Page 11 of Sinful Obsession

A shadowed figure, tall and lethal, his face obscured but his presence suffocating.

A voice, low and commanding, laced with a cruelty that made my skin crawl.

My heart raced, the images sharp but fragmented, like shards of a dream I couldn’t grasp.

Three years of my life were missing, a black hole in my memory, and that name—Cassian—felt like a key to something I wasn’t ready to unlock.

Then, just as suddenly, the flashes vanished, leaving my mind blank, my chest tight with a dread I couldn’t name.

The man in the five-star uniform narrowed his eyes, catching the flicker of shock on my face.

He closed the space between us, grip firm as he drew me forward—not tender. Controlled. Like everything about him.

“Or,” he said, his voice dropping—dark, dangerous—“I take you to my quarters. Appoint you as my bodyguard. It might buy you time. No one survives this place by luck. Especially not the weak. And people die in their sleep.”

The offer hit harder than I expected. For a flicker of a second, it tempted me. Safety, even temporary, was a powerful thing.

But why would he help me? We were strangers. I’d done nothing to earn an edge, let alone protection. And in a place like this, favors came with knives hidden behind them.

But I hadn’t clawed my way into this nightmare to be someone’s charity case. And certainly not his.

“I should report to my assigned quarters,” I said quietly, trying to keep the defiance buried beneath the formality.

“Dmitri,” he said then—his name, not an introduction, but a warning.

I stopped.

Turned just enough to meet his eyes. “Understood, Sir Dmitri,” I said, each word respectful but not submissive.

A smirk threatened, but I swallowed it down and walked away, fast. Spine stiff.

Only when I rounded the corner—his presence no longer coiled around me—did I let myself breathe, a shaky exhale that betrayed the fear I’d buried.

My chest ached, not just from the bully’s punch but from the weight of Dmitri’s scrutiny, his offer to make me his bodyguard, his unsettling perception.

He’d called me feminine, his touch lingering on my cheek, his words laced with an obsessive edge that made my skin prickle.

Was it a game, or did he suspect the truth?

The thought gnawed at me, but I pushed it aside. I had to focus.

Ahead, my destination waited—the DEN, my assigned cage in this underworld of predators—a haunting structure built like a tomb from the tenth century, with five rooms to the left, five to the right, and a narrow field of gravel and tension between them—stood cloaked in sterile white, its pristine exterior a cruel disguise for the horrors it held within.

The candidates called it DEN. Not a dormitory. Not a hostel. The outside world had soft words for places like this. But here? This was a cage.

Painted boldly above the entrance into the dormitory wing were three words in thick, black block letters:

OBEY

SURVIVE

WIN.

The message was clear:compliance was life, victory was everything.

I passed through the narrow corridor, my boots echoing on the polished floor.

There were no traditional room numbers here. No “Room 11” or “12.” No sense of normalcy.