Page 14 of Charmingly Obsessed

C haos erupts.

Some of Papa’s men surge forward, others instinctively retreat towards their cars.

Kulak, beside me, lets out a weary sigh and tells a couple of his younger, wide-eyed guys to “quit your goddamn bitching and watch the master work,” like this is some kind of educational seminar.

I clap my hands over my mouth, stifling a scream, convinced my own skin is about to slide off my bones from sheer terror.

The fight is brutal, visceral, and shockingly one-sided, at least initially.

It’s mostly Frez, a blur of controlled violence, landing blows with devastating precision.

He moves like a high-speed, perfectly calibrated machine of destruction.

And for some reason, he keeps using his head, ramming it into anyone foolish enough to get within range.

It’s barbaric. It’s terrifying. It’s… undeniably effective.

One thug tries to drag Papa out of the fray, but Frez intercepts him, the peacekeeping mission ending with a sickening crunch.

Someone else charges at Frez from the side, but he spins, deflecting the blow, countering with a swift, brutal jab to the ribs that doubles the man over, gasping.

“W-we need to pull him back,” I stammer, turning blindly towards Kulak, but I can’t bring myself to actually look at the mountain of a man beside me.

My words are a jumbled, useless mess. This terrifying criminal, this friend of Mykola’s, is just…

standing there. Calmly. Like he’s watching a slightly uninspired action movie.

I swear he’s also sometimes scrolling through something on his phone.

Telegram, maybe? Ordering a hit? Checking sports scores?

“Uh-huh, yeah, we need to,” Kulak finally drawls, tearing his eyes from his screen with exaggerated reluctance, casting a single, sharp glance at the lopsided brawl. “Just… not right this second. Let the guy vent. Pretty sure that’s literally why he came here. Can’t you see? He needed this.”

Needed this? What in God’s name is he talking about?

I can’t spot Papa in the melee anymore. Frez is now screaming at some other beefy guy from Papa’s crew – words I can’t make out over the grunts and thuds – and then he punches him. Hard. The guy stumbles back, then lunges, swinging wildly. And connects. Oh God!

A heavy, suffocating cold seeps into my bones, clouding my vision, making the world tilt. An uncontrollable urge to throw myself into the fight, to protect him, to stop this madness, surges through my veins.

But I just stand there, trembling like a fucking leaf, my mind churning, overheating, grinding uselessly like an engine without oil.

Then Frez takes a headbutt straight to the nose. A sickening crack echoes across the clearing. Blood explodes from his face.

I almost lurch forward, a strangled cry ripping from my throat.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, another goddamn Xena Warrior Princess,” Kulak mutters under his breath, and then his massive hand is on my arm, unceremoniously turning me back towards the car. “Get moving. You can wipe your Romeo’s bloody nose later. Show’s almost over.”

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” I plead, trying to twist out of his grip. “Please! He’s hurt!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He clears his throat, sounding bored again. “Actually, I’m late for a parent-teacher conference for my kid, so sure, let’s wrap this up.” He raises his voice, a booming parade-ground command. “Alright, girls! Playtime’s over! Pack it in!”

At his signal, his younger guys finally wade into the fight. It’s hard to see exactly what’s happening through the tangle of bodies, but then Frez suddenly breaks away from the chaos, staggering slightly, and I stop caring about anything else.

“He’s still riding the adrenaline high,” Kulak observes, scratching his chin thoughtfully with the edge of his phone.

“Might want to give him a minute before you try any Florence Nightingale shit. Honestly,” he bellows to the dispersing crowd of bruised and battered thugs, some of whom are now helping a groaning Papa to his feet, “you all should get booked for weddings! You’d make a goddamn fortune! ”

Frez’s bloodied face blurs as he stumbles towards me.

The only thing I can see with painful clarity is his darkened gaze, the wild, almost maniacal gleam in his eyes.

And then, like tumblers in a lock finally clicking into place, everything I’ve struggled to understand about him, about us, for the past three years suddenly aligns.

The late-night thoughts, the unanswered questions, the gnawing sense that something fundamental shifted that day.

Three years ago, I walked into his office as a naive artist, and that day happened. The public humiliation. The devastating kiss in the kitchen.

Six months later, he vanished from the office. Stopped showing up. Ran his empire remotely.

He started looking… different. More exhausted. More erratic. Haunted. Not himself.

It escalated. The rumors. Public outbursts. Blacklisted from five-star hotels. A revolving door of personal assistants on this side of the Atlantic, all quitting in droves despite the obscene salaries. Only Amanda in New York, his indestructible right hand, remained.

All of it. All the changes in him. They all trace back to that day.

But why?

His cold lips, tasting of blood and adrenaline, graze mine.

They linger at the corner of my mouth, a breath of unexpected heat. I stand frozen, staring blankly over his shoulder, my mind reeling, feeling like I’ve turned to stone.

“Why are you worrying?” he murmurs. I finally lift my eyes to his. The wildness is still there, but beneath it, something else. Something… vulnerable. “Let’s go. Give me your hand.”

In the car, the adrenaline begins to recede, leaving me shaky and nauseous.

The sight of the blood still streaming from Frez’s clearly broken nose is almost more than I can bear.

The antiseptic wipes and tissues in my trembling hands seem to irritate him more than his injuries.

He laughs, a raw, painful sound, dodging my attempts to clean him up, starting the engine.

