Not accusing. Not curious. Just noting it.
I feel my whole body tighten.
She notices that too. But she says nothing.
Not here. Not in front of Zatanna. One more kindness I may not deserve.
Instead, she steps closer and touches my sleeve once, barely there. “You look tired, Alyosha.”
I don’t answer. Because tired is too small a word for what the last day has done to me. Because there is a pregnant woman in my house, under my protection, carrying a child she says is not mine.
My mother insists on taking Zatanna herself.
She does it in that quiet way she has, the one that makes refusal feel childish. One hand rests lightly on the banister, the other gestures toward the hallway upstairs as if this is all already settled.
“Come,” she says to Zatanna. “If my son shows you the room, he’ll only stand in the doorway pretending not to worry.”
Zatanna glances at me.
I keep my face neutral.
My mother is not wrong.
Zatanna gives me the smallest, exhausted almost-smile and lets herself be led down the corridor. I watch them go for one second too long. My mother moving slower than she should, pale but upright. Zatanna careful with each step, one hand unconsciously at the base of her back.
Then I turn away before the sight of them together does something I can’t afford.
By the time I get back downstairs, Sergei and Anton are already in the study waiting for me. They know my face well enough by now to understand that whatever patience I had left ended on that sidewalk.
I shut the door behind me. “No delays,” I say. “I want everything.”
Sergei nods once. “We have the man from the street.”
“Then start there.”
Anton steps forward. “He’s talking?”
“Not enough,” I say. “Fix that.”
Neither of them reacts. Neither of them needs clarification.
I move behind the desk but don’t sit. Sitting would imply this is a normal briefing. It isn’t. “Find out who sent him,” I say. “Not guesses. Not theories. Names.”
“So far,” Sergei says carefully, “there’s nothing linking the attack directly to your father.”
That buys him exactly one second of silence.
Then I say, “Then look harder.”
He inclines his head. “We are.”
“No. You were. Now you start acting like a woman eight months pregnant was nearly dragged off my street and I had to be the one who got there first.”
The room goes still.
Anton glances once at Sergei, then back to me. “You think she was the target.”
“I know she was the target.”
