Chapter 318

ALEXANDER

I stepped forward and gripped Santos by the hair, snapping his head up so he had no choice but to look at me.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, a satisfied smile tugging at my mouth.

“My wife just gave me an order. She told me to finish you.”

I watched the fear settle deeper into his expression and felt nothing but cold satisfaction.

You should feel honored.” I tilted my head. “My wife gives me plenty of orders.”

A faint smirk tugged at my mouth.

“Most of them I have absolutely no intention of following.”

I tightened my grip. “But this one?”

My smile widened. “Finally, an order I can follow without an argument.”

He swallowed hard. After one final look at me, his eyes squeezed shut.

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” I said coldly.

“You came after the woman I fucking love.”

He tried to fight me, but he barely had the strength to lift his head. I grabbed his hair again and hauled him upright. His legs shook beneath him, barely keeping him standing.

“How does it feel?” I murmured, leaning in closer as his body sagged forward against my grip. “No honor. No power.”

He choked, a wet, broken sound, the last scraps of defiance finally draining out of him. I kept him upright by the hair, forcing him to stay conscious for every second of it.

“All that planning. All that obsession. And this is where it ends—on your knees in a basement, bleeding on my floor, while the woman you thought you could take watches you die.” I let out a quiet, humorless breath.

“You spent years trying to become her nightmare. Look at you now. You’re not even worth the fear anymore.

And in a few minutes, you’ll be nothing but a fucking corpse. Quite the career downgrade, don’t you think?”

I pulled back and drove my foot into his knee.

A sharp crack echoed through the basement. Santos buckled with a strangled roar, collapsing to his knees before finally crumpling onto his side—exactly where he belonged. Beneath me.

I crouched beside him, bringing my mouth close to his ear.

“You know, I could have made this much worse. I know how to break bones in a thousand different ways. You should feel incredibly lucky I stopped myself at one.” I paused, letting the words sink in.

“Although I’ll admit, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine were tempting.”

I leaned back, studying him with mild disappointment.

“I’m giving you an early death. Not because you’ve earned it.” My smile returned. “Because I have somewhere else to be.”

I glanced toward Alina, who was watching with a blank expression.

"My wife is waiting for me." I looked back at him.

"And frankly, I'd like to get back to her before she decides to finish the job herself. The doctor told her to rest. She's already ignored roughly half my instructions today, which for her is practically a personal best in restraint."

I chuckled. "She’s pregnant, stubborn, and far more scary than you ever were, if we’re being honest. And she’s supposed to be on fucking bed rest.

You, at least, I can kill and get it over with. Her?” I shook my head.

“I can’t leave her alone for twenty minutes without coming back to find her standing on furniture, negotiating with medical professionals, or discovering a brand-new way to give me a fucking heart attack.”

A pause. “Honestly, I’m beginning to think bed rest is a punishment for me.”

My voice dropped into something almost conversational. “You’re dying. She’s watching. I’m bored. And it’s incredibly rude to keep a lady waiting.”

I pulled out my favorite knife. It only seemed fair that I finish this.

I pressed it to his neck and made the first cut—shallow, deliberate, nowhere near deep enough to end things quickly.

He gurgled and tried to twist away, but there was nowhere left to go. That cut was only the beginning.

The blade trailed slowly down toward his chest.

“This is what happens when you try to take something that doesn’t belong to you.”

His eyes widened with recognition, but I didn’t give him time to process it. I drove the knife into his chest.

He screamed. I pulled it free and thrust it in again. And again. Blood was everywhere—on the ground, my clothes, my hands, my face—but I kept going until the struggling finally stopped and Santos went still beneath me.

I sat back on my heels, breathing hard, and looked down at the mess.

“You absolute bastard,” I muttered, glancing at the blood soaking into my shirt.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get this out of good fabric? Next time someone decides to obsess over my wife, they could at least have the decency to die cleaner.”

He deserved everything I had given him and more. The only real irritation left was that it had still been too easy. Too quick. I could have drawn it out for hours and it still wouldn’t have been enough.

But I had avenged my wife in the only way I knew how.

ALINA

I didn’t look away.

Not when Alexander forced Santos onto his knees.

Not when the knife caught the low light.

Not when the final, wet sound cut through the basement and the body slumped to the concrete.

I waited for it—the nausea, the pity, the instinctive flinch that was supposed to come when you watched a man die.

Nothing came.

No sickness.

No horror.

No guilt.

Just a vast, quiet emptiness where fear used to live.

Santos had haunted the edges of my life for so long that I had almost forgotten what it felt like to breathe without the weight of him pressing against my ribs. Now he was gone. A broken shape on the floor. Nothing more than evidence that the nightmare had finally run out of road.

Alexander stood over him for a long moment, chest rising and falling hard, the knife still loose in his hand.

