Chapter 441: We Both Rue The Words We Said That Day

[KATYA]

The sound of the keys rattling on the other end told Katya Romanov what to expect.

They were here.

Again.

Five weeks.

He had been gone for five weeks if the number of sunsets he had counted were right. If the meals he had been given that he counted were right on schedule.

Three meals a day, they’d kept him well fed. Well clothed even if there was no palace he’d be going to.

He’d tried to ask for a phone call once, but what he got in return was an injection on his arm, one that he knew was not just painful for him, but for the love of his life on the other end.

His Vladimir.

Gods, Katya had wondered whether Sergei ate properly. Whether he slept the right way. Whether he went to their home and stayed, holding on for him.

When Katya told Sergei to go, he had expected that it would take this long. A part of him already knew that the hours wouldn’t be enough for the government.

By the end of the first week, he was sure that they would take their sweet time to release him. And Katya, he was determined to be a model prisoner just so he wouldn’t be used badly against Sergei.

It was his only way of controlling the pain cycle for Sergei now that he’d fucked Sergei up.

The omega didn’t talk back.

Didn’t try to fight.

Just let them do whatever they wanted, silently hoping that they would let him go.

But each time he asked about Sergei, there was nothing. No news, no passive statements.

Until a week ago where he heard that the accountant had been butchered.

He knew it was stupid hope that it was Vladimir’s doing, but being stuck here wasn’t exactly what Katya had wanted for himself. He hoped that Sergei did what Sergei wanted and didn’t worry about him.

And fuck if Katya knew it was all just pointless hope.

Because when night came, Katya felt it all.

The fear of loss from Sergei. The desperation to hold him again. The desire to be together again. He felt the bond ache with sorrow from Sergei, and he felt like shit for putting them both in that position.

Because if Sergei was hurting that badly, there were so many odds of things going haywire, and Katya had no clue which one would get fucked up first.

Vladimir was not doing well.

And Katya’s heart broke for the man he’d begged to trust him.

But now, that trust had resulted in Katya being taken to an old mill. He’d expected that it would be terrible, yet inside the old mill was a military-grade bunker. It was almost like a home of sorts.

There were several soldiers and their families under there.

Katya was taken to one of the rooms with barely enough sunlight. Maybe he was in a restructured basement; Katya didn’t know. But he knew for a fact that there was what looked like some sort of small town under here.

It was unnerving, to say the least; how a government could have its soldiers like this. How they could live on two different sides of Frolo. For anyone who dared to come looking, they would end up at the old mill.

But beneath it all was what appeared to be a paradise for some people.

Katya wanted home.

And home...

Home had always been his Vladimir for the longest time.

"You look well, young Romanov. It’s time to send your alpha a message," Chief Zhenya, as Katya had learned his name the day of his arrest, said with a soft smile.

He knew what they were doing, and he didn’t like it one bit.

They would inject him with a substance that made his entire body ache so badly for a whole hour, sometimes longer; then when the hour was done, they would give him the antidote.

But for Sergei, it would drive him nuts.

Because he’d think Katya was being tortured.

That Katya was being beaten black and blue occasionally, and he couldn’t help.

These people were playing psychological warfare with Sergei, and if Sergei ever figured it out, Katya knew it would be game over for them.

Maybe that was why he tried to reason with Chief Zhenya. The only man who treated him like a person instead of a weapon formed against Sergei.

Maybe the president’s chief of security wasn’t as bad as the news cycles made him out to be, right?

"May I ask for a favor?" Katya asked quietly, and the chief looked at him, then at the soldiers who had come in with him.

"Get out, all of you," Chief Zhenya said, and everyone left wordlessly. They knew better than to defy the one man who could bend their necks in seconds and pull their spines nearly as brutally as Sergei Moskowsky.

"What is it, young Romanov?" Zhenya asked his nephew, voice still as cold as if he wasn’t about to help the young man only because they were family.

"May I use your phone to let him know I’m alive?" Katya asked calmly, softening his eyes, his ears turning red, and his cheeks brightening like that was the hardest thing Katya Romanov had ever asked of anyone.

And Zhenya smirked knowingly at him.

Classic Romanov omega hostage training.

If he gave in, Katya would know he cared. Katya would know he had a weakness, and Katya would work on exploiting it the next time. Of course it was just the manual that this little wolf was following.

He’d written that shit.

Gods, his brother had really done a number on the young heir.

"I know the Romanov omega training manual by heart, young Romanov," Zhenya said, and Katya stared, not surprised that this man would know.

Of course he would if he was to be the one who kidnapped Katya Romanov.

Of course the manual was something that the underworld had tried to know for so long. But then maybe if he tried again, there would be a way out for him through this man?

"What will you ask for next? To slow down the injections and administer the drugs via IV?" Zhenya asked.

Katya knew he had been caught.

If the pain was administered via IV, then Sergei would know the kind of torture that was being used and be ready for what the government was sending his way. But at the same time, it was horrifying, to say the least.

"No. Just your watch," Katya said, and Zhenya sighed.

"What do you want to do now? I just told you that there are no signals under here. If you try communicating with that barbarian husband of yours, you will fail," Zhenya said, and Katya...

He stilled for a split second before he went back to his state.

But he had picked up one thing.

Husband.

The entire city called Katya Sergei’s unfortunate mate.

Sergei’s weak omega.

The omega being controlled by Sergei.

But Chief Zhenya had called Sergei his husband.

That wasn’t the kind of information that slipped out casually, unless Katya was being manipulated by it. But what were the odds that the man who had been with him since his captivity was using him?

Oh, but the Romanov training was begging Katya not to lean into it.

That the slip-up must have been intentional.

But looking at Zhenya, there was nothing there. Yet Katya also knew that people like Zhenya, alphas like Zhenya Levin, manipulated omegas like it was the only thing they were designed to do.

Katya knew he should have been careful.

Still, he asked for the watch.

"I just want to check the time and date, please," Katya said.

Zhenya sighed before he took off his watch and handed it to Katya.

"You have five seconds to check whatever you’re checking and give it back," Zhenya sighed tiredly.

Katya didn’t look enthusiastic while taking the watch. He simply held out his hand, and it was placed there.

Then he looked at it.

Eleven o’clock in the morning. Which meant the afternoon wasn’t even here yet.

Then he looked at the radio transmitter Zhenya was wearing.

So Katya did the only thing he could.

He pressed the hour button, the minute and second button so hard for two seconds, and turned them all to the left at once, before returning them to the same point they were at.

"Thank you," he said, handing the watch back.

But Zhenya injected him with the drug, before he took the watch, and then left.

And Katya, he hoped for the first time in weeks.

Across the city, inside a minivan headed to the Psych Ward, life had just been breathed into a dead man walking.