Chapter 299

ALEXANDER

I thought I was losing my fucking mind.

The SUV tore through the darkness, but inside the car, everything felt unnaturally still. Nobody spoke.

I couldn't look anywhere but at Alina.

My eyes stayed locked on her face, watching every shallow rise of her chest, every faint movement, searching desperately for something—anything.

A twitch of her fingers. A flutter of her eyelids. A change in her breathing. Anything. But there was nothing.

Every second that passed without her waking felt like another piece of me was being ripped away.

When the car finally stopped, I pushed the door open and climbed out with her still in my arms.

Leo stepped forward to take her.

“I’ll take her.”

“No fucking way.” I walked straight past him, holding her tighter against my chest.

There was no fucking way he was holding her again. It had taken everything I had to hand her over the first time. Not now. I didn’t care that it felt like my leg was about to fall off.

I needed to feel her against me, needed the proof that she was finally safe in my arms and nowhere else.

My injured leg dragged behind me as I limped inside and headed straight for the stairs.

Every step sent fresh fire up my thigh, but I kept going. I didn’t stop until I reached our room. The door was already open.

The second I stepped inside Alexis rushed toward me, eyes wide and panicked.

“Alexander—” She hovered close, hands fluttering like she wanted to touch Alina but didn’t know where it was safe. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“Dr. Rogers is already here with his team. They’re waiting in the study—”

“Then tell Rogers to get his ass up to my bedroom now,” I snapped.

“What the fuck is he waiting for—an engraved invitation?”

I limped past her towards the stairs, Alina still cradled tightly against my chest.

Every step sent another bolt of pain through my leg, but I didn't slow down.

“Alexander, your leg—”

“Can wait.”

I hit the bottom of the stairs and started up. One step. Then another.

My injured leg screamed with every movement, my vision flickering at the edges, but I kept climbing.

I had to brace my shoulder against the wall more than once just to keep from going down.

By the time I reached the landing my breath was ragged and my thigh was on fire. I forced myself the last few meters to our bedroom.

The door stood open. I limped inside and crossed straight to the bed, lowering her as carefully as I could onto the mattress.

My arms shook from the effort. I adjusted the pillow under her head, brushed matted hair away from her face, and only then let myself straighten—barely.

Alexis was already pulling the covers up around her, still asking questions I didn’t have the strength to answer.

A few minutes later the doctor came rushing in — the same man who had patched me up more times than I could count.

He took one look at Alina and another at the blood still seeping through my pant leg.

“Boss, let me look at that before you pass out.”

How the hell did he think I was going to let him touch my leg before he made sure Alina was alive?

“I’m fine.” I didn't even look at him. My entire attention remained on her. “She comes first.”

“Boss you're —”

“We don't have fucking time for this!” My voice exploded through the room.

“She is unconscious, she's bleeding, and we don't know what's wrong with her. So you can stitch my fucking leg after you make sure my wife survives this.”

Roger opened his mouth again.

I cut him off. “Now get to work.”

Dr. Roger opened his mouth again, but the doorway filled with another presence before he could argue.

Vasil.

My father stood in the doorway, his expression carved from stone. His gaze swept over me first—blood-soaked trousers, pale face, the way I was barely keeping myself upright—then settled on Alina.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Not now, Dad.”

“Oh, it is absolutely fucking now.” He stepped into the room.

"You've been shot. You're bleeding through your clothes fast enough to leave a trail across three floors. You're shaking so hard you can barely stand upright, and your solution is to refuse medical attention because you've apparently decided bleeding out beside her is some kind of romantic gesture." Vasil's voice dripped with dry, exhausted disbelief.

"Truly, very touching. I'm sure she'll wake up thrilled to find you dead on the floor beside her bed."

"I said I'm fine."

"Of course you did." He pinched the bridge of his nose like he could physically massage away the headache I was giving him.

"Why would my son ever do the sensible thing, when the theatrical, self-destructive option is right there?"

“I’m not leaving her.”

"Who said anything about leaving your wife?" Vasil's voice stayed calm, almost conversational, which somehow made it land harder than shouting ever could have. "Get a grip, son. Nobody in this room is asking you to walk out that door. I'm asking you to stop bleeding on it.

The doctor is going to examine your wife. You are going to sit your stubborn ass down and let someone stop you from bleeding all over the expensive rugs. Or would you prefer to impress her by fainting the moment she opens her eyes?”

I glared at him.

