Chapter 166
KATYA POV
One hour. That’s how long the clock on the wall had been mocking with its steady, heartless ticking.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Each second was a reminder that the world was moving on, even while I remained pinned to this bed, a broken thing held together by tape and chemicals.
The doctors had finally retreated, their hushed whispers and clicking instrunts replaced by a silence so heavy it felt like it was pressing on my chest.
They had increased the dosage in my IV so the fire in my back had retreated into a dull, throbbing ache, but the fog in my mind was starting to clear, leaving behind a sharp, cold clarity that I didn’t want.
Nonna hadn’t left. She was still in her wheelchair, parked in the exact sa spot as before.
She wasn’t crying anymore. Her face had set into a mask of pale, frozen marble, her eyes fixed on the small, high window where the morning light was turning into the harsh glare of midday.
She looked like a statue placed in a graveyard.
I shifted my head slightly, the movent making the room tilt.
"Nonna?" I whispered. My voice was clearer now, less like sandpaper, but it felt small in the vast room.
She didn’t look at at first. She just reached out, her hand finding mine on the bedsheets. Her skin was thin, dry, and trembling.
"What really happened?," I question. Nonna’s hand stiffened under mine. The strong mask she had spent the last hour perfecting didn’t shatter, but a hairline fracture appeared in the set of her jaw.
"The doctors said you need to rest, Katya," she said, her voice regaining that rehearsed, iron-clad steadiness.
"The details are for later. For when you are stronger."
"No," I croaked, my fingers twitching against her palm. "Please. Don’t.. Don’t... don’t treat like a child."
I took a shallow, painful breath, feeling the bandages pull at the raw skin of my back. The fire was numbed, but the weight of the unknown was suffocating.
"I heard the shouting," I whispered, my eyes searching hers, begging for the truth. At least let bla myself well.
"When I was... drifting. I heard a man and a woman. It was a war, Nonna. I know you were crying before. It wasn’t just because of my back. It was that fight, wasn’t it?"
Nonna looked away, her gaze returning to the window. The silence stretched out, filled only by the rhythmic hiss-click of the dical equipnt.
"I’m weak," I continued, my voice trembling with the effort to stay conscious. "I’m broken. But I need to know. Did I... did I co between you and Roo? Was he screaming at you because of ?"
The thought was a poison. If I had caused a rift between the only two people who cared for each other in this cold house, I didn’t think I could look at either of them again.
I felt like a wedge driven into a crack, splitting the Salvatore foundation apart. Nonna finally turned back to .
The sadness in her eyes was so profound it felt like it could swallow the room. "He wasn’t screaming at , mia cara," she said, her voice dropping to a jagged whisper.
"He’s just conflicted." She paused, a single, sharp intake of breath escaping her.
"Conflicted," I repeated, the word tasting like ash. "But you were crying, Nonna. What really happened? It not just about him being conflicted, is it?"
Nonna’s lower lip trembled, She squeezed my hand, her voice coming out in a fractured, desperate whisper as she finally let the truth bleed out.
"I told him, Katya," she choked out. "I told him what that devilish woman did. I told him that a viper like Marina has no place in this house, let alone by his side as a wife. I told him he needed to send her away, to end this alliance before she poisons us all."
She paused, a fresh tear escaping and rolling into the deep lines of her cheek. "And he....he...he shunned . He told that I don’t dictate his business or his bedroom. He said... he said that Marina was within her rights to ’discipline’ a disobedient servant."
I felt my heart stop. The monitor beside let out a long, flat tone for a second before my pulse kicked back in, erratic and wild.
’Within her rights.’
"He didn’t stop there," Nonna whispered, her eyes filled with a terrifying confusion. "He said that as soon as you are awake—as soon as you can stand—you are to be moved into the servant’s quarters in the east wing. You are to be Marina’s personal maid. He said you needed to learn your place once and for all."
The world tilted. The white walls of the infirmary seed to lt, replaced by the ntal image of Marina’s smiling face and that dark, polished cane.
I wasn’t surprised that he hated . He reminded every day that I was the daughter of his enemy, a trophy of war ant to be crushed.
But to choose her? To side with the woman who had turned my back into a map of fire. Was his hatred for so vast that it outweighed his love for his own grandmother?
"I don’t understand him anymore," Nonna sobbed, finally losing the battle to stay composed.
She leaned her head against our joined hands, her shoulders shaking. "He didn’t even show up to the party. He treats her like dirt in public, but the mont I ask him to protect you... he becos a monster. He is siding with a girl I need out of our lives. He’s choosing the dark, Katya."
I lay there, paralyzed. Panic, cold and sharp, began to claw at my throat. Marina’s personal maid.
It was a death sentence. She wouldn’t just discipline ; she would finish what she started.
She would pick at my wounds until there was nothing left but bone. But as I looked down at the top of Nonna’s silver head, seeing her break again because of , a strange, numb resolve settled over .
I couldn’t let her see shatter. If Roo was choosing to use as a tool to hurt his grandmother.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing plead. "It’s okay, Nonna," I lied, my voice sounding like it belonged to soone else.
Soone dead. "It’s okay. I’m just a servant. He’s just... being the Don." My mind was a screaming void.
The fear was so intense I felt like I was choking on it, but I kept my hand steady against hers.
Roo wasn’t conflicted. He was cruel.
nd I realized then that the "monster" hadn’t been guarding my door earlier to protect . He had been guarding it to make sure his property didn’t break before he could give it to his new bride.
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Poor Katya, what do y’all think about this Chapter.
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