ABSOLUTE INSANITY: A forbidden bond-Chapter 178: Unstable.

Chapter 178

ROMEO POV

My office felt smaller than it ever had. Same walls. Same steel-and-glass order. Same chair behind the desk that had broken men with a look alone.

Yet something in the air had shifted, heavy and expectant, like the room knew what I was about to do.

Antonio entered without knocking. He didn’t usually forget. He just knew better than to pretend this was a normal moment.

He set the drive on my desk. It was small. Black. Unassuming. This thing had been sitting in my vault for months.

Extracted the night we took the Volkov estate. Catalogued. Filed. Ignored. Because I hadn’t wanted to see it.

Antonio sat down in the chair in front of my table. "Footage from the interior cameras," he said. "Primary residence. Hallways. Study. West wing. Time-stamped."

I nodded once, eyes still on the drive. Silence stretched.

"Is this because of Katya?," he added, carefully. That almost made me laugh, because I don’t know why I was even caring to look at this now.

"Its not" I lied, Antonio studied me for a second longer, like he was deciding whether to push. Then he inclined his head and leaned into the chair.

I picked up the drive, looking at it, I considered snapping it in half. Erasing it. Choosing ignorance the way I always had when the truth didn’t serve me.

Because once you see something, you can’t unsee it. I slotted the drive into the system. The screen on the far wall flickered to life, rows of camera feeds populating one by one.

Empty corridors.

High ceilings.

A house built to impress. The Volkov estate. Katya’s home.

I scrolled through dates. My jaw tightened when I realized how far back the footage went.

Months.

Years.

I selected one at random. The image sharpened. A hallway camera. Late evening. The lighting dimmer, warmer than the rest of the house.

A girl crossed the frame—slender, quiet, moving fast with her head down.

Katya. She looked younger. Smaller. Her shoulders were hunched like she was trying to make herself invisible.

I froze the frame.

My chest tightened in a way I didn’t recognize.

I hit play.

She disappeared through a door at the end of the hall. Minutes passed. Nothing happened.

Then another figure entered the frame.

A man. I didn’t need facial recognition to know who he was. Boris.

Katya’s father.

He moved with ownership. With certainty. Like the house—and everyone in it—belonged to him.He stopped outside the same door.

The camera didn’t capture what happened inside.

But it captured everything else.

Time stamps jumping forward. The door staying closed. Sounds bleeding faintly through the system’s audio—raised voices, then silence.

When the door finally opened again, Katya stepped out.

She was shaking.

Her hair was loose now. Her posture collapsed inward. She pressed her arms tight against herself as she moved down the hall, faster this time, like she was trying to outrun something that followed even after the door shut.

I stopped the footage.

My hand was clenched into a fist on the desk. I hadn’t noticed when.

I switched cameras. Different day. Different time. it was the day we invaded.

I switched cameras. Different angle. Different corridor. Same house.

The screen showed the interior of the Volkov estate in chaos—men running, alarms blaring silently through muted footage, shadows cutting across marble floors.

Gunfire didn’t carry sound here, but I could see the flashes of it reflected in mirrors, in glass frames shattering one by one.

Then— Katya. I leaned forward without realizing it. The house rattled with explosion, Katya on the floor, her face hidden under a table.

The screen went black, reflecting my face back at me. I barely recognized it.

I dragged the timeline back. An hour before the explosion. The progress bar crawled left like it didn’t want to go there either. Like the system itself understood what I was asking it to show me.

The feed stabilized.

Same house. Same oppressive luxury. The kind that looks expensive but feels like a cage if you live inside it.

Camera: West wing. Private quarters.

Katya appeared. She moved slowly this time. Not rushing. Not hiding. Just... quiet. Her shoulders were already drawn inward, like she’d learned how to fold herself smaller long before anyone told her to.

She stopped near the wall. Waited. That alone told me everything.

No phone. No book. No distraction. Just standing there, hands clasped in front of her, eyes on the floor. Like a soldier waiting to be inspected. Or punished.

The door opened. Boris stepped into frame.

The footage had no audio worth trusting, but it didn’t need it. I knew that posture. I’d seen it on men about to break someone just because they could.

He said something. Katya flinched.

A full-body reaction. She shook her head once. Small. Almost apologetic.

He stepped closer. She backed up until her shoulders hit the wall. Nowhere else to go.

My jaw tightened.

He kept talking.

Her hands came up...not to fight. Never to fight. Just to shield. Instinctive. Automatic. That’s when something cold settled in my chest.

Because this wasn’t a single moment. It wasn’t an outburst. It was routine.

This was practiced.

The camera angle shifted slightly as Boris moved out of frame, blocking most of what followed. But I could still see Katya’s reactions.

Her head turned away.

Her knees buckled. She slid down the wall slowly, like she knew better than to fall too hard. Like she knew what made things worse.

He leaned back into frame briefly, holding her by her hair. I slammed pause, looking out to the garden.

I didn’t want to go further but I needed to know to be able to process this well. My eyes went back to the screen.

Antonio hadn’t spoken. I realized then that he hadn’t moved either.

I played it, the screen coming back to life as Boris dragged his daughter by her hair to the other wall, he leaned into her. Speaking words that wasn’t heard through the video but I could bet he was threatening her.

A blow to Katya face made me wince, grabbing my pack if cigarettes on the table. I needed something to anchor me through the video.

Katya head snapped back, her lips sealed like she hadn’t just received a pouch that could have broken her jaw.

And for just one second—one devastating, unguarded second—she looked straight into the lens.

No fear. No anger, just painful resignation. Like this was normal. Like this was just... life.

Minutes later, alarms. Chaos. The explosion.

The invasion.

The moment I’d always framed as the start of everything. I leaned back slowly, the leather chair creaking beneath me, exhaling the smoke from my lung.

Nonna’s voice echoed in my head, uninvited.

She was never a princess in her father’s house.

I’d told myself it didn’t matter.

That whatever had happened before, she was still leverage. Still a Volkov. Still useful. I was wrong. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

This wasn’t leverage. This was damage. I exhaled through my nose, because anything else would’ve been dangerous.

Antonio finally spoke, quietly. "That’s harsh." I nodded once but a sharp knock cracked through the room, making me frown.

My eyes still on the frozen frame of the screen. I hadn’t told anyone to come in. No one interrupted me in my office unless I summoned them or unless something had gone very wrong.

"Hold...." I started, but the door was already opening. A guard stepped in, breath uneven, posture rigid. His eyes flicked to Antonio for half a second, then locked on me.

"Don," he said quickly, voice tight. "Katya is unstable."

The words hit harder than they should have.

Unstable.

My mind went blank. Not anger. Not calculation. Not strategy. Just... nothing. Like someone had reached inside my head and cut the power.

I was on my feet before I realized I’d moved. The chair scraped back against the floor with a harsh sound that echoed in the too-quiet room.

"What do you mean, unstable?" Antonio asked, standing now, alert.

The guard swallowed. "She’s—she’s not responding well. She’s agitated. Nonna’s with her, but—"

That was all I heard.

I walked past him, past Antonio, past the desk that had felt like a throne moments ago and now felt like a cage. I didn’t grab my jacket. Didn’t shut down the screens. Didn’t say a word.

†††

I’m sick again, sigh. I’m so freaking tired 😩

So expect a decline in Chapters

I’m sorry