Chapter 178
ROO POV
My office felt smaller than it ever had. Sa walls. Sa steel-and-glass order. Sa chair behind the desk that had broken n with a look alone.
Yet sothing in the air had shifted, heavy and expectant, like the room knew what I was about to do.
Antonio entered without knocking. He didn’t usually forget. He just knew better than to pretend this was a normal mont.
He set the drive on my desk. It was small. Black. Unassuming. This thing had been sitting in my vault for months.
Extracted the night we took the Volkov estate. Catalogued. Filed. Ignored. Because I hadn’t wanted to see it.
Antonio sat down in the chair in front of my table. "Footage from the interior caras," he said. "Primary residence. Hallways. Study. West wing. Ti-stamped."
I nodded once, eyes still on the drive. Silence stretched.
"Is this because of Katya?," he added, carefully. That almost made laugh, because I don’t know why I was even caring to look at this now.
"Its not" I lied, Antonio studied for a second longer, like he was deciding whether to push. Then he inclined his head and leaned into the chair.
I picked up the drive, looking at it, I considered snapping it in half. Erasing it. Choosing ignorance the way I always had when the truth didn’t serve .
Because once you see sothing, you can’t unsee it. I slotted the drive into the system. The screen on the far wall flickered to life, rows of cara feeds populating one by one.
Empty corridors.
High ceilings.
A house built to impress. The Volkov estate. Katya’s ho.
I scrolled through dates. My jaw tightened when I realized how far back the footage went.
Months.
Years.
I selected one at random. The image sharpened. A hallway cara. Late evening. The lighting dimr, warr than the rest of the house.
A girl crossed the fra—slender, quiet, moving fast with her head down.
Katya. She looked younger. Smaller. Her shoulders were hunched like she was trying to make herself invisible.
I froze the fra.
My chest tightened in a way I didn’t recognize.
I hit play.
She disappeared through a door at the end of the hall. Minutes passed. Nothing happened.
Then another figure entered the fra.
A man. I didn’t need facial recognition to know who he was. Boris.
Katya’s father.
He moved with ownership. With certainty. Like the house—and everyone in it—belonged to him.He stopped outside the sa door.
The cara didn’t capture what happened inside.
But it captured everything else.
Ti stamps jumping forward. The door staying closed. Sounds bleeding faintly through the system’s audio—raised voices, then silence.
When the door finally opened again, Katya stepped out.
She was shaking.
Her hair was loose now. Her posture collapsed inward. She pressed her arms tight against herself as she moved down the hall, faster this ti, like she was trying to outrun sothing that followed even after the door shut.
I stopped the footage.
My hand was clenched into a fist on the desk. I hadn’t noticed when.
I switched caras. Different day. Different ti. it was the day we invaded.
I switched caras. Different angle. Different corridor. Sa house.
The screen showed the interior of the Volkov estate in chaos—n running, alarms blaring silently through muted footage, shadows cutting across marble floors.
Gunfire didn’t carry sound here, but I could see the flashes of it reflected in mirrors, in glass fras shattering one by one.
Then— Katya. I leaned forward without realizing it. The house rattled with explosion, Katya on the floor, her face hidden under a table.
The screen went black, reflecting my face back at . I barely recognized it.
I dragged the tiline back. An hour before the explosion. The progress bar crawled left like it didn’t want to go there either. Like the system itself understood what I was asking it to show .
The feed stabilized.
Sa house. Sa oppressive luxury. The kind that looks expensive but feels like a cage if you live inside it.
Cara: West wing. Private quarters.
Katya appeared. She moved slowly this ti. Not rushing. Not hiding. Just... quiet. Her shoulders were already drawn inward, like she’d learned how to fold herself smaller long before anyone told her to.
She stopped near the wall. Waited. That alone told everything.
No phone. No book. No distraction. Just standing there, hands clasped in front of her, eyes on the floor. Like a soldier waiting to be inspected. Or punished.
The door opened. Boris stepped into fra.
The footage had no audio worth trusting, but it didn’t need it. I knew that posture. I’d seen it on n about to break soone just because they could.
He said sothing. Katya flinched.
A full-body reaction. She shook her head once. Small. Almost apologetic.
He stepped closer. She backed up until her shoulders hit the wall. Nowhere else to go.
My jaw tightened.
He kept talking.
Her hands ca up...not to fight. Never to fight. Just to shield. Instinctive. Automatic. That’s when sothing cold settled in my chest.
Because this wasn’t a single mont. It wasn’t an outburst. It was routine.
This was practiced.
The cara angle shifted slightly as Boris moved out of fra, blocking most of what followed. But I could still see Katya’s reactions.
Her head turned away.
Her knees buckled. She slid down the wall slowly, like she knew better than to fall too hard. Like she knew what made things worse.
He leaned back into fra briefly, holding her by her hair. I slamd pause, looking out to the garden.
I didn’t want to go further but I needed to know to be able to process this well. My eyes went back to the screen.
Antonio hadn’t spoken. I realized then that he hadn’t moved either.
I played it, the screen coming back to life as Boris dragged his daughter by her hair to the other wall, he leaned into her. Speaking words that wasn’t heard through the video but I could bet he was threatening her.
A blow to Katya face made wince, grabbing my pack if cigarettes on the table. I needed sothing to anchor through the video.
Katya head snapped back, her lips sealed like she hadn’t just received a pouch that could have broken her jaw.
And for just one second—one devastating, unguarded second—she looked straight into the lens.
No fear. No anger, just painful resignation. Like this was normal. Like this was just... life.
Minutes later, alarms. Chaos. The explosion.
The invasion.
The mont I’d always frad as the start of everything. I leaned back slowly, the leather chair creaking beneath , exhaling the smoke from my lung.
Nonna’s voice echoed in my head, uninvited.
She was never a princess in her father’s house.
I’d told myself it didn’t matter.
That whatever had happened before, she was still leverage. Still a Volkov. Still useful. I was wrong.
This wasn’t leverage. This was damage. I exhaled through my nose, because anything else would’ve been dangerous.
Antonio finally spoke, quietly. "That’s harsh." I nodded once but a sharp knock cracked through the room, making frown.
My eyes still on the frozen fra of the screen. I hadn’t told anyone to co in. No one interrupted in my office unless I summoned them or unless sothing had gone very wrong.
"Hold...." I started, but the door was already opening. A guard stepped in, breath uneven, posture rigid. His eyes flicked to Antonio for half a second, then locked on .
"Don," he said quickly, voice tight. "Katya is unstable."
The words hit harder than they should have.
Unstable.
My mind went blank. Not anger. Not calculation. Not strategy. Just... nothing. Like soone had reached inside my head and cut the power.
I was on my feet before I realized I’d moved. The chair scraped back against the floor with a harsh sound that echoed in the too-quiet room.
"What do you an, unstable?" Antonio asked, standing now, alert.
The guard swallowed. "She’s—she’s not responding well. She’s agitated. Nonna’s with her, but—"
That was all I heard.
I walked past him, past Antonio, past the desk that had felt like a throne monts ago and now felt like a cage. I didn’t grab my jacket. Didn’t shut down the screens. Didn’t say a word.
†††
I’m sick again, sigh. I’m so freaking tired 😩
So expect a decline in Chapters
I’m sorry
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