Chapter 254: Teach Me To Function With You

[FROLO]

"One misstep and you’re banned from this floor," Katya said eventually, and Sergei couldn’t have been any happier.

He hurried toward Katya like a puppy whose owner had finally acknowledged him, and the fact that he passed behind Katya, breathing the omega in discreetly, didn’t go unnoticed by Katya.

Thankfully, no one thought much of the positioning since Sergei went to stand beside the other researchers and not Katya.

Soon enough, the lab was back to its functionality...

For a whole of five minutes.

Then, of course, Sergei happened.

"Chairman, what are the odds that we might blow up inside this lab?" Sergei asked casually, and everyone seemed to be apprehensive of him suddenly.

Katya, on the other hand, just continued with his work like it was normal for the greatest psycho of the realm to be talking about blowing up the lab while they were testing very explosive prototypes.

He was a menace, damn.

"Do you know?" Sergei whispered to the researcher beside him when Katya glared at him as if to tell him to shut up.

The poor researcher just shook his head, unsure of what the devil wanted from him. But maybe this time, Sergei was just here to see how things went on, right?

"You’re being a menace, Mr. Moskowsky," Katya said, and Sergei stared at him hopefully. He looked pathetic as fuck, but he didn’t give two shits about anything other than Katya right now.

"I just wanna help so I don’t blow things up," Sergei defended like it was the most rational explanation he could offer his beloved.

He was currently more excited about being in the same room as Katya than even the experiments he’d volunteered to help with. And it was showing, not that he was as bothered.

"Why are you really here, Vladimir?" Katya asked exasperatedly, thirty minutes later, when the experiments were going smoothly. A little too smoothly because Sergei had somehow managed to stay suspiciously quiet through the whole thing.

"I wanna be useful to you," he said, not mincing his words, even though his tone was light and had the researchers nearly swooning. Maybe they would have if this man weren’t the Devil of Frolo.

"I have enough researchers to help me out," Katya argued, stating the obvious. He knew there was more to this, even if he couldn’t exactly pinpoint it at the moment.

"But one of them betrayed you," Sergei said, a soft pout on his lips like that was the most normal of things.

And for a moment, the temperature inside the research floor went cold. Colder than the heart of the madman who was with them.

"Please pass me the tweezers," Sergei said, like he hadn’t just silently declared war on the floor.

Everyone stared skeptically, knowing damn well that there was a really high chance that one or two of them would end up in a madhouse or would be disappeared before the sun went down.

"We’re working right now, you can do your investigation later," Katya said, breathing in a few times.

Of course, he knew that Sergei wouldn’t force that kind of betrayal, and it was also then that Katya realized that Sergei wasn’t here to defend himself against the accusations the city was throwing at him.

Sergei was here because someone had leaked photos from this floor. Evidence that there was a traitor among them. Katya had figured that the buzz would die down later, but for Sergei...

This was personal.

Because even what he had said wasn’t relating to Moskowsky.

He said someone betrayed Katya.

Not Moskowsky.

"I know their names already," Sergei said excitedly as he was handed the tweezers. The researchers seemed to suddenly realize the man was here for one of them. Or two of them? Shit, there was no telling.

"Vladimir..." Katya trailed off.

"It’s okay. If they come forward by themselves, I won’t harm a hair on them," Sergei said, like he was making the greatest compromise.

"If they don’t?" Katya asked even though he knew that that wasn’t exactly an option.

"Then we see how fast things can explode inside here," Sergei said, as if it were the simplest of things.

Before anyone could even confirm what they heard the man say, he continued.

"No one will even know beyond the building or the floor. The air conditioning is perfect in here, and the elevators and escape routes locked behind me when I came in an hour ago. We are all going to burn in here together... Right?" Sergei said.

And everyone stared in horror.

Katya, on the other hand, didn’t even look scared. He looked like he was dealing with the most normal version of Sergei, and it was even more unsettling because everyone else was horrified at the thought of burning alive.

It was creepy, crazy, unhinged in every way, yet while people moved away from Sergei, he just stayed focused on his experiments.

"If you ruin my prototypes, I won’t forgive you," Katya said, like it was the most normal conversation he was having with Sergei.

And the researchers seemed to pause as they listened to the conversation and took in the sight before them.

Katya wasn’t scared of Sergei.

Katya Romanov trusted Sergei.

"But I’ll get you more trustworthy researchers," Sergei bargained.

"We spent so much time on these already. If someone here betrayed us, you can deal with them outside my lab," Katya said before turning to the researcher a few feet from him and handing him what looked like a semiconductor to put in the system they were working on.

"But I kidnapped the senator," Sergei argued, and Katya rolled his eyes at the man.

"Right, and I’m a beauty pageant in Frolo," Katya said, and snickers were heard in the room again.

These two couldn’t be serious.

There was just no way the most dangerous man in Frolo and the most powerful omega in the city were having a casual conversation about what the city was stressing about, and they still managed to make a joke of it.

"You are beautiful though, Chairman," Sergei said sheepishly, and Katya groaned.

Soon, the duo turned to bickering over things that didn’t make sense while the researchers, unable to leave the floor, went back to their work.

They were apprehensive of the Devil of Frolo, yet they stayed because a part of them believed Katya wouldn’t leave them at the hands of the madman.

Perhaps they had a little too much faith in the omega because, frankly, it was his boyfriend on the news, and the person being accused was the man he was bickering and playfully bantering with inside the most explosive research lab in Frolo.

Maybe there was more to them than everyone could see.

But one thing was obvious to the researchers.

The chairman and Mr. Moskowsky were good friends who trusted each other. It was the only way Katya would have stayed that calm despite the accusations across the city.

"Everyone, take a break. We reconvene in ten minutes," Katya said hours later, a few hours past lunch break. They had had a really busy morning, and it was paying off slowly.

"Yes, sir," the researchers echoed as they walked around the floor.

Funny enough, some of them tried to leave, hoping that Sergei had changed his mind about the lockdown, but the entire floor was still locked down.