Chapter Fourteen
Roman’s POV
The air in the second elevator was thick and hot, smelling faintly of silk and gunpowder.
I cradled Liza against my chest, her stillness a heavy, terrifying accusation.
I hadn’t carried her to the main medical suite but to our suite, the large, private space that was itself a secured zone within the mansion.
She wasn’t a patient; she was a priority asset that had malfunctioned, and I needed absolute containment.
The elevator doors opened onto a luxurious hallway. I strode straight into the bedroom. I laid Liza gently on the massive bed, the cream satin of her wedding dress pooling around her, jarring against the dark velvet comforter. Her skin was unnaturally cold.
I pulled out my phone before I even fully let go of her. My fingers were shaking, but the command was sharp and cold.
“Stepan,” I barked into the receiver. “This is code red. I want the entire perimeter locked down. Anyone seen or spoken to at the wedding is now in lockdown. No one leaves. No one calls out. I want absolute silence. If one word of the attack or Liza’s collapse hits the wire, you call me.”
I didn’t wait for his reply. I severed the connection and immediately called Viktor.
“The press?” I demanded when he answered.
“Handled. Lighting failure. Electrical fire. No injuries. The attackers are being processed,” Viktor’s voice was clipped, professional, already back to business.
“Liza is down. She didn’t take a hit. She collapsed. I need Alina Sokolov here in three minutes. Tell her I will personally burn her facility to the ground if she breathes a word of this. She will enter through the service. Security is her escort.”
“A collapse?” Viktor asked, a rare note of confusion in his voice. “After that? It must be a shock.”
“Don’t tell me what it must be!” I slammed the phone onto the bedside table. My breath hitched. “I need something I can fight, not some damn weakness.”
I paced the rugs in front of the bed. My internal monologue was a storm of protective fury.
This couldn’t be just stress. Liza Markova was built of steel and fire.
She didn’t faint. No, this was a strategic failure.
Arkady’s rivals had used the attack to destabilize my wedding, and somehow, they had poisoned her or injured her in a way my guards missed. That was the only logical answer.
The entire facade of the wedding, the controlled transaction, had been ruined on the altar.
Now, my profound sense of strategic failure turned into a need for immediate, brutal retaliation.
I couldn’t move on the rivals until I knew she was stable.
The thought of losing her, losing my leverage, losing the future of my investigation made the blood pound against my skull.
A discreet knock signaled that the service entrance was being used. The door opened. Alina Sokolov entered first, small and serious, carrying her medical bag. She was escorted by two silent, massive guards.
Then, the unnecessary clutter arrived. Emilia and Isabella followed, their faces pale, their eyes wide with worry.
“Roman,” Emilia said, rushing to the side of the bed. “Is she awake? What happened?”
I met her eyes, my own blazing. “She is fine. And you are here for comfort, nothing more. Alina is in charge. Don’t distract her. She needs absolute quiet.”
I waved a hand toward the wall. “Alina. You have three minutes to tell me what’s wrong with my wife. If it’s not an injury, I want to know why this happened on my watch. Get to work.”
Alina didn’t look at me. She looked at the patient. She set her black bag on the nightstand and began pulling on sterile gloves. The inspection had begun, and I could only watch, trapped in my own suite, consumed by worry.
I stood near the door, my arms crossed tight over my chest, radiating a tension that was enough to make the crystal chandeliers crack. Alina, however, seemed immune. She worked with methodical, almost insulting calmness, attaching monitors and checking Liza’s pulse at the wrist.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, my voice cutting through the soft, anxious murmur between Emilia and Isabella. “Forget the pulse. Search for a bullet entry point! We were fired upon. Find the wound.”
Alina looked up, her expression utterly detached. “Mr. Lobanov, the bleeding would be obvious. I am checking systemic function. And frankly, this dress makes finding anything complicated.”
“Tear it,” I snapped. “I don’t care about the fabric. I need a definitive, physical reason for this collapse. I don’t pay you to check pulse rates. I pay you to confirm a strategic threat.”
Alina paused, holding Liza’s limp hand. “And I am here to report facts. The first fact is, prima facie, there is no wound. No blood. No exit point.”
