Contract Marriage: Married to My Ex-Husband's Alpha Stepfather [BL]

Chapter 203: Paused and Found Myself Gloriously Barefoot

[FROLO]

Sergei stayed seated, an amused smile on his face as he watched his shareholders try to get a hold of themselves at the information they were getting.

All of them had glanced back into the glass conference room, and at Sergei more than once. Maybe because they knew there was only one man enough to do that. They didn’t have proof.

They didn’t need proof.

They had been there. Back then.

Back when Sergei Moskowsky was just Sergei.

Back when Sergei was the most dangerous name in the realm.

Granted, he was still the most dangerous man to this day, but the history books told a different tale. They showed the stark difference between Sergei Moskowsky... And Sergei.

Just Sergei.

"Father..." Yaroslav, who had stayed back, said as he looked at the man smiling from ear to ear.

He looked like he had just gotten the best of amusements in the day, and he wasn’t about to let it go to waste.

"What is it, son?" Sergei asked, his voice calm like the world wasn’t already burning and like he wasn’t already being blamed indirectly for it.

"The Senate..." Yaroslav trailed off carefully.

He had seen the message on that dead body. He had tried to analyze it, but it made no sense. Because for years, the only tears that were bound to burn the city down were Yaroslav’s.

Even the beta knew it.

But he also knew his father didn’t just wake up and blow up Senate buildings. He had attacked the central governing system of the city. Of the nation.

That wasn’t the kind of shit that was done on a whim.

It was intended to send a message, and Yaro was curious about why.

"In my defense, I told Volkov to only use thirty-five explosives. But you know how excited he and Rahim get whenever explosives are involved. They used all sixty," Sergei said, like it was the most normal of things.

Like the calm secretaries in suits who had been in the just-ended meeting for three and a half hours were supposed to be blamed for the explosion that had flattened the entire Senate building.

His father was unhinged.

He was not new to it.

But the motivation was something that Yaroslav couldn’t understand fully. Because it made no sense at all.

Yaroslav was not in any danger.

He hadn’t ever been since the day his father took him into the new house. He had been protected from bullies back when he was just a kid by this very man.

He had been loved unconditionally, even when this man was just his father’s boyfriend. Time had given him so much and now...

Now he wasn’t sure if there was something he needed to worry about or if this was the beginning of a different Chapter in both their lives.

"Why?" Yaroslav dared to ask.

He had never questioned anything his father did. Ever. Yet this was one that had shaken him, too.

It was too brazen.

The signs all pointed in the direction of the Moskowsky household.

His father had gone after the second-highest national office in the capital. And things like that didn’t stay quiet.

There would be inquiries.

So many things that would affect them.

The business.

The legacy his father had built.

Yet his father had absolutely no regrets about what he had done, save for the slow reminder that his people had used a higher number of explosives.

The same people who looked so harmless even as they talked to the shareholders freaking out there.

"As long as I’m here, no one will hurt you," was all Sergei said to his son, as he looked at Yaroslav.

Or maybe he was looking at a certain someone past Yaroslav. Someone beyond the glass walls who was hugging the senator.

Someone he had sworn to burn the world for, right?

But would it matter who it was?

"Will you be okay?" Yaroslav asked quietly, believing that his father had started a war for him.

It wasn’t even that hard to believe because up to this moment, Yaroslav was the only person Sergei was willing to give up everything for.

The realm knew it.

Yaroslav knew it.

Even the certain someone beyond the glass walls knew it. So, it was the only logical conclusion, no?

"Of course, my boy," Sergei said, ruffling Yaroslav’s hair like the beta was a kid again. Then again, he was always going to be Sergei’s little kid anyway.

"Do you need me to do anything?" Yaroslav offered as if he couldn’t have his father going down without a fight. But Sergei Moskowsky was not just any father.

He was Sergei.

He was the myth. The legend.

And maybe the city had gotten so comfortable in the quiet for over three decades, but they would remember. He would make sure they did.

"Other than live your life to the fullest? No. I’ll handle everything. I’m your father, son. It is my duty to make sure you’re happy and safe. Don’t think too much about whatever happens in the coming days.

"No one will think of even touching you," Sergei reassured calmly, holding his son’s eyes with his, the sincerity in them, something that Yaroslav was so familiar with.

Maybe that was why he didn’t push.

Because if Sergei said he didn’t have to worry about shit, then Yaroslav wouldn’t.

"Okay, Father," Yaroslav said as he got up to leave.

And Sergei watched his son walk away, trusting the comfortable quiet between them, not even suspecting that all of this wasn’t for him.

Not this time anyway.

Outside the glass conference office, Katya Romanov stood in the middle of a chaotic realization. He watched as the city remembered what he, along with every other child of Frolo, grew up knowing.

The devil of Frolo was back.

Or rather...

The devil of Frolo had never once left.

The tactics were the same as that one season years ago. The elimination methods were all too familiar, only this time, some people were saved.

And among those people was his senator boyfriend, who was still making calls. Who was still barred by Moskowsky security from leaving because his destination was dangerous.

However, as Katya stared at the mess they had stepped into, as Katya looked between his boyfriend and the man behind the glass walls...

As Katya looked at the huge television screen that had always stayed mounted on the walls, talk about the huge death toll of senators within the Senate and some beyond the Senate...

Katya didn’t want to spell it out.

Not here. Never within these walls.

But he knew what everyone knew. What everyone suspected. Because Katya, like everyone in Frolo, had lived through that history. The one that had rewritten the belief Frolo had in the man in the glass room.

And suddenly, the journalist’s head that had been sent to the senator’s house by Sergei months ago, was intentional. Not because Katya had been there during his heat, and it was the only place to send the head, no.

That had been too simple an explanation for this.

If anything, when Katya’s eyes met Sergei’s through the glass walls, the omega knew it was just one of the reasons.

"I sent you a gift," Sergei had said then, defending his decision.

Yet the message that had been left at the Senate building today...

"There are tears this city cannot survive; pray hard they are not shed on your account, or the city will drown."

That message spoke of something else.

Something Katya had suspected during the contract reread and the several months after.

Something his friends had investigated for a whole year and even spent billions at an auction to uncover. Something his own mother had asked him in passing when he went back home after the divorce.

And worse, something Alek himself had hinted at weeks ago.

Because in truth, Katya had always known it was never just a contract...

Not with all the variables involved and how things had changed drastically around him and the barbarian.

He just couldn’t accept it yet.

Because accepting it meant opening another door he didn’t know how to face.

A door that had been right in front of him and unlocked; one he had spent two years pretending not to see, even when it was clearer than the glass wall between him and the devil of Frolo today.

Because accepting it meant accepting that the devil of Frolo had something more to lose than just his son. And that was too dangerous a possibility to accept, especially if he was wrong.

But was he?

And even so, how did a flattened Senate fit into all of this?