Chapter 263: Out of Sight, Out of Mind… Right?

[FROLO]

Alek held a press conference the next morning outside Katya’s gates. He’d been leaving for his residence and dropping Katya off for work when they got to the gates and saw the reporters with questions.

Katya wanted to ignore them, but the accusations were increasingly adamant about Sergei’s involvement in the senator’s disappearance.

"I’ll fix this, little rose," Alek said, and Katya looked at him as if to ask if he was sure.

"It’s my mess. I shouldn’t have dragged you and that madman into it. I’m really sorry about that," Alek added, and Katya didn’t see a reason to stop him.

Especially if it would clear Sergei’s name.

"Senator, is it true that the Moskowskys kidnapped you?"

"Senator, did you come to this residence so we’d believe your boyfriend isn’t cheating on you with the Devil of Frolo?" another asked, and Katya fisted his hands.

And Katya...

He was supposed to stay in the car.

He was supposed to let Alek handle the press.

But cheating and Sergei in one sentence had Katya pushing the doors open with fury on his face. He didn’t care how this would look.

The media had watched as Yaroslav had cheated on him with Milan, and now, they were trying to push a different narrative for him.

Oh, he would be damned if he let them drag his—

His friend’s name into the mud.

Right?

Friend was safer than thinking of Sergei as his beloved. Because once he crossed that line, he knew he’d never look at Alek the same way again.

"You all need to stop being obsessed with theories and my life. I have a boyfriend whom you love. I have a boss whom you don’t like. And that is not my problem.

"The next time someone accuses me of cheating with Vladimir, I’ll sue every last penny out of your lineage," Katya said confidently.

Then he stood closer to Alek, holding his arm like an omega who had suddenly realized all the attention was on him. They looked at him in surprise, like this was not what they were expecting.

But then this was the Katya they’d been provoking for two weeks, no?

"You heard him. And if he changes his mind, I’ll sue you on his behalf," Alek warned, not once mincing his words.

The reporters were stunned to say the least. They had not been expecting that bold declaration from Katya of all people.

The Katya they knew was shy and avoided talking to people. Almost never spoke about anything happening to him. He’d always been quiet, taking the punches like it was all he was made for.

But this time...

He was ready to fight back.

And that was scary, because the city knew what that meant.

If Katya picked up arms, there was a madman somewhere who would support every little decision he made. They didn’t even need to hear that from Sergei. That man was down for the senator’s omega, and it was no secret anymore.

So instead of asking any more accusations, they waited for the senator to say more. Maybe to answer their questions.

"I took a two-week sabbatical. Yes, it was messy and involved a lot of fighting. That’s why I came home looking that terrible. I know what that sounds like, but if this was Mr. Moskowsky’s doing, I wouldn’t have survived the Senate bombing," Alek said.

Katya held back a snicker at that.

It was almost hilarious how that was what Alek was using as a defense for Sergei. But at the same time, there was no other way to remind the people of Frolo that Sergei never played with people he wanted dead.

If he needed someone gone, he would do it himself.

"I know my boyfriend was worried, and while I have apologized to him in private," Alek said as he turned to Katya, who was still clutching his arm for safety.

Oh, Katya.

Gently, he pulled Katya from behind him like an alpha to an omega he loved. The reporters watched, and cameras clicked faster than they had before.

"I would like to publicly apologize to my little rose for not giving him a proper explanation and for making society come up with its own assumptions.

"I’m sorry you had to go through that, baby," Alek said, his eyes holding Katya’s like he was really sorry. Like he was going to do everything he promised to do last night.

Katya had given him a second chance, and he wouldn’t waste it. Not with reporters who were determined to dig his own grave for him.

He would prove to Katya that he was not jealous anymore, which was even more hilarious, knowing that the Kumarin Bratva wouldn’t let Alek go just because Aleksandr said he was jealous.

But then they would figure it out together.

He had promised Katya.

And even now, he was promising the same thing as he looked at Katya like there was an entire universe in the omega’s eyes.

