Good.”
He lingers for half a second like he wants to say something else, then just nods and leaves the room with the phone already at his ear.
Ten minutes later I’m outside on the back terrace under a pale morning sun, wrapped in a light shawl one of the staff pressed into my hands before I could protest. Breakfast is set on a long table overlooking the garden.
Not formal. Not intimidating. Just fruit, tea, toast, eggs, and a basket of things that smell too rich for my current state.
His mother is already there.
She looks better than she did in the hospital, though still too thin, still washed out around the edges. But the air seems to help her, and the sight of her outside, in a soft blue robe with a blanket over her knees, makes her seem more like a person and less like a patient.
She smiles when she sees me. “You survived my son.”
“Barely.”
“Good. That means your instincts are intact.”
I laugh before I can stop myself and lower myself carefully into the chair beside her.
She watches the plate one of the staff sets in front of me. Plain toast, sliced apple, more grapes.
“Aleksei told them?” I ask.
“He told me. I told them. He would have tried to feed you like a soldier with a wound.”
That is so accurate I nearly smile into my tea.
For a little while we eat in companionable quiet. Or rather, she eats and I move things around my plate while trying not to invite death by scrambled eggs.
Then she says, “When I was pregnant with him, I wanted pickled plums and black pepper on everything.”
I blink. “That is revolting.”
“Yes.” She smiles. “And yet I would have murdered for it.”
That pulls a laugh out of me. “Mine is ice. Not even fancy cravings. Just ice. And sour candy. And one week where I nearly cried because I wanted instant noodles with lime and hot sauce.”
She looks delighted. “Good. Ugly cravings are honest ones.”
“That is a terrible philosophy.”
“It is motherhood.”
I smile despite myself.
We sit there with the morning light on the table and talk.
It is disarming. And kind. And because of that, I relax more than I mean to.
Aleksei is gone longer than I expected, pacing somewhere inside the house with his phone pressed to his ear, his voice drifting in and out when the terrace doors open. Even from a distance I can hear the tension in it.
His mother hears it too.
“He thinks I do not notice when he is frightened,” she says quietly.
I look toward the doors. “He doesn’t seem like someone who frightens easily.”
“No,” she says. “He frightens deeply.”
That sits between us for a moment.
Then she turns her gaze on me, gentle and far too direct. “And you?”
I try for lightness. “I mostly just throw up and make bad decisions.”
Her smile deepens. “Yes. I noticed.”
I should feel cornered by how much she sees.
Instead, I feel oddly... understood.
His mother presses a small glass jar into my hand before breakfast ends. Inside are salted tamarind strips dusted with chili and sugar.
I look at them, then at her. “What is this?”
“This one is for your weird cravings.” She winks at me.
I open the jar, suspicious, and try one.
The reaction is immediate. My whole mouth wakes up. Sour, spicy, salty, sweet all at once. “Oh my God.”
She smiles. “There we are.”
I clutch the jar to my chest like a dragon with treasure. “I would actually fight someone for these.”
“Yes,” she says. “Now you sound pregnant.”
I spend the rest of breakfast picking at toast and aggressively munching tamarind strips while pretending I do not notice how comforting it is to be looked after by a woman who understands exactly how irrational my body has become.
Later, after she gets tired and one of the staff gently insists she rest, I head back upstairs with the jar in one hand and a glass of water in the other.
The house is too quiet.
Big houses always are. Quiet in a way that makes every footstep feel observed even when no one is there. Sunlight cuts through the upper hall in long clean bands. The air smells faintly of polished wood and expensive nothing.
I’m halfway to my room when he steps out of the study.
Aleksei.
He stops when he sees me. I stop because my body apparently still reacts to him before my brain gets a vote.
We look at each other across the hallway.
He’s taken off his jacket, sleeves rolled up now, tie gone again, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He looks less like a warlord this morning and more like a man who slept too little and carries too much in his jaw.
Annoyingly attractive, in other words.
“What?” I say, because I know if I don’t start this with irritation, I’ll start it somewhere worse.
He takes one step toward me. “We need to talk.”
“No, you need to talk. I need a nap and these.” I lift the jar slightly.
That almost gets a smile out of him. “Zatanna.”
“No.”
His brow lifts. “No?”
“No. I am not doing this if this is another version of you deciding what happens and expecting me to fall in line.”
He is quiet for one beat too long. Then he starts walking toward me anyway.
I back up. Not because I’m scared. Because I know exactly what happens when he gets too close and I am trying, for once in my life, to have one coherent thought before my body ruins everything.
“Don’t,” I say.
He stops. Then he says, very calmly, “Tell me you don’t want me anymore.”
I blink. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s simple.”
“No,” I say at once. “It’s manipulative.”
“Probably.”
I stare at him.