Isabella, who had been dabbing Liza’s forehead with a damp cloth, spoke up. “See, Roman? She’s a very good doctor. She would know if it was serious.”
Alina flinched slightly at the title.
“I am a nurse, Isabella. Highly trained, yes, but a nurse.” She didn’t look at Isabella, but the correction was firm. I filed the details away instantly. Professional caution. Good, but I didn’t care about her title. I cared about the diagnosis.
“Then give me the facts, Nurse,” I growled.
She finally finished attaching the monitors and looked at me, meeting my hard gaze. “The facts are these: heart rate is 145, dangerously high. Blood pressure is erratic. She is severely dehydrated. The entire episode, the syncope, the fainting, is triggered by acute stress and anxiety overload.”
I slammed my fist onto the nearby table, making the metal instruments jump.
“Stress? That is an amateur, unacceptable answer. I put millions into ensuring your operation is the best. Liza Markova does not collapse from stress. Find the internal bleeding. Find the poison. Find something that confirms someone is responsible, not some psychological weakness.”
My protective fury boiled over. Accepting stress meant admitting I lost control of the environment, not just a direct attack. It meant this collapse was messy, soft, and indefinable, and therefore impossible to retaliate against cleanly. I needed a clear physical threat to blame.
“Mr. Lobanov,” Alina insisted, her tone measured, “The body does not distinguish between a physical threat and a profound emotional threat. She was nearly killed at her wedding. That is enough to induce vasovagal syncope, especially given the existing makers.”
Existing makers. That phrase snagged my attention, finally silencing my rage enough to let me listen.
“What existing markers?” I demanded.
Alina looked pointedly at Emilia and Isabella, then back at me. “The fatigue, the unusual paleness, and the lack of appetite were noted over the past week. Synonyms of a body running itself ragged, now pushed over the edge.”
I paced away from the bed, rubbing the back of my neck.
Fatigue. Not feeling well. Liza has been too complacent lately.
Too quiet. I had assumed it was strategic, a preparation for her own move, not a genuine medical issue.
Had I pushed her too hard? Had her defiance been hiding genuine fatigue related to Arkady’s disappearance?
I stopped pacing. I was looking at the wrong kind of enemy. This wasn’t a bullet. This was an internal problem.
“Alright, Nurse,” I conceded, forcing my voice into a cold calm. “I am listening now. If it’s not a wound, what is it? And what do you do next?”
My voice went flat, finally giving up the desperate hunt for a bullet wound. I needed to know what invisible enemy was attacking my newly acquired wife.
Alina didn’t rush. She maintained her unnerving pace.
She gestured toward the monitors. “The next step is to treat the dehydration and stabilize the heart rate, of course. But that would only address the immediate crisis. To understand the underlying cause of this systemic shock, we must acknowledge the non-lethal symptoms.”
She looked away from the monitor and directly at me. “Mr. Lobanov, the extreme anxiety, the rapid collapse without injury, the existing fatigue and paleness you noted, all these signs point away from an external attack and toward an external condition.”
She picked up a small, sterile pack, her hands steady. This woman had nerves of ice.
“Before I administer anything potentially harmful, or even anything strong for the shock, I must rule out the most common reason a woman of childbearing age, who is clearly malnourished and stressed, experiences these specific symptoms.”
My breath hitched. The thoughts, cold and ridiculous, slammed into my mind like a rogue wave, a fear I’d violently suppressed since that night in St. Petersburg. No, it couldn’t be.
“What reason?” I demanded the low menace back in my voice, but it was thin, shaky.
Alina ignored the menace. She was focused on her duty, not my rage. She looked at me, then back at Liza, and her face remained neutral, professionally distant.
“I cannot be sure until we take the test,” she said, her voice clear, delivering the news like a perfectly aimed bullet. “But I believe she’s pregnant.”
The word landed on me like a strategic detonation. It wasn’t a medical diagnosis; it was the complete, violent obliteration of my entire world.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. The color drained from my face so rapidly that I felt the cold sweat break out on my forehead. Liza’s voice, Isabella’s startled gasp, the insistent beep, beep of the heart monitor, all faded into a muffled roar.
