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

Chapter 205: Ignore The Fog When They Burn, Solnyshka

[FROLO]

Work within the executive office continued as usual. Like, there wasn’t a crisis outside, like there wasn’t a lot of fates being jumbled together.

Katya walked past Sergei’s office for the third time in ten minutes, his mind filled with the kind of questions whose answers he was confident Sergei would never answer.

Maybe he would ask first this time, instead of making assumptions. Maybe he would figure it out before shit exploded.

But would it work?

"Chairman..." Volkov greeted curtly like a secretary to a boss. Not like a man who had seen enough chaos on this floor to understand that there had been a change of dynamic in the last two years.

Hell, even in the last week.

"Is he in?" Katya asked, trying to look confident.

He wasn’t.

He couldn’t be.

Not with the haunting realization staring right at him.

Not with the way that dots connected.

"Yes. But he’s busy and isn’t taking any visitors," Volkov said calmly.

Katya staggered.

This was new to him. Sergei was never busy for him. He always made time a luxury that Katya had gotten a little too used to, it seemed.

"The Senate was him, right?" Katya asked, like he was desperately hoping for a different answer. Like it was going to make things a tad better.

But would it?

"Yes. Rahim and I delivered the body and rigged the place up," Volkov said calmly, like he was talking about the weather.

Like the city wasn’t in shambles already because of the explosion that had killed eighteen senators. Like, there was nothing so fundamentally wrong with that statement.

Gods, this was different.

"Why?" Katya asked, and Volkov let out a soft laugh.

"You’re not blind, chairman. I’ve worked for him for half my life, and he doesn’t see me as a friend. You’ve known the answer for a while now, haven’t you? Anyway, I have to get back to work. Please excuse me," Volkov said in earnest before he focused on his work.

And Katya...

He knew it there and then.

The gloves he had been hoping would stay on for the past year or so... they had come off with a bang, or rather an explosion.

Yet the questions were still there.

Because Sergei, for all his insanity, was a consistent man. And Katya had only figured out a section of the greatest puzzle of his life.

"Has he left?" a text chimed on Volkov’s phone, making Volkov look up to the omega as if to ask what he was still doing there.

And Katya knew that was his cue to leave. He still had work. He still had commitments until the end of the day.

But damn was it the most unhinged of days for him.

Especially when he reached his office and found lilies at his table.

This time... There was a card.

"For you, my precious. Sorry about our lunch date today, but I’ll skip. Gotta handle some business beyond the company. I’ll be there for tomorrow’s lunch. Also, ignore the fog while they burn, Solnyshka."

There was no sender.

But he didn’t even need a name to figure it out this time.

The devil of Frolo was no longer hiding.

And Katya... He should have run. Should have looked the other way, especially after today. He should have made it clear that he wasn’t encouraging this, whatever it was.

Yet as Katya Romanov sat on his desk, as he pushed the lilies gently along his table, as he breathed in the thick rainforest that had been his anchor for years now, Katya couldn’t.

He couldn’t run.

Not because he was trapped.

But because for the first time in so long, he had something to run toward.

Maybe he could lie and say that it was for the answers he needed. Maybe because he wanted to be safe.

Or maybe...

Just maybe...

Somewhere along the stolen lunches and the societal scandals they’d chosen not to pay heed to... Katya had actually started looking forward to days with the devil himself.

He didn’t know what a day without the barbarian looked like anymore.

Maybe Volkov was right.

Katya had known the answer for a while now.

"The lilies are beautiful, thank you. See you at lunch tomorrow, Vladimir," Katya texted, like they want an endless bundle of madness going on.

But then this was his normal.

Right?

Outside the Moskowsky building, the city was preparing. No one knew for what exactly, because the government had not said who had attacked the Senate.

They had no evidence linking it back to the devil of Frolo.

Everything had been done with the kind of precision that would forever haunt the city. And the worst part about it all...

The senators hadn’t just died in the explosion.

They were dead... before the explosions went off. Fatal sniper gunshots to the heart and neck. The government knew that and kept it from the public.

Because an explosion was easy to explain.

Government officials dead before a government building was brought down? That was not.

If they went public with it, the city would question the legitimacy of the government. They would question the protective details of the highest government office. They would question the security protocols.

Because if the leaders of the nation were not safe in their most protected habitat, then where the fuck were civilians supposed to be safe then?

As if that wasn’t enough, the Moskowsky group posted a condolence letter, saying how sad a day it was for the nation and the families of the poor senators.

The company even urged the government to invest in protecting its people because if the powerful in the country were not safe, then what would happen to the common folk in the country?

It was a brazen statement from a company whose owner was the key suspect in the explosion.

But evidence...

That was never going to exist.

And hours later, when Senator Aleksandr came to speak to the media as the Senate representative, of course, the people listened and paid attention.

"We will do better to keep the nation safe from terrorists," part of Senator Aleksandr’s statement said, his eyes red from shock and what had happened.

"What about the message that was sent to the Senate? What did it mean?" the media asked what everyone was wondering.

Because anyone with eyes could see that the attack was deliberate.

"Our translators are working hard to decode the letter that was sent. Once we have enough information, we will let you know.

"Meanwhile, let us all refrain from spreading speculations that will harm the nation at large," the senator said to the media. But the citizens didn’t buy it.

And soon enough, there were waves of protests online.

With people demanding to know who had been stupid enough to go after someone important to Sergei.

They were spelling it as it was to them.

A city that had lived through that horror once was not willing to live through it again. They refused to. And they were right not to want that past back. Because the past had defined their lives and how they lived.

The devil had never left. He had just slowed down. And someone somewhere had triggered him enough to start with the Senate, one of the highest offices in the nation.

Sergei was coming.

And the city had to either brace for impact...

Or root out the perpetrators and hand them over to the devil before he wiped them all out for being enablers.

He had done it once.

They knew he could do it again.

That was the danger of it all.