Page 17 of Sweet Obsession (Savage Vow #1)

A woman, young, wild-haired, beautiful. Laughing into the camera like the world was hers for the taking. “My mother,” Misha said, voice rough, almost unused.

I stared, stunned.

He never talked about his past.

Hell, I wasn’t sure he had a past. He moved through this world like it was something he’d conquered in a past life and came back only to rule it colder.

“She used to wear a necklace,” he went on, voice softer now, but harder in other ways. “Tiny black pearls. Iron links. Not expensive. Not pretty. But it was hers. Wore it every damn day until the day she died. It was stolen.”

I swallowed, my throat dry.

He didn’t ask. Didn’t have to. “You want me to make you a similar one,” I said slowly.

He nodded once. A single, restrained movement. But everything about it felt bare.

I hesitated.

This wasn’t business. It wasn’t about favors or manipulation or survival.

It was too personal.

My hands froze over the beads. I shook my head.

“I can’t.” I breathed.

His jaw ticked. But he didn’t snap. Didn’t lash out or throw ice at me. He just looked at me.

And fuck, that was worse.

That look, stripped of armor, stripped of violence, felt like it reached inside me and scraped across everything I was trying to bury.

Guilt. Grief.

The dangerous echo of shared loneliness.

“I’ll think about it,” I whispered.

He didn’t say a word.

But he dipped his head, just barely. Understanding. Or maybe surrendering. And that nearly broke me more than rage ever could.

Three nights later

I sat curled on the window seat in my room, the velvet cushions cold against my bare thighs. Outside, the snow glittered silver under the full moon, too still, too quiet.

I hated it. The estate had fallen into a silence that suffocated. No guards stomping past my door. No Misha.

Just stillness. And the weight of fear, guilt, and the way I still thought about his hands on me, even when I hated myself for it.

The burner phone buzzed once beneath my pillow. I’d kept the burner phone hidden since the day a maid pressed it into my palm without a word.

Never used it when the cameras could see. Never when Misha was near. But even then, I felt his presence like a storm waiting to break.

I lunged for it, fingers trembling.

Only one message.

The burial is set. Come now if you want to say goodbye. We’ll get you out.

Attached: an image.

The sigil was black ink and brutal lines—Yuri’s family mark. I remembered it from the days he used to sleep beside me, hand splayed over my ribs like he owned me.

I stared at the message until my vision blurred.

Yuri.

He turned into something dark. I never forgot that. But before that, before the power, the poison, he was someone who made me laugh when all I wanted was to disappear.

I wasn’t mourning the man he became. I was mourning the boy I once believed in. There were memories of him that weren’t soaked in blood.

I squeezed the phone so hard it creaked.

Was it betrayal? To want to say goodbye?

Would Misha see it that way? Did he even trust me?

No.

There was no trust here. No freedom.

This wasn’t a marriage. It was a sentence, sealed in blood, inked in power and pain.

I wasn’t a wife. I was a transaction wrapped in silk.

A pawn dressed in gold.

But pawns?

They’re always the first to run. And I was so damn tired of waiting to be sacrificed.

The plan was simple.

At least, it sounded simple when it was whispered to me over a scrambled call, hours after the message from Yuri’s family reached me.

Slip out through the side gate. Cut through the north woods, where surveillance grew lazy. A car would be waiting on the old service road, engine hot, ready to vanish. Forty minutes to the airstrip . A charter flight fueled and waiting. Papers already forged.

By the time Misha realized I was missing... I’d be nothing more than a fading shadow on a screen.

If I could just get to Yuri’s grave. If I could say goodbye. If I could finally breathe without Misha’s ice-cold control coiled around my ribs.

I pressed a trembling hand to the stone wall near the servant’s exit, heart hammering like a prisoner begging for escape.

Don’t think. Just move.

But I remembered what happened last time, back in Colombia. The night he caught my sister and me trying to escape with Yuri’s help. The way he’d looked at me afterward, like I’d betrayed him, like I was the one wielding the knife.

