Chapter 17: Find Me Beneath Your Endless Rubble
[YAROSLAV]
The room went quiet instantly as the worst had happened.
Like the impossible had surfaced, and honestly, that was just about it.
It was as if the world itself was trying to wrap its head around what Nikolai had said.
Surely he had to have spoken too fast, right? It had to be a joke. Maybe, right? After all, Nik always knew the relationship that Yaroslav had with Milan.
That had to be it.
A joke.
One that didn’t seem to make Yaroslav too happy right now. Yet at the same time, he knew it was impossible.
Katya loved him.
Katya worshiped the very ground he walked on.
Katya would do anything for him.
Besides, the fact that this was coming from Anya was just hilarious because there was just no way that Sergei would choose that omega over his own son, right?
"Yeah, nice joke, bud... tell me, what are the papers about?" Yaroslav said nervously.
He was trying his very best to mask it all, but there was only so much he could mask, especially with the looks on both Anya’s and Nikolai’s faces.
This was not how shit was supposed to be, yet here he was.
With a gunshot wound.
With a torn ear so close to falling again and stitched for the third time in the past hour.
He had cursed the doctors for not fixing him right, but now, as he looked at Anya, as he looked at Nikolai, the only thing that made sense was the horror that loomed above him.
The horror that he refused to lean into, even when the signs were there. Because there was no one with that much power over anyone in Frolo other than his father.
But Sergei loved his son... right?
"I just told you, man. Katya, set your device papers," Nikolai said.
Yaroslav looked at him like he had completely gone bonkers.
"Give them, Nik. I wanna see," Yaroslav insisted, and his friend looked at Anya, who just sighed softly, a pen in her hand, waiting to give the man the weak hospital bed.
This right there was a line that had been crossed, but no one would dare speak about it. Not in the way that was expected, but perhaps karma was a thing of the present now, yeah?
"Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you the truth," Nikolai said exaggeratedly before he handed him the papers. Instantly
Anya extended her hand with the pen.
Yaroslav didn’t take it.
"Annulment between Katya Romanov and Yaroslav Gamov," the Beta read, and for a moment, it was like the world had stopped spinning.
Or maybe it hadn’t.
Because Yaroslav suddenly burst into fits of laughter, ignoring the ache in his chest that he hadn’t even known was there until he tried to move.
His entire body was heating up again, and the veins of his forehead showed as he tried to understand whatever this was.
It had to be an illusion.
That was the only way.
It had to be a game of some sort.
Yet Anya stood there, her face unreadable, like this was when she didn’t want to be a part of. Even so, she would always be a part of the Gamov Moskowsky mess, wouldn’t she?
"What is this?" Yaroslav asked amid laughter.
He sounded like a maniac who was straining to regain his composure, but then did he even need a mask with the only two people in the room who knew him better than anyone ever had?
"Yaro..." Anya trailed off, but Yaroslav interrupted her.
"Why would you, father’s aide, be the one to bring the divorce papers between my husband and me? What is going on, Anya?" Yaroslav asked like it wasn’t already obvious.
Maybe it wasn’t to him.
For all his married life, he had never seen his father be interested in anything that wasn’t Yaroslav’s happiness.
So what the hell was ever going on at the moment?
Oh, he had so many questions, most of which he was sure he wanted to rage about to be civilized about.
"I don’t know the details, but I was sent to give you the papers. He said they needed your signature," anyway said like she didn’t always know her motivation for whatever madness Sergei indulged in.
But maybe it’s time; this was one she didn’t need to explain.
Katya was in the hospital.
Sergei was nowhere to be seen.
Yaroslav was in a different hospital nursing wounds from his father.
And Katya... was nowhere to be seen.
"No. I won’t sign," Yaroslav said, not ever bothering to read the rest of the document.
This was a fallacy he refused to be a part of.
There was nothing concrete about his marriage and the annulment.
But deep down...
Yaroslav may have expected it.
From Katya, maybe.
But never from his father.
"Where is he?" Yaroslav asked when Anya didn’t say anything after he tore the papers.
She was just looking at him like a child throwing tantrums, and that haunted Yaroslav in a way because he had a feeling that there were more copies somewhere.
That they would never stop coming.
That this was something that he would have to embrace. Then again, why the fuck was his father sending his divorce papers instead of his husband?
"Katya is still in the hospital recuperating," Anya said, as if she didn’t know who Yaroslav meant.
"I don’t care about Katya. Where is my father?" Yaroslav demanded, his voice cold and stiff, and Anya raised a brow at that.
"Yaro, maybe you should tone it down," Nikolai said as he looked at Anya.
This woman may have been here as an aide, as a messenger, but one word from her and the entire Frolo would be reduced to ashes.
Nikolai knew it too well.
Hell, Yaroslav knew it too.
Still, he wanted an answer.
He wanted to know.
But what the heck was he going to gain by being nasty and disrespectful to the one person who could bridge him and his father?
"He burned your plant," Yaroslav recalled cruelly
Nikolai flinched.
"Yes, yes. I know he did, and right now this is not about the plant. Anya is here as a messenger," Nikolai reminded.
Yaroslav sighed defeatedly.
Of course she was.
Of course, he had known that.
Still, it didn’t make it any easier on him because there was nothing justifiable about what his father was doing. It was as if the man was determined to dig a grave.
Then again, what were the odds that there wasn’t an empty grave somewhere in Frolo waiting for Yaroslav as its only occupant?
"Fuck... I’m sorry, Anya. I just..." Yaroslav trailed off, unsure of what to say.
His mind was all over the place already, and his father wasn’t making this any easier for him.
"No one has seen him since last night. All the instructions came via fax," Anya said apologetically as she stared at the man who had ruined his own life and the life of the one person the devil cared the most about.
Nonetheless, it was probably easier this way, because what were the chances that Yaroslav would have been alive if his father had come with the papers himself, no?
"I—" Yaroslav began.
"I have another appointment in ten. But you should talk to him," Anya said, even though deep down, she knew that talking to Sergei was a dead end.
She’d seen this coming two years ago.
