Chapter 39 Aleksei
ALEKSEI
By the time I step out of Zatanna’s room, I’ve already made the decision.
Today I kill him.
Not later. Not strategically. Not with patience or pressure or any of the careful methods I’ve used to keep this war from becoming personal in the most final way.
It is personal now. He’s involved. I know it.
How, I don’t know yet.
How he got into my house, how he got close enough to her food, how he thought he could touch what was mine and keep breathing after it, I do not know.
Right now, I do not care.
I walk down the corridor with that single thought in my head and every other one stripped away. My men fall in behind me without being told. They know my face. They know the pace of my steps. They know what it means when I stop looking like a man and start looking like a verdict.
The elevator ride down is too slow.
The lobby is too bright.
By the time I get to the hospital doors, my hand is already reaching for my phone to tell Sergei to bring the car around.
Then my phone rings first.
Anton.
I answer without slowing. “What.”
His voice is tight. “Boss. Alena was seen walking into the hospital.”
I stop so abruptly one of my men nearly walks into my back.
“What?”
“Five minutes ago. Security cam at the west entrance. She came in alone.”
Every part of me goes cold. “Where?”
“We lost her after the second-floor transfer.”
I curse and turn around so fast my coat swings wide.
The men behind me don’t ask questions. They just pivot with me.
By the time I hit the elevator again, I’m already putting the pieces together too fast and not fast enough. Alena walking in now, after the evidence, after the pressure building against her, after everything. Either she’s suicidal, or she’s desperate, or someone sent her.
The third possibility is the one I hate most.
The doors open. I stride out into the corridor at speed, and one of my men stationed near Zatanna’s room is already there, face pale.
“She went in,” he says.
My heart stops once and then starts again harder.
With him at my side, I hit the door.
We don’t knock. We barge in.
The door slams open hard enough to crack against the wall.
For one second, the whole room is chaos without motion.
Alena is on the floor. Blood at her hairline.
Zatanna is half upright in the bed, eyes wide and wild, hand still smashed against the call button.
And standing beside her, breathing too evenly for someone who should be panicking, is my mother.
Everything in me goes still. Not confusion. Recognition.
The kind that arrives so fast it feels like memory, not thought. Every missing piece. Every too-clean answer. Every time the trail pointed somewhere obvious. Every time I chose to hate the convenient woman instead of asking who benefited most while I was busy burning in the wrong direction.
My mother turns to me. And smiles. “My son,” she says softly, as if we’ve walked into tea, not a scene with one woman bleeding on the floor and another white with terror in a hospital bed.
The silence is worse than shouting could have been.
I look at Alena first.
Alive. Dazed. Trying to push herself up.
Then at Zatanna.
Her face tells me everything before she says a word.
She knows. Or enough.
My man steps in behind me. “Boss—”
“Out.”
He hesitates.
I don’t look at him when I say it again. “Out.”
He leaves. Closes the door behind him. Good. No witnesses. Not for this.
I walk into the room slowly.
My mother watches me come with that same calm expression, but I know her too well now. There is tension in her shoulders. In her jaw. Not fear exactly. Expectation. Like she has been waiting for this moment and rehearsing what kind of son she will still have when it arrives.
“You,” I say. One word.
She lifts her chin a fraction. “Aleksei.”
Alena lets out a pained breath from the floor. “Well. This is new.”
I ignore her. I keep looking at my mother.
And as I do, the rage changes shape.
I look at my mother and say, “It was you.”
She doesn’t deny it. That tells me enough before she even opens her mouth.
“Aleksei,” she says.
“You poisoned her.”
She lifts her chin a little. “I did what was necessary.” That answer almost sends me through the roof.
I take another step toward her. “You poisoned her.”
“Yes,” she says again, calmer than she has any right to be. “Because you were losing perspective.”
Behind me, I hear Zatanna suck in a breath.
I don’t look away from my mother. “She was pregnant,” I say.
“I know.”
My hands curl into fists.
That is the moment I understand how far gone this is. Not just the poison. Not just the attack. She knew about the baby. She knew and did it anyway.
Alena laughs once from the floor. Weak. Bitter. “Well. At least now we’re all caught up.”
I ignore her. I keep looking at my mother. “Why?”
She actually looks irritated by the question, like the answer should be obvious. “Because my son was about to ruin himself.”
That’s when Zatanna speaks.
“Ruin himself?” she says. Her voice is shaking, but she gets the words out. “You tried to kill me.”
My mother turns to her and says, “I tried to stop this before it became permanent.”
I can feel my pulse in my throat now.
“She called me a whore,” Zatanna says quietly.
She knew exactly what would wound Zatanna and exactly how to use it.
“You framed Alena,” I say.
“She made a convenient target.”
Alena closes her eyes for one second, like even she’s tired of being right.
I finally look at her. “You knew.”
She gives me a flat look from the floor. “I suspected. That is not the same thing.”
Fair enough.
I look back at my mother. “You let me go after the wrong person.”
“I let you see what your anger wanted to see.”
Because she’s right.
I wanted Alena to be the answer because Alena made sense. My mother knew that. She counted on it.
I should have seen it sooner. I didn’t.
Zatanna almost died because I didn’t.
That thought clears my head in a very dangerous way.
I take out my phone and call Sergei.
He answers immediately. “Boss.”
“Come to recovery. Bring two women from security and the hospital administrator.”
He doesn’t ask why. “On my way.”
I hang up.
My mother watches me now, and for the first time I see something shift in her face. Not panic.
But she understands this is not going her way.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I look straight at her. “I’m done listening to you.”
“I’m your mother.”
“And she is the mother of my child.”
The room goes quiet after that. Even Zatanna stops breathing for a second. My mother looks at me like I just struck her.
Good. Let her feel one clean hit for once.
She says, “You would choose this over blood.”
I laugh once. “This? You mean the woman you poisoned?”
She doesn’t answer. Because there is no answer that makes her sound like anything but what she is. I take out my phone and make a curt call.
The door opens. I know they’re out there, waiting for my next command. I have made enough donations to this hospital to know this will never leave this place.
Sergei comes in first, then with two of my men, then the administrator looking sick. Sergei takes one look around and understands enough.
I point at my mother. “She leaves this floor now. No contact with Zatanna. No contact with the baby. No phone. No visitors without approval.”
My mother’s voice goes cold. “Aleksei.”
“No.”
She steps toward me and says, “Think carefully.”
“I have.”
She doesn’t fight them. She just looks at me with this mix of anger and disbelief, like she still can’t accept that I’m not going to bend. “You are making a mistake,” she says.
I look at her and say, “No. I made the mistake when I trusted you.”
That shuts her up. They take her out.
The door closes. I stand there for one second and do nothing.
Then I go to Zatanna. Always her first.
I sit on the edge of the bed and put my hands on her face. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head, but she’s crying now. Silent tears. Shock more than pain.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I hate how weak the words sound. I hate that they are true anyway.
She grabs my shirt and says, “You came.”
“Yes.”
Too late, my mind says. I shut that down immediately. “Yes,” I say again.
Behind me, Alena says, “I would really prefer not to stay on the floor for the emotional reunion.”
I look back at Sergei. “Get Alena treated. Keep her separate. No one touches her unless I say so.”
He nods. “Done.”
Then I look at Zatanna again. She is pale, exhausted, shaken, and still here. But still here.
I lean down and kiss her forehead. Then I say the only thing that matters now.
“It’s okay, the worst is over.”