"Don't glare at me." Vasil's voice cracked like a whip, every trace of dry sarcasm burned clean out of it. "You're bleeding out, and you're no good to her like this. She's being taken care of — she's already in better hands than yours right now. You're swaying on your feet, white as those sheets, and every second you keep standing there dripping blood on my floor, you're making Rogers' job harder when he needs to be focused on her. Not you."

He closed the last of the distance between us, voice dropping lower, harder, every trace of amusement gone from it now.

"Sit down. Let them work on her. You can hold her hand once you're not one bad breath away from joining her on a bed of your own." His jaw tightened, something almost desperate flickering behind the command.

"Let one of the nurses patch you up, before I make Leo and Vincent do it for you. I am not burying my son on the same night I got my daughter-in-law back alive. Sit down."

I looked at Alina one more time. Pale. Still. Too quiet.

Then I looked at my father.

Every instinct screamed against it.

But the rational part of me—the part that still remembered how close I’d come to losing her—knew he was right.

"Fine."

Vasil gave a short, dry nod. "Progress. Miracles do happen after all."

I turned to Rogers. "Make sure she's okay. I want her okay. Do you understand me?"

"Boss—but"

I surged forward and fisted his collar before he could finish, hauling him up until his feet barely touched the floor.

"But what?" My voice cracked with everything I was barely holding together.

He swallowed hard, eyes wide, and nodded fast enough that I let him go. He straightened his shirt with visibly shaking hands, not meeting my eyes.

I glanced at my father. Vasil shook his head, exasperation carved deep into every line of his face, eyes hard as they settled on me.

"Rogers, do exactly what he says. He is never going to listen to a single person in this room where she's concerned, and God knows we don't have time to argue him out of it tonight." His gaze cut back to me, sharper.

I gave him a look that would've made most men in this house take a step back.

He didn't move an inch.

Alexis stepped closer, already rolling her sleeves up.

"I'll deal with his leg." She glanced down at the blood-soaked bandage and exhaled through her nose.

"I've done it more times than I can count at this point. Man could have a limb hanging on by a single tendon and still insist he's fine." She reached for the scissors.

"Honestly, Alexander, I'm starting to think stubbornness is the only organ you have left functioning tonight."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"No." She didn't even look up. "You need an exorcist."

I glared at her.

"Stop glaring at me and sit your stubborn ass down before I sedate you myself, and don't think I won't — I know exactly where Rogers keeps the good stuff."

"Whatever..."

I climbed onto it beside Alina before anyone could stop me, careful, moving slow around the pain still tearing through my leg, and pulled her against my side for one more second, breathing in whatever was left of her scent underneath the blood and the dirt and the antiseptic already hanging in the air.

Then I turned a fierce stare on Rogers.

"Well?" My voice came out low, dangerous, done with every second of delay.

"What the fuck are you waiting for. Make my wife better."

"Right, boss." He didn't argue, didn't hesitate — just nodded fast and turned to the room at large, voice sharpening into something professional and clipped.

"Everyone else, out. I need space to examine her properly."

The room cleared quickly. Only Alexis and I remained. She dropped to her knees beside my bed and started cutting away the ruined fabric around my thigh, hands steady even though her face was tight with worry.

Rogers leaned forward, placing a knee on the mattress beside Alina. He took hold of the waistband of her pants but didn’t move them yet. His eyes lifted to mine, careful.

“Boss… may I? With your permission. I need to see where the bleeding is.”

My hands fisted at my sides. The thought of another man seeing her body made something violent twist in my chest. I wanted to put my fist through his face for even asking. But what choice did I have?

I forced the word out.

“Do it...”

Rogers nodded once and carefully eased the fabric down. His expression changed the moment he saw the blood.

He pressed two fingers to the side of her neck, counting under his breath, then moved lower, examining the source of the bleeding with clinical speed.

Suddenly his voice cracked through the quiet room like a whip.

“Get two large-bore IVs in now! Start fluids—wide open. I need O-negative blood on standby and a crash cart in here. Move!”

Nurses who had been waiting just outside scrambled into the room.

I shot up so fast...“What the fuck? What’s wrong with her?”

Rogers didn’t look up. His hands kept working, voice tight and focused.

“She’s bleeding heavily from the uterus. Her pulse is weak and thready. Blood pressure is dropping. She’s likely miscarrying—or about to. We need to try to stop the hemorrhage and stabilize her. If there’s still a viable pregnancy, we’re going to do everything we can to save the baby. But right now the priority is keeping her alive.”

Baby?

My ears rang. The floor seemed to tilt under me. I stared at Alina’s pale face, at the blood, at the doctor’s hands moving too fast, and for a second I couldn’t draw air.

A BABY!!