ABSOLUTE INSANITY: A forbidden bond-Chapter 203: Worried?

Chapter 203

KATYA POV

I didn’t realize I was staring at the blood until it started to blur. It had spread farther than it should have.

Dark against the pale floor, creeping into the grooves of the marble like it belonged there. My mind kept trying to turn it into something else.

A spill of Paint....Wine....Anything but what it was.

The room was quiet in a way that hurt my ears. I followed the line of blood without meaning to.

And when I saw her, my breath hitched. Adelasia lay face down where she’d fallen, her dark hair fanned across the floor, one arm twisted beneath her body at an unnatural angle.

She wasn’t moving. Not even the small movements people make when they’re pretending to be still.

My brain refused to connect her to the woman who had been standing, speaking, accusing. The woman who had called him cousin.

My hands were still wrapped around the vase. I hadn’t dropped it. I couldn’t remember deciding not to.

My fingers felt distant, like they belonged to someone else, trembling just enough to make the ceramic knock softly against itself..

My eyes drifted without permission, finding Marina. She was still on the floor, a few feet away, frozen in a half-crouch like her body hadn’t received the same message as her mind.

Her hands hovered uselessly in front of her as she stared at Adelasia dead body. She was shaking so badly, that her lips parted and nothing came out.

I watched as her gaze traced the floor, the blood, the stillness. Something in her face finally broke.

Her knees buckled first. Her body followed a second later. She crumpled sideways, her shoulder hitting the floor with a dull thud.

Her head lolled back. She fainted. The silence deepened. I could feel the steady presence of Romeo beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him.

My eyes lifted slowly, reluctantly, as if they were moving through water. Romeo was already looking right at me.

He hadn’t turned his head. Hadn’t shifted his stance. He was just there, solid and unmoving at my side, his gaze locked on mine like it had been waiting.

The world narrowed. No bodies. No blood. No sound.

Just him.

His eyes didn’t ask anything. They didn’t soften. They didn’t harden either. They simply held me, unblinking.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. A second? A lifetime? All I knew was staring deep into the stormy gray eyes that haunted me countless night.

Drop.

The sound was small. Almost nothing. But it cut through everything in the silence. My gaze slipped from his face to the floor between us just as a single dark drop fell and bloomed against the marble.

Another followed. My breath caught. I tracked the trail upward without thinking, my eyes moving inch by inch.

Past his hand, past the sleeve of his jacket, darkening as it soaked through. Up to his shoulder.

The fabric there was torn, stained deep and wet, clinging where it shouldn’t. Blood seeped steadily out from the open wound.

"You’re—" The word didn’t finish as the vase slipped out from my hand before I could stop it from shattering.

The sound exploded between us.

Ceramic slammed against marble, splintering into sharp white fragments that skidded across the floor.

I flinched hard.

My body jerked on instinct, stumbling back out of Romeo’s arms as if the noise had physically shoved me.

My heart slammed against my ribs, breath tearing out of my chest. Felt like the spell broke as everything came rushing back in at once.

The blood. The body. The smell of gunpowder still hanging faintly in the air.

My head snapped up to him, questions crashing into me so violently I felt dizzy.

Why? Why was he bleeding? Why had he stepped in front of me?

He could have stayed where he was. He could have let it happen. He could have watched from the elevator, detached and untouched, while Adelasia pulled the trigger and I....

My stomach twisted.

He didn’t have to move. He didn’t have to take that bullet. And yet he did.

And not only that—he had fired back without hesitation. Had ended her. His own blood. His cousin.

My thoughts tangled, spiraling faster and faster. Why save me? Why me?

My eyes dragged back to his shoulder, to the blood soaking deeper into the fabric now, dripping steadily to the floor. Each drop felt like a countdown I didn’t understand.

My chest tightened painfully.

"Y-you... you’re b-bleeding," I managed to choke out. My voice sounded thin and papery, like a stranger’s. "It’s... it’s s-so much... the b-blood, it’s not s-stopping."

My heart hammered at the sight of the deep crimson soaking through his expensive suit jacket, making my head spin.

I took a shaky, uneven step toward him, my hands instinctively reaching out. I had to see. I had to know how bad it was.

I needed to reach his shoulder, to press my hands against the wound, to do something to atleast apologize.

"I... I’m so"

"Don’t move."

Before I could take another step, Romeo’s uninjured arm shot out. His hand clamped around my wrist with a strength that was startling, anchoring me to the spot.

He didn’t even glance at his own hand, which was already stained with the blood from his side, or the wound that was surely burning. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

His focus was entirely, terrifyingly, on me.

I blinked, the sharp authority in his tone snapping the fog in my mind.

The trance broke. I followed his gaze downward, my eyes landing on the floor just inches from my toes.

The jagged remains of the vase—the one I had dropped only seconds ago—were scattered in a lethal circle around my feet.

A long, curved shard of white ceramic, sharp as a razor’s edge, sat directly in the path of my next step.

If he hadn’t stopped me, I would have driven it deep into my foot. I looked at the glass, then slowly looked back up at him.

His face was a mask of cold stone, his jaw set so tight I thought it might crack. He was bleeding—he had been shot because of me—and yet his only concern was a few pieces of broken pottery under my feet.

What is wrong with me? The question screamed through my mind, louder than the silence of the room.

I felt a surge of self-loathing so intense it made my knees weak. I was worried about him? I was about to slice my own skin open just to check on a man who had, only minutes ago, pulled a trigger and ended a life without a single blink?

I looked past him to where Adelasia lay, still and silent. He had killed her. He was a murderer.

He was the very thing I should be running from, not running toward. My gaze flickered back to the blood on his shoulder. My pulse was still racing for him, my chest still aching with a terrifying concern that I couldn’t suppress, and it disgusted me.

Why did I care if he was hurt? Why was my first instinct to heal a monster who dealt only in death?

I pulled my wrist back, my skin crawling where he touched me, though I wasn’t sure if it was from fear of him or fear of myself.

Ding.

"Don Romeo?"

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