Chapter 116: This City Will Always Break Your Heart

[KATYA]

It was eleven o’clock.

In the night.

Outside his home.

And back into the city that had been home for him.

Only that now, Katya didn’t know what to think of all that was happening at the moment.

Was home supposed to be like this?

This filled with pain and insanity?

Was home supposed to hurt more times than it held and fixed?

Was home supposed to haunt Katya in ways he didn’t even know he could explain or deal with?

But he was home.

And that should have been a good sign.

Yet it only hit him with a type of pain he would never get used to. The kind that not even time could heal.

Because society was supportive.

Society could understand what was needed.

But beneath all that...

Society would always remain cruel.

Katya Romanov was learning the hard way as he stood inside the small airstrip, watching the huge screens replay everything that he didn’t even know how to process yet. And the worst part was that it had happened early in the morning.

While Katya didn’t even know what was happening

Maybe that was why the trip was delayed by five hours.

Maybe that was why no one was bothered when the chairman stepped out, late, and there was a private jet waiting for them. After all, who could question anything a Moskowsky did?

Someone had known the truth early.

And Katya was being smacked in the face with it so ruthlessly.

How delightful, no?

"The Moskowsky heiress was born earlier today at Aslava hospital," one of the headlines read, as if that was the greatest news to a city that had been ruled by an iron fist by the Moskowskys.

A city that had held more times than it had smiled because of that family.

Yet they were praising them like it was normal.

But maybe everyone was happy because there was a new life.

A child had been born into the Moskowsky family after so long.

And Katya...

He understood the excitement.

Painfully so.

Even as he kept watching the television. He didn’t know what to do or say because his feet wouldn’t move.

The staff who had volunteered with him looked at him with pitiful faces as they passed by him, heading home, as if they were feeling terrible for him.

But even if they did feel terrible for him, the truth was something that no one would ever be able to change.

Milan had given them something that Katya hadn’t been able to.

It explained the absence of Yaroslav for the past week.

Oh, if only Katya knew.

Then again, even if he knew, what would he do?

Face the woman his husband had cheated with during their courtship and marriage, too?

Fight the woman who had produced something that even Sergei, for all his insanity, would never turn his back against?

Their family was whole now.

’At least Yaroslav won’t have to defend Milan each time like he did my inability to carry a child,’ Katya thought to himself as he stayed watching.

"Mr. Moskowsky and Irina were together at the hospital for the delivery. Looks like father and son finally got over their differences for this special occasion," someone said on the TV.

Katya couldn’t help but feel like he was losing his mind. The truth was haunting him, and he was truly helpless this time. What did he even come home to?

Would it have been better to have known beforehand?

"A loved mistress gives more than a cherished husband ever could: the dilemma of the Moskowsky household," someone laughed in the distance, and Katya’s heart sank into his stomach.

Cherished husband.

That was what they called him.

Funny how he was so cherished and cheated on throughout their entire marriage. What a love story, right?

Even then, Katya stayed glued to the spot. He had noticed people dispersing fast, and frankly, he did care this time. Not even as he saw Anya leave through another exit marked private.

Of course, it wasn’t hard to tell where she was headed.

She was part of that family. Always had been.

"Chairman Katya Gamov and the heir-less reality he lived in," someone said, all smiles, like that wasn’t the most insulting thing of all that Katya had heard today.

Katya sighed before he walked away. He needed to get out before the reality he was stuck in got a little too painful for him.

But again, there was never going to be a way for him to get out, because he was bound to the Moskowskys for life.

Even if Yaroslav did eventually have pity on him and granted him the divorce, he would never be free thanks to his contract with Sergei.

The same Sergei who was already living his life with Irina.

The same Sergei who looked so good with Irina was nauseating.

Oh, but Katya was a secret in every way.

An open secret.

A jailed bird stuck in a golden cage.

When Katya got to his car, which had somehow been bought over at the airstrip. He dared to hope that there would be silence. But it was just a fever dream for him.

The moment he turned on the radio, he was hit with the same news cycle again. Across every channel, and fuck if that wasn’t a cruel fate. But this was probably his punishment, right?

For not being able to give his in-laws what they needed.

"Nurse Milan Popova has given the devil of Frolo something that no one ever could. And certainly, something that the legal husband could never give CEO Gamov," the first channel taunted like they knew Katya was listening in.

Katya had to remind himself that this was bound to come after the scandal six months ago.

Oh, but it was a harsh truth for him.

"The first Moskowskys grandchild ever, a devil’s pride."

That stung.

But Katya willed himself to drive home.

It did help that there was too much traffic already, and he was so close to losing his shit. Then again, even that wouldn’t ever help him. So, he had to sit through all that because it was way better than silence.

The only comfort he had was that his phone wasn’t breaking with notifications because otherwise, Katya didn’t know what he would have done, especially with the stakes he had bound himself to for family.

"Was Chairman Gamov too bitter to even go see the heir he couldn’t give?"

"If Sergei Moskowsky could come to the hospital. Why not Chairman Gamov?"

"The chairman submitted a last-minute request to volunteer on a field trip away from the city. On the same day that Milan delivered the first Moskowsky grandchild."

"The name is out. The new Moskowsky grandchild is called Erika Gamova."

Katya heard and saw it all.

Across billboards as he drove home, he only saw that the route had shown Katya more than he ever could have thought of.

The way that traffic had seemingly slowed, like the universe was giving him front row seats to his own doom, was appalling.

Milan had delivered a baby.

Katya had lost his baby.

Milan had given Yaroslav what the man had always wanted.

Katya couldn’t even give him peace in his marriage.

The comparison was all over.

The jabs he was getting were not even indirect anymore.

The attacks were far more direct than they had ever been.

Across the city in his way, Katya saw videos from that Saturday night when he found out Milan was pregnant surfaced.

They were edited into far sinister things.

And Katya knew there and then that no defense he gave would ever give him peace.

So, when he got home, he just went to bed.

Without even changing his clothes.