Chapter 225: Louder Than Bombs I Break, Yeah

[FROLO]

"Professor... was Chairman Romanov infertile?" Prosecutor Rostova continued.

"No," he said.

A defeated whimper was heard from the second row on the right.

Katya Romanov.

Everyone else seemed to pause to take in the admission that was so blatant and shameless. No one understood anything about this anymore. How a man so dedicated to saving lives would be that cruel.

Across the city, shame befell citizens who had once judged the chairman for something that had never been his fault.

It was like they were being snapped to reality and forced to look into a mirror they could never be able to break away from.

Maybe they did deserve the hell they were being forced into this time, right?

"Could you say that again. The court didn’t hear you," Rostova insisted.

"No. Chairman Romanov was never infertile," he admitted, once again making the courtroom erupt into more chaos.

"What did he just say?"

"How could a doctor be that cruel?"

"Who is even going to trust doctors after this?"

"What the hell is wrong with everyone?"

"This man should be given a death sentence."

"I have never seen such levels of cruelty against the innocent."

The court was still in session, but damn, the voices were too much.

The reactions were too chaotic.

Hell, even Milan sat there, her jaw wide open like she couldn’t believe a person could be that cruel. Maybe because she may have hated Katya, but even she wasn’t capable of such... Right?

"Order! ORDER IN COURT!" the court marshal shouted amid the chaos.

Katya stared, really stared at the professor this time.

Beside him, his friends were slowly losing their minds. Svetlana looked like she was doing the math on how many court officers would be needed to stop her before she got to the professor on the stand.

Andre was already removing his watch from his wrist as he cracked his knuckles, like he was ready to do something that he couldn’t come back from. He didn’t care. Not right now anyway.

Yaroslav looked at his ex-husband, following Katya’s eyes that had settled on the professor, and he felt his heart shatter for his beloved for the hundredth time today.

Oh, they had suffered too much.

And Yaroslav’s breathing slowly got uneven, so much so that Milan was the only one trying to calm the man down.

It wasn’t working.

How could it in such a situation, though?

Again, the court was silenced after so many calls for order by the judges and the court marshals.

Then the prosecutor continued, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Did you tell Chairman Romanov, on seven separate occasions, that he could never successfully carry a child?"

"...Yes."

"Was that statement medically true?"

"No."

At that... protests began across Frolo.

Within the courthouse, the disbelieving audience had to be shushed by Justice Reginia for order to return.

"One more interruption, this will be a closed court hearing."

The prosecutor breathed in and out as the silence returned. Then continued.

"Professor... why?" she asked, and that caught the professor off guard. Maybe because he had been expecting more medical questions, not one that directly forced him to explain his ethics. It was embarrassing to say the least.

And the professor...

The respected reproductive professor...

He stared at the floor as if there were answers there, before he lifted his head and looked in Yaroslav’s direction.

"Money," he mumbled.

"Speak clearly," Rostova insisted.

"I was paid."

"To do what?"

"To make sure Chairman Romanov never believed he could carry a child."

Katya didn’t blink.

"Did medical science ever support your diagnosis?"

"No."

"Did laboratory reports and imaging support your diagnosis?"

"No."

"Then could you explain to this court how every report suddenly declared him infertile?"

"I rewrote them," he said, swallowing hard.

"Personally?"

"Yes... every report that reached him."

"What of the original reports? What happened to them?"

"We archived them separately."

The courtroom erupted again.

"How could a person be that cruel?"

"They could have easily asked the Moskowskys to pay them if they wanted money."

"What a shame this has been."

"Keeping them in a separate archive so they could siphon more money?"

"So people can be that spineless?"

"SILENCE!" the court marshal called.

The Chief Justice turned to the professor on the stand...

"Professor, are you telling this court, under oath, that genuine medical records still exist?"

"Yes."

Everyone paused for a moment as they looked at each other; even the judges couldn’t resist. It was almost like they were confirming to each other that they were hearing the same thing. This was insanity.

This was the kind of shit that made murder look like a piece of cake, because who in their right mind even did this?

"Where?" Justice Hoffman questioned.

And the professor...

"Aslava Hospital’s Restricted Records Archive. Basement Level Four; Vault C."

On the prosecutor’s desk, one of the prosecutors handed a small note to a court officer who suddenly ran out, and it was never hard to tell what it could be about.

Those records were needed.

The confirmation was needed, and gods, this professor needed to be stripped of everything.

"Who authorized those records to remain hidden?" Prosecutor Rostova asked.

"I did."

"Who had access?"

"Me, Dr. Hamid, Dr. Belyaeva, Dr. Maxim, our fallen friends, and..." The professor stopped suddenly.

"And?"

The professor’s hands shook, not looking at the prosecutor anymore. Instead, his eyes glanced across the courtroom to the first row on the left. For a moment, his eyes stayed in the same place, looking at someone...

Milan.

It was almost unnoticeable, because the professor’s face shifted to the prosecutor again, but those who had been intent noticed it all.

Katya, Yaroslav, the Romanovs, Svet, Andre, and the Moskowsky secretaries.

Hell, even the judges and prosecutors.

"Professor... You looked toward someone," Justice Hoffman pointed out, and the professor looked away instantly.

"I..."

"Answer the question," Justice Reginia pressed.

"No one else had medical access," he said instead.

And no one challenged him, at least not yet. Prosecutor Rostova just smiled like she knew there was something that the professor didn’t want anyone else to know.

"No further questions for now, Your Honours."

With the prosecutor gone back to her seat, Professor Sorokin relaxed for a moment. He was about to leave the witness stand, too, when the Chief Justice stopped him.

"Professor Sorokin, this Bench has one question before you step down," he said, and the professor slowly looked up at the man who held his fate.

"You spent forty-two years teaching young doctors the words, ’First, do no harm...’" the Chief Justice said, before continuing, "at what point did you stop believing them?"

And in that moment, everything dawned on the professor. He realised truly that everything he had ever earned before today was gone and would never truly mean anything anymore.

He didn’t answer the judge; instead, he just broke down, something that no one in the courtroom was touched by.

Still, they let him step down.

As the court came to terms with what was happening and the length of this all, a court officer approached the second witness, Doctor Hamid.

"Doctor Abdul Hamid," he said, and the doctor slowly got up, walking to the witness stand like he had nothing to worry about.

Unlike the professor, he looked a little too confident with an expressionless face. It was like he had no regrets for what he did, and that was scary in every way.