ABSOLUTE INSANITY: A forbidden bond

Chapter 283: Two rooms, one door.

Chapter 283

ROMEO POV

By the time I ended the call, nearly an hour had passed. The call ended, but I didn’t move. I stood in the quiet corridor, the phone still in my hand, my gaze fixed somewhere ahead without really seeing anything.

"Handle it," I had said. There were always things to handle. Always problems waiting. Always people expecting decisions, instructions, control.

That part of my life hadn’t changed. It never did and it would never. I lowered the phone slowly and slipped it back into my pocket.

The house was quiet around me. Not the kind of silence that came from emptiness. The kind that came from familiarity.

Old wood. Soft lighting. The faint scent of lavender that never seemed to leave these walls. The same house I had grown up in. The same house I had walked away from.

And the first place I had come back to. Not for business. For family.

That was what I had told Nonna. It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the full truth either. My gaze moved down the hallway toward the direction of the staircase.

Toward the upper floor. Toward my old room. Her room but now our shared room.

Katya. I could still see the way she had walked into the living room.

Steady. Controlled. No hesitation. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have done that. Six months ago, she would have avoided my eyes. Avoided the room. Avoided me.

Tonight, she had stood in front of me and spoken like there was no weight between us at all. Like I wasn’t something she had once been afraid of. Like she didn’t need to protect herself from me anymore.

And when she held my gaze....She hadn’t flinched. This was good. That was what I wanted. Now she wouldn’t have to run the other way when she sees me.

I moved toward the staircase. The house was quiet at this hour. Most of the lights downstairs had been dimmed, leaving only the soft glow from the wall lamps.

Halfway up, I checked my watch. They would have started already.

By now, the door would be open. The covers pulled off the furniture. The dust cleared. Air moving through a space that had been closed for years.

The thought settled something steady in my chest. I reached the top of the stairs and paused for a moment, my gaze moving down the hallway.

Same walls. Same framed photographs. Same quiet order Nonna had always kept. But at the far end of the corridor... that was where the past waited.

My room. Or what used to be. I walked toward it, my expression unreadable, my mind already moving ahead of my steps.

That room had never been just a bedroom. It had been a gift. A secret. Something my father had built for me long before I understood why.

When I was a child, he had called the hidden room my second space.

A place where I could disappear when the house was too loud. When visitors came. When business meetings filled the rooms downstairs and voices carried through the walls.

The door that connected the two rooms had been hidden behind a built-in panel. You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew where to press.

To everyone else, it looked like a single large bedroom. But behind it was another room. Smaller. Private. Soundproofed better than the rest of the house.

My father had supervised the construction himself. At the time, he told me it was for comfort. "Every man needs a place where the world cannot reach him," he had said.

I hadn’t understood then. I understood now.

That space had been my hideout when I was young.

Later, it became something else.

A place to think. To plan. To work without interruption. To shut the door on everything outside.

A controlled space.

Safe. And now Katya was sleeping on the other side of it. The corner of my mouth moved slightly.

She hadn’t even know. She had lived there for months and never noticed the second door. Never found the panel. Never realized the room she slept in was only half of the original space.

God, the look on her face when I said that. I reached the end of the hallway and stopped in front of her door. Now our door.

I reached for the handle and opened the door. I expected the room to be empty.

After the conversation downstairs, I had assumed she would stay away a little longer. That she would rethink what she had agreed to. Regret it. Avoid the reality of what sharing this space meant.

Katya had always needed distance when things became too real. But she was there.

The first thing I saw was her reflection.

She sat in front of the vanity, her back straight, her movements slow and careful as she wiped a cotton pad across her cheek.

The red dress was still on her. The same one from earlier. The color stood out against the softness of the room, bold and sharp in a space that had always been quiet.

Most of her makeup was already gone. The dramatic lines around her eyes had faded. Without it, her face looked softer. Younger. Tired.

She hadn’t noticed me yet. Or she had... and chose not to react.

From where I stood at the entrance, I could see past the open panel behind the far wall.

Movement. Two men were inside the hidden room, pulling sheets off furniture, opening windows, clearing the dust that had settled over the years.

The low sounds of shifting wood and quiet voices carried faintly into the bedroom.

Good. They had started. I stepped inside fully and closed the door behind me.

The sound was soft, but in the quiet room, it was enough.

Katya’s hand paused for a fraction of a second. Then it continued moving. She didn’t turn. She watched me through the mirror instead.

Our eyes met in the reflection.

No fear. No tension. Just awareness. Damn. I held her gaze for a moment. Then I looked away.

I had told myself something when I came back. I wouldn’t step into her life again the way I had before.

No pressure. No control. No forcing my presence into her space. If she wanted distance, she would have it.

So I said nothing. I didn’t greet her. Didn’t ask about her day. Didn’t acknowledge the silent tension that lived between us.

I walked past her. I could feel her eyes following me through the mirror as I crossed the room, moving toward the opened room, I stepped through without looking back.

But I was aware of her. Of her silence, of her the way her gaze followed me.

Even without turning, I could feel it.