Chapter 414: Perhaps The Battle Calls Came With An Answer

[FROLO]

The sound of fists hitting a punching bag inside the Gamov in-house gym was not new. It had been like that for the longest time. Especially after long days.

Routine, anyone would consider it. But today was different, even as the beta dragged another bag to the metal, as the other fell to the ground, ripped to pieces.

There was a pile of thirteen punching bags, among them sandbags that had been lying in the garage for years now.

He’d never used them.

He promised he wouldn’t.

But after yesterday, Yaroslav needed to feel something.

Anything.

The press conferences today and the broadcast by Aleksandr didn’t make it any easier, and Yaroslav knew he had to keep himself in check. That he had to stay calm. That he had to be better. That he had a team.

That he had to remember his father’s only command: to come home every single day. But where was home anymore when everyone was trying to break that for him and his father?

What was he supposed to consider home when the city had turned its back against them and was already on their next mission of villainizing his father again?

Sergei had been calm and quiet for the past five years. He had been more reserved than Yaroslav ever thought his father could ever be. Sure, the man had always been just Dad for him even to this day, but Yaroslav was not blind to the actions of the devil of Frolo.

Granted, he didn’t know what had forced the city to fear his father to the point that even Yaroslav was off-limits, but he knew for a fact that his father hadn’t exactly been the devil of Frolo these past five years.

His father had slowed down.

Had been happy.

Had tried to live a normal life. Even if it was with Katya, a truth that Yaroslav didn’t dispute anymore. He didn’t even need to question it anymore because the facts were there.

But then the city just wouldn’t let his father be happy.

The city was determined to break his father’s heart again, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Yaroslav had seen Sergei grieve these past thirty years, and he refused to watch his father be thrown into that pit of loneliness and uncertainty again.

He’d watched his father mourn his papa for so long that it had reminded the beta that at the end of the day, devil or not, his father had been a husband. A man who had lost the love of his life to a sickness that didn’t care about treatments.

Yaro knew Vitya had been sick.

He knew it had been hard for his father, and when Vitya passed from his sickness, Sergei had never been the same. He had stayed the protective father, always being normal around Yaroslav, but even Yaro saw how careful his father had gotten.

How cruel his father had been around the city.

How much his father had protected him.

The empire itself was the evidence because Sergei had told Yaroslav more than once that the empire was not a burden he wanted for Yaroslav. That it came with so much pain and agony, and he didn’t want that for his son.

That was why Sergei had set up Knox Tech for Yaroslav. Because he wanted his son happy and away from the madness that came with the Moskowsky name.

But Yaroslav was done watching from the sidelines.

He would not let people hurt his father again. He would not let anyone take his father’s source of happiness.

And Aleksandr Petrov was his target this time.

For his father, Yaroslav was not going to step back.

He would not watch Sergei spiral again.

He’d seen his father cry enough times on most nights when the alpha thought Yaro was sleeping. He’d seen his father shattered so much because of losing Vitya. And given the way Sergei was attached to Katya this time, Yaro knew it would be worse than when his father had lost Vitya.

He would not let that happen.

He would never let that happen.

Perhaps that was also why, as he punched the fifteenth bag to the ground, watching as the sand spilled to the floor, Yaro knew he had to act.

"Ivan, get the car ready. We are going on a drive, and release the video about my visit to the Bratva from weeks ago since the city wants to play games with video releases," the beta said, walking out of his gym, all sweaty and worn out, yet determined to protect his father’s happiness.

He had sworn to protect Katya before, and to make sure his father understood that happiness wasn’t something he had to pay a high price for.

Yaroslav was going to make sure the realm remembered to stay away from trying to take his happiness. He was going to protect his father.

Sure, it was not going to be a one-time thing, but Yaroslav would do whatever it would take. His team would just have to meet him halfway anyway.

Soon enough, the city was met with the last video of the day.

A video of Yaroslav inside the Bratva headquarters, torturing Aleksandr. It wasn’t so bad that it would make people wonder what was happening, but it was enough to dismiss the claims that Aleksandr was not related to the Bratva.

If anything, the video had a broken and battered Alek smirking at Yaroslav and laughing at how Yaro was going to his father after learning that Aleksandr was the Bratva leader. The way Alek had spoken was something else altogether.

But one thing that was also part of the video that made it even more incriminating was the way Aleksandr had called Katya a pathetic omega, jumping from the father to the son. An omega who, by morals, didn’t understand what being loyal was.

He had been tortured by Yaroslav for a long time, but that was what he had kept at.

Yaroslav had been close to snapping his neck when Sergei called, and Yaro excused himself, saying that his father needed him. And that:

"You needed to thank the heavens for making my father call me, or you’d be dead meat," Yaro had said in the video.

It was the kind of video that didn’t look good for Aleksandr or even the Bratva itself because now the city had confirmation that Aleksandr was the Bratva leader.

That Aleksandr, who had been defending Katya Romanov and crying about how much he loved Katya Romanov earlier, was nothing but an insecure alpha who didn’t know what he stood for.

More than anything, the video introduced the city to something far more terrifying.

Sergei Moskowsky... the father.

After the exposé that Yaro did about the Bratva, he shared a few more, not because he needed to, but because for the first time, he was doing something no one had ever done for Sergei publicly.

Sure, Sergei had his networks in private and had his life with his son kept away from the public. But Yaro showed the soft moments of Sergei being a father.

Just a father with nothing like the weight of the underworld on his shoulders.

Yaroslav showed the city that the devil of Frolo was never the devil of Frolo inside their home.

That was the one thing that no one expected.

Not even Sergei himself thought the day would end with him being humanized and defended by his son.

And in the final message, Yaroslav hijacked all the national broadcasting feeds and sent a warning to the city himself.

"You came after my father’s happiness... No one is going to save you... from ME."