Chapter 117: Maybe I Deserved It All For Loving & Staying

[KATYA]

That morning, Katya didn’t say a thing to anyone.

Not even to his driver, who had turned off the radio like he knew his boss already had a lot to deal with. And Katya was thankful for that. Because he didn’t know what to do or say.

So, he chose to pretend that things were normal.

Like his entire marriage wasn’t upended for everyone to see.

Hell, he didn’t even react when he got to work the next morning.

He just walked in like always. Even when the whispers had gotten louder than anything he could ever imagine in his time at Moskowsky. He didn’t want to come to work, especially today of all the days.

But he had a job to do.

A contract to fulfil.

A society to pretend didn’t exist for his own sanity.

But it was all too crazy.

The private elevator stared emptily at him like it was a reminder of what he had given up.

Of what he had lost all those months, and didn’t even have the courage to face anymore.

Of what he would never get back.

Katya knew what people wanted from him. He had been bashed in this society ever since the Yaroslav-Milan relationship was revealed six months ago, and frankly, he had told himself he wouldn’t give in.

Because right now, there was only one set of things they all wanted from him to justify whatever theories they already had running in their minds.

A reaction.

Jealousy for the one thing that he had never been able to provide the Moskowskys. The one thing that Milan had given so easily, like the fates were on her side all this time.

Maybe they were.

Anger for the cheater, he called his husband, who wasn’t even about to let him go, despite everything that was happening.

But he would work.

Because that was all he had left.

Work.

"Rahim, are there meetings scheduled for today?" Katya asked when he reached his office, and his secretary was already there as always.

She looked at him with eyes that were too soft for anything that Katya could even think of.

But Katya didn’t want her pity.

Didn’t care what anyone’s pity.

"No, sir, but an envelope came for you today," Rahim said, a smile on her face as if she was hoping that it would make Katya’s day any better.

Life was so fickle that it was sickening to an extent. But what the hell did Katya even have left to fight for? Even if he decided to fight back?

A husband who had long announced to the world that he would never divorce Katya, and at the same time, he would never let Milan go?

A family that didn’t even want him?

What was there to fight for, really?

"Alright, thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything," Katya said as he walked into his office.

After all the fuss around the day, it wasn’t hard to imagine what those papers could be.

Katya was not going to deal with that right now.

Because, honestly, it was already bad enough that he was blindsided by it all.

For months, he had locked himself in a cocoon that filtered out any and all news about Yaroslav and his mistress. He had made sure no one around him ever even mentioned it.

And he didn’t even have to do much to enforce that.

Yet now he was bombarded by it all at once.

It was like he was in hell and no one was telling him shit.

But maybe this was what he should have expected from the very beginning. Something that he should have embraced regardless of what happened along the way.

"Life has to go on," Katya mumbled to himself, like he was not going to embrace whatever that was just yet.

Like he wasn’t so close to crashing out at what his life had become over these past few months.

Why did his life have to be so damn hard?

As he sat on his desk, the black envelope stared at him, and Katya wondered if this was really the course of action the Moskowskys were taking with him.

It wasn’t fair at all.

Katya picked it up, not paying attention to anything in his office. The same office, he was starting to think he wouldn’t even last another day in.

Sighing, he picked the envelope up and checked it.

It didn’t have a sender, just a receiver’s name.

Katya Romanov.

Not Katya Gamov.

Not Katya Moskowsky.

Romanov.

Of course, Katya was now convinced that he knew what this could be.

Divorce papers from the mighty Sergei Moskowsky, seeing as Yaroslav was too proud to let Katya go.

The man was probably freeing him and deciding on other ways to torture Katya.

But what was Katya supposed to do then?

His fate had long been sealed anyway, and it was useless to fight.

’The luckiest Romanov in the world,’ Katya thought to himself when he realized his phone had long died.

He hadn’t even noticed.

Then again, in his defense, he had only used his phone when they were going on the trip. He didn’t expect that it would die after a day and that fast, for a phone whose battery usually lasted three days.

It was absurd, but what else was he supposed to do? Maybe Svet had turned it off remotely?

Oh, but it was a desperate stretch given everything that was happening.

Katya plugged it in, ignoring the envelope on the table that he was sure would define his fate in a worse way than the Milan birth.

Maybe if he kept working and opened it at the end of the day, he would be fine. After all, it was going to be easier to work than to think of whatever was waiting in there.

But it wasn’t better.

The moment Katya’s phone turned on, the omega regretted even turning it on.

He had thousands of notifications.

It was definitely why his phone had died. And the fact that they were still streaming in was something else.

Katya didn’t even know that people could send this many messages at the same time.

So, he watched as they streamed in, his phone vibrating at a scary frequency. It was almost like he had been hacked, but Katya knew better than that.

No one in the office building knew of his personal line other than the Moskowskys.

They had been the ones who gave it to him for fucks sake.

So, the fact that the notifications were thousands of missed calls, messages across his personal messenger, and the few social media apps he had been using was not surprising.

Katya could only think of one person who could do that to him.

Yet he couldn’t dare name.

Not here anyway.

The message contents were way worse than the notifications that came. Hell, Katya has his regrets oiling up with every thirty messages that came through per second.

For a moment, Katya wondered if the universe or anyone out there ever cared that he had been wronged first.

That he had been loyal, faithful, and loving to the man who had ruined his life and dragged him to the pits of hell.

But what did it matter when all he was getting were things he never thought possible in his whole life?

’So, this is what I get for being in love,’ Katya thought defeatedly, as he lay his head on his desk.