My leverage was carrying my child, my heir.
My strategic plan was utterly ruined. Liza wasn’t a temporary hostage or a political bargaining chip anymore.
The truth I had intended to break from her over the next few nights had been replaced by a bond I could never break.
She had been holding my entire future, my lineage, in her fragile body, and I hadn’t known.
The thought made me furious and terrifyingly possessive all at once.
My blood pounded with the weight of this new, catastrophic reality.
Isabella, her eyes wide, recovered first. She gripped Liza’s hand, which was still lying limply on the sheet.
“Liza, tell me,” Isabella whispered, her voice laced with fear. “Do you believe this can be a possibility?”
I watched, frozen in place, unable to intervene. I needed Liza to deny it, to look at me and say Alina was a fool.
But Liza didn’t deny it. Her eyes, still pale and tired, fluttered open fully. She looked at Isabella, then at Emilia, who had gasped audibly when Alina spoke, and then, finally, she looked at me.
She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. “I missed my period,” Liza whispered hoarsely, her voice weak but steadying slightly. “And the fatigue… the nausea… I thought it was just stress.”
That silent confirmation was the final, crushing blow. My secret night in St. Petersburg had not only created a hostage, but a future I hadn’t wanted, a tie that made the marriage unbreakable. I stared at the woman I had brutalized and claimed, realizing she now held the ultimate power over me.
My mind was a crucible of pure, conflicting heat.
The attack on the wedding wasn’t just a political warning aimed at me.
It was an attack on my unborn heir. The realization struck me like a physical blow, elevating the chaos from a matter of money and power to a matter of bloodline and survival.
Arkady’s rival hadn’t just attacked my wife but had threatened the future of the Lebanon name.
I felt the sudden, desperate urge to throw everyone out, to secure the room, to clean the air, to ensure no one else witnessed this seismic shift in our foundation.
Liza’s voice, though weak, was absolute. She looked at me, her eyes burning with a new, terrible defiance.
“Get them out,” she whispered hoarsely.
The command, coming from the pale, collapsed woman on the bed, was startling. Yet, I instinctively obeyed. The power shift was total, immediate. She commanded, and I, the one who controlled New York’s underworld, moved to secure her privacy.
I turned to the other woman, my voice strained, tight with the need for immediate isolation.
“Emilia, Isabella, Alina. Leave.”
Emilia, always the worried sister-in-law, started to protest. “Roman, she needs immediate care! We should stay–“
“She needs quiet,” I cut her off. I pointed at the door. “Now. This is not a social call. Alina, you stay on the premises. Wait in the staff quarters. I will call you.”
Alina nodded, collecting her instruments with detached efficiency. “Mr. Lobanov, she needs water and absolute rest. No stress. No loud noises. You understand?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared at her until she retreated, followed by Emilia and a tearful Isabella.
The door shut with a soft, final hiss. The engineered silence of the suite rushed back in, broken only by the steady, accusatory beep, beep of the heart monitor. The immense silence amplified the sheer, devastating weight of the news.
I turned back to the bed. I didn’t rush.
I walked slowly toward her, the sound of my own footsteps heavy on the thick carpet.
The planned interrogation, the cold calculation of the wedding night, to break her walls and force the truth about Arkady, was wiped clean from my memory. It was irrelevant. A suicidal move.
I stopped at the edge of the bed, looking down at her. I was no longer seeing a pawn, or a defiant captive, or a beautiful rival. I saw the mother of my child.
Liza pushed herself up. The movement was slow, deliberate. She did not need my help. Her composure was returning, fueled by the terrifying knowledge she now held. She sat fully, pulling the silk sheets up to her waist. She looked like a battered queen reclaiming her throne.
She looked me dead in the eye, ready for my judgment, ready for my worst strategic move. “Now you know,” she said, her voice stronger, carrying a clear, steel note of defiance that pierced through my shock. “So do your worst.”
I stood there, staring at the woman who had just trapped me, realizing that my worst, the power I wielded, the violence I controlled, was now utterly complicated by the life she carried.