Then he exhaled, slow and controlled, and the violence seemed to drain out of him like water leaving a cracked glass.

He wiped the blade clean on Santos’s shirt, set it aside, and washed his hands in the sink against the wall.

The water ran pink, then clear. He dried them with deliberate care, as if erasing every trace mattered more than the act itself.

Only then did he turn to me.

Our eyes met across the room. Something unspoken passed between us—understanding, finality, the quiet knowledge that this chapter was over and neither of us needed to explain what it had cost.

He walked toward me.

Without a word he bent and lifted me into his arms, one arm under my knees, the other supporting my back. Bridal style.

I looped my arms around his neck.

“I can walk.”

“I’m aware.” His voice was dry. “I’m choosing to ignore that information.”

Behind us I heard Leo mutter, “And there they go. Romance lives.”

Alexander didn’t even glance back. “One more word and you’re on gate duty for a month.”

Silence followed us up the stairs.

I rested my head against his shoulder, feeling the solid strength of him, the faint remaining tension still coiled in his muscles.

He carried me like I weighed nothing, careful in a way that still managed to feel possessive, as if even now he was making a point.

“You’re very quiet,” he said after a moment.

“I’m processing.”

“Regretting coming down?”

“No.” I traced a finger along the collar of his shirt, following the edge of a drying bloodstain. “I thought I might feel something. Pity. Disgust. Anything.”

He glanced down at me. “And?”

“Nothing.” I met his eyes. “He doesn’t get to take anything else from me. Not even a reaction.”

Alexander’s arms tightened slightly around me. He pressed a brief kiss to my temple and kept walking.

The house felt different on the way back. Lighter. As if some invisible pressure had finally lifted from the walls and the air itself had remembered how to move. We passed two of his men in the hallway; both looked away politely when they saw me in his arms, though I caught the quick flicker of surprise in their eyes.

“You’re going to start rumors,” I said.

“Let them talk.” His mouth curved. “Husband carries wife to bed. Scandalous.”

“After killing a man in the basement.”

“Details.”

Rogers was already waiting outside our bedroom door, a folder in one hand.

His gaze flicked from Alexander’s blood-specked shirt to me in his arms, then back again.

“Efficient timing,” Rogers said mildly. “I was just about to come find you.”

Alexander pushed the door open with his shoulder, carried me to the bed, and set me down with exaggerated care, as if Rogers might deduct points for roughness.

I smoothed my clothes, suddenly aware of my flushed cheeks and the fact that I had just watched a man die less than ten minutes ago.

“Ready for the final check?” Rogers asked.

Alexander stepped aside, but I didn’t miss the way his shoulders stayed tense, arms crossing over his chest like he was bracing for bad news even now.

Rogers set his bag down and got straight to work—blood pressure, gentle examination, quiet questions about pain and dizziness.

Alexander hovered the entire time, watching every movement like he expected the doctor to suddenly announce something terrible.

When Rogers finally straightened and closed his bag, the silence in the room felt heavier than it should have.

“Everything looks good,” he said simply. “The bleeding has fully resolved. No signs of further complications. Bed rest is no longer necessary.”

He opened the folder, scanning the top page once more for confirmation.

“And the test results are back. Everything is clear. You’re cleared to resume normal activity. No more bed rest.”

Relief loosened something tight in my chest.

Then Rogers glanced at Alexander, the faintest hint of dry amusement in his eyes.

“And yes—before you ask for the thirtieth time this week—strenuous activity is also cleared. In case that happens to be the only question you’ve been interested in.”

My face went hot.

Alexander, the absolute menace, only smiled. Slow. Satisfied. Completely unrepentant.

“Out,” he said.

Rogers raised a brow. “I’m sorry?”

Alexander’s voice remained perfectly calm. “Out. My wife and I have some strenuous activities to perform.”

For a moment the room was silent.

Then Rogers closed the folder with a soft snap, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“Of course,” he said. “Far be it from me to delay medical recovery.” He walked to the door, paused, and added without turning around, “Try not to undo all my hard work in the first hour.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

“I cannot believe you just said that.”

Alexander braced a knee on the bed and leaned over me, eyes dark with barely restrained amusement.

“What? He cleared you. I was being efficient.”

“You were being shameless.”

“I’m motivated.” threading his fingers through mine.

“So many days of fucking restraint, wife. Do you have any idea how long that is in husband years?”

I tried—and failed—to keep a straight face. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re cleared.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, then the other side, soft and lingering.

“Which means the only thing stopping me now is you telling me to wait.”

I looked up at him—the man who had just ended the nightmare that had followed me for years, who carried me like something precious even with blood still drying on his shirt, who could switch from lethal to teasing in the space of a heartbeat.

I slid my hands up his chest and into his hair.

“I’m not telling you to wait,” I whispered.

His smile turned wicked and warm at the same time.

“Good.”