Chapter 297

ALEXANDER

I caught her before she could hit the concrete, one arm locking around her back, the other cradling her skull like she might shatter if her head so much as tipped the wrong way.

For half a second I just froze there, some desperate part of my brain scrambling to build an explanation I could survive.

She’s exhausted. That’s all this is.

Hours in this hole. No food, no water, no air that didn’t stink of rot. Her body just gave out the second it knew I was here. That’s all. It has to be all.

“Wife.” I shook her gently, carefully, like I could coax her back with softness alone.

“Wife. Open your eyes. I know you’re fucking tired — you can sleep all you want when we get home — but right now I need you to look at me.”

Nothing. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it felt like it might crack something.

“Wife—” I shook her shoulder harder this time, panic starting to override care. “Come on. Look at me. Right now. I need you to look at me right fucking now.”

Still nothing. Her head lolled against my arm, boneless, wrong, and something in me that had been holding steady all night finally snapped clean in half.

I pressed my palm to her cheek. The cold hit me like a fist to the chest.

Not tired-cold. Not cool-skin-in-a-drafty-room cold. Wrong cold — clammy, slick with sweat despite the freezing air, her lips gone a pale, sickening blue at the edges that made my stomach drop straight through the floor.

“No.” The word tore out of me, raw, unrecognizable. “No, no—come on, baby, no—”

My fingers fumbled for her pulse and missed it completely, hands shaking too hard to find anything.

“Fuck—” My voice cracked wide open. “Come on. Come on—”

I tried again, pressing harder, desperate, and finally—

There.

A pulse. Thin. Thready. So faint I had to hold my breath just to be sure I wasn’t imagining it, fluttering under my fingertips like it might vanish the second I stopped focusing on it.

The dread that crashed through me in that instant stole every ounce of air out of my lungs.

“Leo!” My voice ripped out of me, barely human. “Leo!”

He spun toward us, already moving.

“I can barely feel her fucking pulse — she’s freezing — call an ambulance, now!”

“I already have, but—”

“Call them again!” I didn’t care that I was screaming. Didn’t care about anything except the woman going limp and cold in my arms.

“Tell them to hurry. Tell them whatever they need to hear. If anything happens to my wife because they were too slow, I will burn this fucking city down!”

Leo’s phone was already at his ear, words tumbling out fast and clipped, but I couldn’t process any of it.

All I could hear was the roar filling my own skull and the terrible, absolute silence coming off her body.

I pulled her tighter against my chest, cradling her head, rocking her without meaning to — some primal, useless instinct convinced that if I just held on hard enough I could physically stop her from slipping any further away from me.

“Wife.” My voice shattered as I pressed my mouth close to her ear. “Open your eyes and look at me. Ask me what the fuck took me so long. Call me slow. Call me useless. Ask if I stopped for coffee on the way here, for fuck’s sake. I don’t care.”

My throat tightened painfully.

“Use that smart mouth of yours. Mock me. Insult me. Tell me I’m an overprotective bastard. Tell me I’m impossible. Hell, you can spend the rest of our lives reminding me how badly I fucked up.”

I brushed my thumb helplessly over her cheek. “Just say something, Alina. Anything. Fight with me. Argue with me. Be angry with me. Give me something.”

My hands were shaking violently against her face, against skin that felt less like her every second.

“Don’t you want to know about the kids?” My voice broke apart entirely, tears burning hot and sudden, blurring everything in front of me. “They’re safe. They’re home. They’re driving the maids fucking insane.”

I forced something that was supposed to be a laugh, and it came out wrecked — more like a sob with the shape of one.

“Matteo decided the goldfish needed a better view. Tried to flush them down the toilet so they could, and I quote, ‘swim in the ocean.’ We lost two before Rosa caught him. He’s already planning a memorial. Wants everyone to wear black.”

I pressed my lips to her temple, desperate, babbling now, anything to keep talking, anything to keep the silence from winning.

“And Sofia’s been telling everyone you’re a secret agent. Says that’s why you were gone. Told the other kids that you’re ‘on assignment.’ She’s got all of them believing it. I didn’t correct her, because God help me, baby, I needed to believe something that sounded that good too.”

My voice cracked wide open again.

“You have to hear the rest. You have to be there when Matteo holds his fish funeral, because I am not doing that alone. I already told him you’d want to say a few words.” A broken laugh-sob tore out of me.

“Open your eyes and tell me I’m an idiot. Tell me to stop hovering. Tell me you can breathe just fine without me shoving my face two inches from yours.”

I pressed my forehead to hers, shaking.

“I’ll take it. I’ll take all of it. Yell at me if you have to. Just—talk to me.”

Still fucking nothing.

Fuck. Did she get injured? Did Santos do something I didn’t see?

The thought hit like a second blow. My hands started moving over her body, frantic, searching for whatever I might have missed — another wound, a deeper injury, anything that would explain why she’d gone from looking at me to this in the space of thirty seconds.

