Chapter 197: Exposed

Sienna didn’t stop. Compression after compression, her arms burning, her breath coming faster and faster beneath her mask until finally, without even realizing what she was doing, she ripped it away entirely, needing air, needing to focus everything she had into her hands.

Outside the glass, the small crowd that had gathered stood frozen, hands pressed to their mouths, tears streaming freely.

The two nurses who hadn’t dared to move stood off to the side, guilt written plainly across their faces, feeling like they had failed her.

Then, finally, a beep. Aria’s heart monitor caught a rhythm again, faint but steady, climbing back toward something alive.

Sienna sat back slightly, chest heaving, sweat and tears mixing on her face.

And somewhere beneath the relief flooding through her, a colder realization settled in. She had torn off her mask. She had entered the room, unprotected, breathing the same air Aria had been breathing for days.

She had known the risk before she ever stepped through that door.

She stayed anyway, watching the steady rise and fall of her friend’s chest, listening to the quiet, stubborn beat of a heart that had refused, just barely, to stop.

—

The chessboard sat forgotten between them when Marcus burst through the door, breathless, his face pale in a way Viktor had rarely seen before.

"Boss," Marcus said, voice tight. "It’s Sienna. She’s been exposed to the virus."

For a moment, the words didn’t fully land. Then they did, all at once, and Viktor felt the floor tilt beneath him. He caught himself against the edge of the table, knocking two chess pieces to the carpet.

"What happened?" His voice came out cracked, barely his own.

Marcus explained quickly the CPR, the torn mask, the way she’d thrown herself into that room without a second thought for herself, only for Aria.

Viktor turned back to the don, something in his chest collapsing inward.

"What is it going to take?" he said. "To have the vaccine."

The don studied him for a long moment, unmoved, almost curious, watching as the composed, dangerous man across the table began to unravel in real time.

Viktor didn’t wait for an answer. He sank to his knees, right there on the hotel room floor, something he had never once done for another man in his life.

"One dose," he said. "That’s all I need. For my wife. I’ll do anything."

The don’s expression didn’t soften. If anything, something almost pleased flickered behind his eyes.

"Look at the bright side," he said, settling back in his chair, unbothered. "Now she’ll die, and you get to marry Katalia, as it should have been all along." He spread his hands slightly, as if presenting a gift. "See? In the end, it all works out."

"Please," Viktor said, his voice raw now, stripped of all its usual control. "Save her, and I will be at your service for as long as I live."

The don considered this, tilting his head.

"And if your little wife survives, by some miracle," he said slowly, "I will end her myself." His eyes hardened. "You and my daughter are meant to be. That is final."

Something in Viktor snapped back into focus at that, some flicker of his old defiance cutting through the desperation.

"What makes you even sure Aliya is your missing daughter?" he said, still on his knees, but his voice sharpening now. "Has it ever been proven? Or did you just take Don Capri’s word for it?"

"She has her mother’s gold necklace," the don said. "That is enough."

But even as he said it, something small and cold stirred beneath his certainty, a flicker of doubt he refused to let surface. It would have been simple to prove whether Aliya truly was Katalia.

Her blood. A single conversation that pressed into the right memory. But he didn’t want to rush it. He didn’t want to frighten her, didn’t want to risk triggering some buried trauma before she was ready to remember on her own.

That hesitation, whether he realized it or not, worked entirely in someone else’s favor.

Viktor rose slowly from the floor. Something in him had gone hollow, numb, the fight drained out of his face as he turned and walked out of the suite without another word. He moved like a man already grieving, already burying someone he hadn’t lost yet.

He was almost at the hotel entrance when his phone buzzed. A message. From an unknown number. He stopped walking, staring down at the screen.

You can save your wife, and you don’t even need the vaccine. Just a drop of blood from Katalia, the don’s daughter.

Viktor read it twice, then a third time, his mind struggling to catch up. Someone close to the don, close enough to know things like this, was reaching out to him. A trap? A trick? Some new game in a war that already had too many players?

He didn’t have the clarity to work it out. Didn’t have the patience to sit and untangle who had sent it or why.

All he could think about was Sienna.

He pushed through the hotel doors and out into the night, already calling for the car, the message still glowing faintly on the screen clutched in his hand.

Viktor arrived at the emergency center out of breath, his shirt still creased from where he’d knelt on that hotel floor. He found Sienna through the observation glass, awake, alert, moving between monitors like nothing at all had happened.

She looked fine. That should have been a relief. Instead, it terrified him more, because he knew better than most how fast fine could turn into something else entirely.

"What have you done, Sienna?" he said, pressing a hand flat against the glass, his voice cracking despite every effort to keep it steady.

"I’m okay," she said, stepping closer to the barrier between them. "Aria needed me. I jumped in without thinking." She offered a small, tired smile, like she was trying to reassure a child. "But you don’t have to worry. We’re very close to the cure now. The vaccine is coming along well. We also developed a vitamin compound that helps the body fight the virus on its own."

"You little dummy." His voice shook, anger and fear tangled so tightly together he could barely tell them apart anymore. "You can’t save everyone. You know that."