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.”
