Chapter 382: Freaking Out Is A Natural State Of Being

[FROLO]

"Doctor, any updates on him?" Alek asked, the defeat in his voice obvious.

When Kenzo had told him they had to transfer the Joe patient, Alek’s heart almost stopped. It wasn’t what he had been hoping for that late in the night, but then the truth was something that even he had to face.

Whatever had been done to Joe was reversible.

But the Bratva infirmary was not equipped for that. Not to mention there wasn’t time to look for hospitals quiet enough that they could buy. So Kenzo had trusted Aslava Hospital because it was the one place he knew that offered the best services.

And now, Alek was staring at his boyfriend from years back, looking like a vegetable on the bed.

The doctor looked like she was not leaving anytime soon, and honestly, that didn’t worry Aleksandr. After all, the doctor’s silence had already been bought by Kenzo.

He had nothing to worry about, right?

"We will need to monitor him for the next three days. The amount of drugs in his system was way too much and has to be flushed out regularly. Otherwise, he might die," the doctor said to him, and Alek stared at the man on the bed.

He looked so much like Joe.

He looked like the boy he had loved and lost, and gods be damned if that didn’t scare him to the core.

In here he wasn’t a Bratva leader anymore. Instead, he was back thirty years ago. Back to the day that he had almost lost Joe.

Almost, because Joe was here.

Alek had checked the bullet wounds and they matched the targeted points from that night. Even the one to the head had matched. And Alek had murdered enough people to know that sometimes bullets could be lodged in the head and people could survive.

Maybe he was being a little too desperate.

Maybe he was holding onto something that even he knew was impossible.

But in a world where he had just gotten Joe, or even the slightest reminder of Joe, Alek wasn’t about to give up. He would not.

This man was Joe.

He knew it.

He didn’t care what the DNA results or the isotope tests said about him.

This man...

Was his beloved.

"Doctor, what do I do? I can’t... I can’t lose him," Alek pleaded as Kenzo stayed in the back watching out for security.

Kenzo had run the doctor’s badge number through the system, and her name and the details were a match. Even her profile. And the mask on her face wasn’t even there to hide her face.

It was just a medical need, given the fact that the patient on the bed was an addict and a junkie. So, they all relaxed.

But maybe that wasn’t what they should have done.

Because across the city, at the Hercules camp, Rastenkin watched in disgust, his hand on the one button that would flip Aleksandr’s relief into something else. Something worse than pain and pity.

"Do it," Reeves said, like they had watched enough of the man who wasn’t even to be trusted anymore.

"We’re ready, Meera. Are you?" Rastenkin said into the mouthpiece and on the camera. Meera nodded slowly, still listening to the senator whine about a man who wasn’t even the ghost of his past.

"Meera is ready, Elara. All operations are a go," Rastenkin said, and in that moment, three things happened at the same time.

Elara pressed a button on her phone, and on the screen, Raul began seizing violently, his body shaking in the kind of way that had Aleksandr petrified, staring at the man he believed was the love of his life.

Irina, who was with Yaroslav at the Bratva depot, got the signal to interrupt the operations of the day.

The moment they got confirmation of Elara pressing the button, they began their own massacre of the men at the depot. They didn’t come to take anyone alive for questioning or anything. They didn’t come for the products that Alek was pushing through this port, no.

They had come to kill.

To flatten them all. And with a team of ten other Moskowsky mercs, they were set.

Svet and Andre, who were at the Aslava Hospital’s server room, shut down the power, forcing the hospital to rely on emergency power. They had made sure there was enough that could be relied on so the patients who were critical weren’t affected.

Meanwhile, they used the hospital’s server too to smoke out the Bratva men and women who had been planted there. At first, it wasn’t easy because the hospital emergency systems were not supposed to be dragged out for that long.

But then, as a contingency, they had shut down the district where Aslava Hospital was. So, the city believed that it was not a hospital-only issue, but that it affected the entire district too.

That bought them half an hour to do what they needed to do.

Inside the private room, Meera made a move to leave, and Alek stopped her as was expected.

"Where are you going?" Alek asked, not understanding why the doctor would leave a patient who had just been seizing.

Sure, the seizures had stopped, and Meera had stabilized him with the syringe with gray liquid, but even she knew it wouldn’t be enough to keep the man okay after three days. But then Sergei had asked for three days, not more.

"Getting the toxicologist. Can’t page them since our systems are down," Meera said calmly, her composure something that had Alek raising a brow.

In her earpiece, a reminder came from Rastenkin.

"You are not to kill or break him, Meera. Beating Aleksandr stupid isn’t the mission. Understand?"

Meera sighed.

This man was no different from Raul in the bed. Same people who promised love and protection only to use people’s weaknesses against them.

The urge to pummel his head into the wall on Katya’s behalf was strong, but she was a soldier, and her commander had demanded something else.

So, she would behave.

For now.

"You’re not leaving him without help," Alek said, his voice cold and the warning evident even though he had come with the other doctors for the Bratva here.

Six in total, Meera had counted.

Six people who had been unable to tell that the man they were presenting to their boss wasn’t even what their boss was looking for.

What a joke this team was.

"This is a hospital, Senator. We don’t attend to one patient the whole day, in case you didn’t understand how healthcare systems work. You have the other doctors to monitor him.

"Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to tend to," Meera said, not mincing her words. She tried to sound as polite as she could. But then this man’s voice from that phone call with Katya still haunted her.

Pathetic omega, he had called Katya, yet he was here pining over a man who wasn’t even an alpha in the first place. Who wasn’t even his dead beloved. Who was nothing like what he had imagined.

Who was the pathetic one?

"You have his chart. You tend to him," Aleksandr said, getting into Meera’s personal space.

And Meera just scoffed.

"You’re getting brave, Daniil. If I were you, I would be careful with everyone around you," Meera whispered before adding:

"You try anything with me; your precious Joe dies. Now, do you still want me to stay here? I don’t mind doing things outside my scope of work as a sworn doctor."

Alek faltered.

This man really was Joe. His alpha. His Joram.

And Kenzo noticed.

"Shall I go now, senator?"

"Of course," Aleksandr whispered, a low whimper escaping him.

"I’ll be back when I’m done with my rounds," Meera reassured, before leaving.

"Second assignment complete," she said into her earpiece.