Leo stood beside us, phone still clutched in one white-knuckled hand. "She'll be okay, boss — she's probably just—"

I wasn't listening.  My entire world had shrunk down to her face, her stillness.

My hand was still moving when it came away wet. What the fuck.

I looked down. For one full, suspended second my brain simply refused to process it — just stared at the dark stain across my palm.

I swallowed hard and made myself look down.

Blood. Soaking through the fabric between her legs, dark and spreading fast.

"What the—" The words scraped out of me, thin, disbelieving, refusing to fully form.

"Shit. Fuck—"

"Leo!

He looked over, and whatever he saw written across my face drained every trace of color out of his own.

“She’s fucking bleeding. Where the fuck is that ambulance?”

“I trying....the nearest hospital from here is fifty minutes out, boss. Even with lights and a clear road, that’s the best they’ll do.”

“Then get a fucking helicopter. Get every fucking medic we have on the payroll. I want someone here, now, before she bleeds out on this goddamn floor!”

LEO

He broke. I watched Alexander Dimitri break right in front of my eyes.

I had known him for years — since we were kids running wild through streets that already belonged to men twice our age.

I had seen him after his mother’s death. I had seen him after deals gone wrong, after betrayals, after nights that ended with more blood than anyone should ever have on their hands. In all that time, I could count on one hand the moments he had ever let the mask slip.

Since the day we buried his mother, I had never seen him shed a single tear.

Of course not. He was the boss.

The Mafia king. The most ruthless Bratva leader this city had ever seen. Cruel when he needed to be. Heartless when the job required it. Alexander Dimitri did not cry.

But right now, he was breaking.

He didn’t care that his men were watching. He didn’t care about the blood still drying on his own clothes or the wound in his thigh that had to be screaming with every movement. All of his focus — every shattered piece of it — was on Alina.

His shoulders shook as he rocked her against his chest, arms locked so tightly around her it looked like he was trying to fuse her body to his.

I stood frozen a few feet away, the jacket I’d pulled from my own shoulders still clutched in one hand.

“Boss… she’ll be okay,” I said quietly, stepping closer and carefully draping the jacket over her body.

He didn’t move. Alexander was so far gone he didn’t even hear me.

I looked down at Alina. Her face was pressed into the curve of his neck, half-hidden by greasy, matted hair. I leaned forward, ignoring the choked sounds Alexander was trying — and failing — to swallow, and even ignoring the way my own stomach cramped at the sight of her like this.

I brushed her hair aside just enough to see the bruised side of her face and the thin cut on her throat. Then I pressed two fingers to the side of her neck, right over the pulse point.

Faint. Slow. But steady.

My eyes dropped to her chest, watching the shallow rise and fall. Too slow. Almost like every breath was a fight she was barely winning.

I exhaled and looked around the cell..

“Boss. We have to go.”

When he didn’t respond, I put a hand on his shoulder and tightened my grip.

“Alexander. We need to get out of here. Now.”

Still nothing. What the fuck was going through his head? Was he too far gone to even hear me?

I shoved the thought aside and tried again, voice lower, more deliberate.

“We need to get her out of this place. She’s not safe in this rotting cell. She needs clean air. She needs you functioning.”

His head snapped up. The look in his eyes nearly stopped my heart.

Grief. Terror. Rage. All of it raw and unfiltered, staring straight through me.

His eyes flared dangerously for a second — the old Alexander flashing through — and I knew the words had finally landed. Good. He needed to snap out of it before the shock finished what Santos had started.

Alexander looked down at Alina again. The hard edges of his expression softened, just slightly, into something almost unbearably gentle.

“She… I…” His voice cracked. He pulled her tighter against his chest, burying his face in her hair for a moment. “I —”

“I know,” I said quietly. “We’ll take care of her. But right now our only priority is getting her somewhere safe. Out of here..Somewhere we can actually help her.”

He drew a long, shaky breath, then nodded once.

Alexander caressed her cheek with the back of his knuckles, fingers barely grazing her skin, handling her with a gentleness I had never believed he was capable of. Then he shifted her carefully in his arms and rose to his feet.

I saw the limp the moment he put weight on his injured leg. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t make a sound. He just adjusted his hold on Alina, cradling her against his chest like she was the only thing in the world that still mattered, and started walking.

“Boss—your leg. Let me carry her.”

Alexander’s eyes cut to mine, sharp and absolute even through the exhaustion and the tears still drying on his face.

“No!” His voice was low, rough, and left no room for argument. “I’ve got her. She’s been out of my arms long enough already.”

I raised both hands slightly in surrender.

“Okay. Okay. I’m right behind you.”

I fell into step beside him, already scanning the corridor ahead, phone still in my hand, ready to clear the path and keep anyone who even looked at them the wrong way from getting close.

We were getting her help. Whatever it took.