“We need to get this cleaned up,” I insist, my voice firmer than I feel, already mentally cataloging the first aid supplies in Serafima’s bathroom. “Right now.”

“Let’s go to my place,” he says, his gaze fixed on the road, but then he shoots me a lightning-fast glance, his eyes intense, possessive. His voice drops, becoming huskier, laced with a meaning that has nothing to do with first aid. “We can… clean everything up there.”

I stare out the window, watching the blighted landscape of the park blur past. My mind is a battlefield of conflicting emotions.

Fear, relief, anger, confusion, and a deep, aching tenderness that scares me more than anything.

After three long, agonizing minutes of silence, I finally answer, my gaze still fixed on the passing scenery.

“Let’s go to mine first,” I say, my voice carefully neutral. “I mean… to Serafima Pylypivna’s. I need to… settle in.” I tighten my grip on the tissues, the antiseptic wipes, the ridiculous crushed tulip. “Then… then we can go to yours. If you still want to.”

“Of course,” he responds immediately, his voice laced with a relief that’s almost palpable. “Whatever you say, Diana. Anything.”

I want to conjure a different version of myself out of thin air.

A Diana who isn’t a tangled mess of insecurities and past traumas.

A Diana who doesn’t overcomplicate everything.

A Diana who can just… accept this. Accept him.

Because at the end of the day, stripped bare of all the drama and danger and billion-dollar complications, he wants to have sex with me.

And God help me, I want it too. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.

What’s the big deal? It’s just… taking my clothes off.

Once. Just once. He won’t run away screaming.

He’s too… Too determined. Too possessive.

Too well-mannered, ironically. I won’t even have to look him in the eye during the actual…

unveiling. And then I’ll never have to know what he really thinks.

My desire has to outweigh fear. My It has to.

I’m not some alien creature. I’m just… bad at this.

And my first and only boyfriend was a monumental piece of shit, so his opinion doesn’t count.

Just undress. Once. Just do it.

“…Diana,” Frez says gently, his voice pulling me from my spiraling thoughts.

I nearly flinch, my gaze snapping back to his blood-streaked face.

He looks… almost relaxed now. The wildness in his eyes has softened to a simmer.

“Do you have any idea what the estimated mineral value of a single large asteroid is?”

I blink. We’ve already arrived. The Spectre is parked silently in the courtyard of Serafima Pylypivna’s grand, decaying building. The question is so random, so utterly Frez, that it momentarily short-circuits my anxiety.

“A lot?” I frown, trying to follow his bizarre conversational leap. “Like… a whole, whole lot?”

“Exactly.” He turns in his seat, facing me fully, his expression uncharacteristically serious.

“Trillions, potentially. And I would gladly give away the entire goddamn asteroid belt, every precious metal, every rare earth element, just to know what the hell is going on inside that beautiful, complicated head of yours right now.”

If he knew… If he really knew the chaotic mess of self-doubt and overthinking that constitutes my internal landscape, he’d probably wither on the spot. Like an oak tree attempting to grow in the Sahara.

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me, shaky and bordering on tears.

It’s the sudden, absurd image of him, so decisive and powerful, being dropped into the sheer, unrelenting noise of my head.

The constant second-guessing, the what-ifs, the endless replays of every tiny mistake—it would short-circuit his brain.

He’d be the one needing a long, quiet recovery. But I’ve been living inside my own head my whole life. I’m used to the abuse.

I don’t say anything as we make our way up to the apartment. Right now, thank God, Serafima Pylypivna and her magnificent eccentricity are bound to steal the spotlight.

But she doesn’t answer the doorbell. I frown, then remember the keys she pressed into my hand this morning. I unlock the heavy oak door.

It feels… awkward. I’ve been a resident for all of half a day, and I’m already bringing a man home. A bloodied, bruised, devastatingly handsome billionaire, no less.

At least it’s some small comfort that Serafima knows Frez. Knows of him, anyway. Their book club rivalry is the stuff of office legend.

While Mykola disappears into the bathroom – presumably to assess the damage to his nose and attempt some cleanup – I wander through the sprawling apartment. Kitchen, living room, dining room… no sign of Serafima.

Even Aza, her curmudgeonly dachshund, is conspicuously absent. Did they go out for an emergency Ugg boot shopping trip? A protest march?

Just as I’m turning back towards the bathroom, ready to offer my amateur first-aid services again, Serafima Pylypivna appears directly behind me. Materializing out of thin air like some kind of glamorous, opinionated ghost.

I gasp, clutching a hand to my chest, my heart leaping into my throat. She definitely wasn’t there a second ago.

“Serafima Pylypivna!”

“Hmmph.” She peers past me towards the closed bathroom door, then back at me, her gaze sharp, assessing, missing nothing.

“Either a knight errant in rather rumpled paper armor,” she mutters, adjusting her vibrant shawl, “or a jester with a particularly sharp sword hidden up his sleeve. One way or another… the trajectory is clear enough for me.” She leans in conspiratorially, her voice dropping to a stage whisper that could probably still be heard in the next borough.

“And I assure you, my dear girl,” she adds, her eyes twinkling with terrifyingly inappropriate mischief, “from the sheer force of his… presence… he’s very, very well-endowed. ”

Oh God. I’m surrounded. Outflanked. She’s even worse than Frez.