ABSOLUTE INSANITY: A forbidden bond-Chapter 235: Using you

Chapter 235

KATYA POV

The chair felt too big for me. I sat stiffly, back straight, hands folded in my lap because I didn’t know what else to do with them.

My phone was still in my right hand, its weight pressing into my palm like a reminder I couldn’t put down.

Romeo didn’t say anything. The silence stretched. It settled into the room the way fog settled into a valley, slow and suffocating.

I risked a glance upward and immediately regretted it.

He hadn’t sat yet. He stood behind his desk, one hand resting against the polished surface, the other loose at his side.

His expression was calm, unreadable, as if nothing about this moment required urgency. As if I wasn’t sitting here with my pulse racing, waiting for something to fall.

My gaze dropped again, heart pounding loud enough that I was sure he could hear it.

The office smelled faintly of coffee and something sharper—cigarette. Everything about the space reflected him. Order. Precision. Nothing out of place. Nothing unnecessary.

I wondered if that was how he saw people too. Seconds passed. Or minutes. I couldn’t tell.

My thoughts started to spiral, filling the silence he refused to break. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. I kept replaying last night in my head, every word, every pause, every mistake.

The way my voice had shaken when Michael suggested coming over. The way I’d frozen instead of explaining. The way I’d looked at Romeo and said nothing.

Romeo finally moved, opening a file I hadn’t noticed before—or maybe I had, and my mind had simply refused to register it.

The sound of paper sliding against leather was soft. Still, when he let it drop onto the desk in front of me, I flinched hard enough that my shoulders jerked.

The sound wasn’t loud. But in that room, it might as well have been a gunshot.

My eyes lifted on instinct, dread crawling up my spine before I even understood why.

The file had landed open. A face stared back at me.

Michael. My breath left me in a sharp, silent rush, like my lungs had forgotten how to work for a second. My heart lurched so violently it hurt.

I didn’t need to read the words to know what it was. Photos. Documents. Official-looking pages arranged with brutal neatness.

Even without understanding the text—without being able to read most of it—I knew exactly what I was looking at.

A background check. On him. On Micheal!

My fingers twitched in my lap, useless. My eyes skimmed the page helplessly, catching only fragments.

Numbers. Headings. A date. His face again, cropped from somewhere official. My stomach twisted.

Romeo had done this overnight. He didn’t look at me as he moved away from the desk. He walked toward the side table by the window, where a glass of whiskey waited.

He picked it up, turning slightly so his back was to me. "Micheal Giovanni," he voiced calmly, lifting the glass. The ice clinked softly as he tilted it. "Twenty-five. Single."

He took a slow sip before continuing. "Former police officer."

The words hit like a blow. My thoughts scattered instantly, crashing into each other without order or mercy.

Ex-cop.

Michael had told me once. Casually. Like it was nothing. Like it didn’t matter. I’d forgotten. Or maybe I’d chosen not to remember.

Because now—sitting here, staring at his face on Romeo’s desk—it looked terrible. It looked intentional. It looked like something I’d planned.

I hadn’t. But how could I prove that?

Romeo turned then, glass still in hand. His eyes found me immediately, sharp and unreadable, stripping the air from my lungs.

"Your friend?" he asked. My mouth opened, then closed again. My heart was racing so fast I felt dizzy.

"I—" My voice came out thin. I swallowed and tried again. "Yes." The word sounded wrong the moment it left me.

His gaze didn’t change, but something in the room did. The pressure increased, invisible and suffocating.

"A friend," Romeo repeated slowly, as if testing the shape of it.

I nodded, too quickly. "Yes. He is. He was." I stopped, confused even by my own correction. "He helped me. Before."

He had helped me. And now, somehow, I needed to help him by any means necessary. Even if that meant lying.

"And you didn’t think it was important to mention that your ’friend’ was law enforcement?"

"I didn’t think—" I broke off, breath hitching. "I didn’t remember. Not like this. I wasn’t thinking about... any of this."

"That," he said quietly, "is rarely a defense that holds."

My hands clenched together, knuckles whitening. I felt small. Exposed. Like every wrong choice I’d ever made had finally caught up to me all at once.

"I didn’t call him," I said again, desperate now. "I swear. I didn’t plan anything. I didn’t even know he would—"

"I know," Romeo interrupted. The word stopped me cold. He set the glass down carefully, the base clicking softly against the table. Then he walked back toward the desk.

"You didn’t call him," he repeated. "But you answered." My chest tightened painfully.

"And you didn’t tell me who he was," he added. He stopped in front of me, close enough now that I had to tilt my head back slightly to look at him.

"Which means," Romeo continued evenly, "either you didn’t understand how dangerous that omission was..."His eyes darkened.

"...or you understood perfectly." My throat closed.

"I didn’t," I whispered. "I didn’t understand. I swear."

He studied me in silence, searching for something I couldn’t see. Then, softly—too softly—he asked, "Do you know what an ex-cop looks like to a man like me, Katya?"

I shook my head, fear coiling tight in my chest. "He looks like surveillance," Romeo said. "He looks like leverage. He looks like a mistake waiting to be exploited."

"He’s not like that." My eyes burned, anger simmering at how he was throwing accusations on Micheal.

"You don’t know that, Katya," he said evenly. "He could be using you to get to me."

††

Thanks for reading and the golden tickets.