ABSOLUTE INSANITY: A forbidden bond-Chapter 245: Lila

Chapter 243

KATYA POV

Nonna’s room smelled like chamomile and lavender like it always had.

The curtains were half drawn, the late afternoon light slipping in softly. Everything in here moved at a slower pace—time included.

The armchair by the window, the crocheted throw folded just so, the little porcelain dish on the bedside table that held nothing important and yet was never empty.

Safe things. Familiar things. I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands folded in my lap because I didn’t know what else to do with them.

They wouldn’t stop trembling. "Drink," Nonna said gently, pressing a warm cup into my fingers before I could protest.

Her voice was steady. It always was. Even when the world outside this room cracked open, Nonna spoke like nothing sharp was allowed to pass her lips.

I nodded and took the cup. The ceramic was warm enough to sting slightly. I welcomed it. Pain that made sense was easier to hold onto.

I stared down into the tea instead of at her. Watching the steam curl upward felt safer than meeting her eyes.

"I’m sorry," I said quietly. The words slipped out on instinct, like they always did when something went wrong.

When I went wrong.

Nonna made a small sound, not quite a sigh, not quite a scold. She sat beside me and covered my hands with hers, steadying the cup, steadying me.

"You have nothing to apologize for," she said. I almost laughed. Almost. My chest felt tight, like something had been wrapped around my ribs and pulled too hard.

Every time I inhaled, the memory followed it, Adelasia body. Lifeless eyes. The kitchen. The voices. That sentence. Lila

I didn’t kill her.

I hadn’t even realized I’d said it until it was already out in the open, hanging between me and Romeo like a confession I didn’t remember making.

I swallowed and took a careful sip of the tea. It tasted faintly sweet, faintly bitter. Balanced. Everything I wasn’t.

"I didn’t mean to cause trouble," I murmured. "I just... I thought I could get some water and some time with Miss Stella."

Thinking back at Miss Stella reaction to me made my thoughts go high wire again. Nonna’s hand tightened slightly over mine. Just enough for me to notice.

"This house," she said slowly, choosing her words the way she always did, "has too many mouths and not enough sense."

I shook my head, a reflex. "It wasn’t like that. I..." My voice faltered. Was I trying to defend Lila. I pressed my lips together, trying to keep the rest in. "I shouldn’t have gone in there."

There it was. The familiar turn inward. The quiet rewriting of events until they bent around me.

Nonna was silent for a moment. Then she reached out and tipped my chin up gently with one finger, forcing me to look at her.

Her eyes were sharp despite her age. Not unkind. Just very, very aware. "Katya," she said, softly but firmly. "Tell me what was said to you."

My stomach dropped. The room felt smaller suddenly. The walls closer. The air heavier. I looked away again, shaking my head.

"It doesn’t matter," I whispered. It mattered. I knew it mattered the moment the words left my mouth.

Nonna’s thumb paused against my knuckles.

"It matters," she said quietly, "because you’re talking about leaving." The word settled heavy between us.

Leaving.

I inhaled softly, a small, careful breath, and sniffed the tears back before they could spill. I nodded once, because nodding was easier than speaking, and let my gaze drift to the far wall where the light thinned into shadow.

Inside my head, everything unraveled.

Doesn’t she know? The thought rose uninvited, sharp enough to make my chest ache.

Doesn’t she know Adelasia is dead?

I didn’t say it. I didn’t even look at Nonna when it crossed my mind. I just sat there, hands clenched around the cup, feeling the question echo again and again like it was trying to find a way out.

Adelasia had been her family.

Blood, or close enough that it should have mattered the same way. Loud enough that the house should still be shaking from it.

Heavy enough that someone like Nonna—who noticed everything—should have said something.

But she hadn’t. Not once. No mourning. No anger. No quiet candle lit in the corner of a room.

Nothing. The thought twisted, ugly and unkind, and I hated myself for it even as it took root. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Did she care? Did anyone? My throat tightened. Since Adelasia died, the house had gone on breathing. Eating. Speaking in low voices behind closed doors. Life continued, smooth and uninterrupted, like a river that barely noticed the stone thrown into it.

And I had noticed. I had noticed because I couldn’t forget her eyes. Lifeless. Open. Accusing without meaning to be.

The cup trembled in my hands again, and this time Nonna noticed.

She set her own hand over mine more firmly, grounding, present. Real.

"You are not someone who runs," she said, her voice gentle but sure. "So when you say you want to leave, I know it is because something has frightened you."

Frightened?

That wasn’t the right word.

Ashamed. Cornered. Pulled backward into a memory I hadn’t been strong enough to bury properly.

"I don’t belong here," I said instead, because that felt safer. Less specific. Less dangerous. Nonna hummed encouraging me to elaborate but there was nothing to explain.

She leaned closer, her presence solid, unyielding. "Katya," she said, firmer now. "Look at me."

I forced myself to.

Her gaze searched my face—not impatient, not demanding. Just steady. Like she was reading something written beneath my skin.

The tears burned behind my eyes asI shook my head again, smaller this time. "I don’t want to stay somewhere I’m... blamed," I whispered. "I don’t want to be looked at like that."

Like how Miss Stella looked at me. Nonna’s jaw set.

"Blamed for what?" she asked. My heart hammered.

The answer pressed against my ribs, desperate to escape, but fear wrapped around it tight. Fear of saying it wrong. Fear of saying it at all. Fear that once spoken, it would become truth.

I hugged the cup closer to my chest, as if it could shield me.

"I just want to go somewhere quiet," I said finally. "Somewhere I don’t remind people of things they’d rather forget."

Nonna was about to speak. I saw it in the way her lips parted, in the breath she drew like she had finally decided which truth to hand me and which to keep.

A sound cut through the room before she could. A scream—raw, sharp, wrong—ripped down the corridor outside, close enough that it didn’t echo. It broke.

I barely had time to register it before the door slammed open so hard it struck the wall, the impact rattling the porcelain dish on the bedside table.

Something—someone—was shoved inside. The body hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud and slid forward on the polished wood, momentum carrying it straight into my knees.

I gasped and jerked back instinctively, the cup slipping from my hands as my body recoiled. Tea splashed uselessly across the bedspread, warmth blooming where it soaked in, but I didn’t feel it.

All I could see was the face that tipped upward from the floor.

Lila.

Her cheek was smeared dark, blood drying unevenly along her jaw. One eye was already swelling shut, the other glassy and unfocused as it struggled to find mine.

Her mouth opened, a soundless attempt at words that never came.

I froze.

††

Well well well lol