"I’ll be better, moy lyubim," Alek said, pulling Katya into a hug, and the reporters cooed as the live streamers laughed at how cute they were.

But in an executive office in Frolo, someone had seen something.

"No fucking way..." Volkov trailed off.

"You guys saw that too, right?" Rahim voiced as she looked at Sergei, Anya, and Volkov.

"Saw what?" Anya asked.

"He flinched when the alpha called him lyubim," Rahim said, like that was the most obvious thing.

"They love each other, and they just clearly had a fight about where Aleksandr was. Don’t read too much into it," Sergei said before he got up and went to his office, leaving the other three staring at the screen and replaying the video they had just watched.

"He defended the boss and then flinched at the senator’s live declaration. This is going to be the war ever," Volkov said, as if he didn’t have a meeting in ten minutes.

Well, meetings could wait.

Such miracles almost never happened in Frolo that consecutively.

"Kids these days," Anya huffed as she went back to her office like she hadn’t seen shit.

But she had.

It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but someone who knew what to look for was certainly aware of what they had seen.

Across the city, the Kumarin Bratva was gathered again inside the restaurant. Some people still called them the syndicate, but the horror stories about them were associated with the name itself.

The Kumarin Bratva.

Today, the man who usually sat at the head of the table was missing;

Maybe because the woman who had been yapping about the senator had been found with her body in the kind of shape that would make anyone lose their mind and never want to eat meat again.

"Kenzo, you saw that too, right? The senator’s little boyfriend does not love him," one of the women, the butcher, Hadasha, said to Kenzo, their second-in-command, as she played with her knife.

She’d come in early, too, and didn’t have as many bodies to grind.

"Yeah, you’re right. The way the omega defended Moskowsky is all the proof we needed to know that Romanov’s omega was important to the Devil of Frolo.

"All those breadcrumbs for years, and now we have irrefutable proof of it," Kenzo said, laughing sinisterly as he stared at the screen where the senator was still giving his speech.

It was a nice, heartwarming speech after the little show, and gods, it should have been heartwarming. Yet that one press conference had given the Bratva what they had been desperate for for so long.

A confirmation.

"Do we still need Senator Goody Two-Shoes?" Hadasha asked as if they had better options now and didn’t need the man.

"Yes. I’m pretty sure he convinced his little omega to forgive him. We will use them both to dismantle the Moskowsky empire from within.

"This is going to be so much fun! Leader will definitely love this when he returns," Kenzo said as he looked at the head of the table, at the empty seat.

The dangerous endgame of life was only just beginning, and they were more than excited for it.

"Great, I should go sharpen my grinder then. See you guys later," Hadasha said, excusing herself like a woman who finally got all the motivation to be better at crushing people’s bones.

Across the city, in a penthouse in Moskowsky, an alpha was doing his very best to be reasonable.

To not feed himself hope.

To not give in to what was right before him.

He was trying to be a better person. He had tried to stay in his office after the press conference, but then the senator dropped Katya off at the office building, and he lost his shit.

He didn’t trust himself to be steady, so he hurried to his penthouse to keep the distance.

His subordinates looked at him, confused, before they saw the footage and saw why their boss was running away.

Frankly, this was one they couldn’t even blame him for.

Katya Romanov had defended him.

Not because he was being forced to.

Not because it would look good for PR.

He had defended the barbarian without hoping to get anything for it. And the fact that it was the first sighting of a fierce Katya, they honestly understood.

Because no one outside the man’s circle had defended him publicly.

Not like that.

Not when there was a risky scandal coming up.

Sure, they had murdered their way through scandals, but no one had ever given warnings with soft yet fierce eyes like that.

No one.

Maybe this time their boss was right to take some time to relearn breathing and functioning like a normal man, right?

"He defended me... called me Vladimir... called me Vladimir in public," Sergei breathed, his breath fogging the huge surveillance screen.

At some point, he’d gotten so close to it that his forehead was nearly touching the glass. He’d been replaying Katya’s defense ever since he’d heard it... and bolted.