Could I really do this?

After nearly an hour of hesitation and bitter self-recrimination, I finally slipped into the servants’ corridor.

My boots made barely a sound against the old tile, steps as quiet as guilt.

No guards. Not this far in.

They trusted the snow, the walls, the silence, the illusion of my compliance. Maybe even Misha did too.

Maybe he believed the dinners, the fake calm, the cautious smiles I wore like armor. Or maybe... he just didn’t care anymore. That thought hurt more than it should’ve. But I didn’t let myself feel it.

The cold punched me in the chest the second I shoved open the rusted back door and stepped into the screaming dark.

Wind like knives. Snow like broken glass. But I ran.

Toward the woods. Toward freedom. Toward a future I wasn’t even sure I deserved. I didn’t look back. The Lada was there. Just like they promised. Black. Nondescript. Engine humming low beneath layers of frost.

And the man waiting inside wasn’t old. Wasn’t unfamiliar.

He stepped out of the car and leaned against the door with a lazy sort of arrogance that didn’t match the tension in his jaw.

Lev Odessa.

Chernov’s younger brother.

And even in the moonlight, I could see the risk painted all over him.

“You made it,” he said, opening the passenger side for me. “I was beginning to think you changed your mind.”

I didn’t speak. Just slid inside, shaking from cold and nerves.

He got behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, and yanked the car into motion.

Tires slipped on snow, catching again as we hit the road.

“You know this is insane, right?” he muttered. “If Petrov finds out I was here... he won’t just kill me. He’ll mail my body back in parts.”

I finally turned to look at him. “Then why risk it?”

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Because Yuri’s family reached out to my brother. And Chernov, God knows why, gives a damn about what happens to you.” A pause. “He said he owed you. Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe he’s just stupid when it comes to women who wear defiance like perfume.”

I froze, heartbeat stuttering.

Lev continued, voice lower now. “He said if I got you out... maybe one day, you’d return the favor. Or at least remember who didn’t let you rot in that frozen palace.”

Something twisted deep in my chest. Not guilt. More like doubt. Conflict. A crack in the certainty I thought I had I turned away from him, jaw tight.

“I didn’t ask for Chernov’s help.”

“No,” Lev said simply. “But you’re using it anyway.”

The silence stretched. Heavy. Loaded.

“If I get you to the airstrip alive,” he said after a beat, “you better make it count, Luna. Because the second you get on that plane... this becomes war. Misha Petrov won’t take it lightly. He’ll come for you.”

I didn’t respond. Because part of me already knew. And part of me didn’t care. I should’ve felt relief. But all I felt was the ache in my chest. I thought about Yuri’s grave. And then... about Misha.

His cold eyes, unreadable and endless. The way his body shifted the moment Chernov looked at me too long at that first public outing, how he’d crossed the room in seconds, hand at the small of my back like a brand, jaw tight, eyes burning.

How he’d sent his men out, mid-meeting, just because I barged in.

How he’d draped his heavy coat over my shoulders that frozen night at his father’s house in Moscow.

And the kisses.

God, those kisses.

Rough and raw. Like he wanted to devour me and save me all at once. Like I was the only thing in the world that could undo him, and that terrified him.

The pierogi disaster. Him quietly burning half the batch beside me but eating every single one like they were gourmet.

His shoulder brushing mine, heat bleeding into my skin, his hand stalling over the dough like it reminded him of something long buried.

And the necklace. That damn photograph. The way his voice broke, just slightly when he said, “ She wore it until the day she died.”

He could’ve ordered me to make one for his mother. Threatened me. But he hadn’t. He’d just looked at me. Like I was the last real thing left in a world that had taken everything from him.

And for one unbearable second, I wondered, was the man I was running from really the devil? Or just another prisoner, like me, born of blood and obligation?

I hadn’t been afraid when he touched me. Not once. And I hated myself for that. I clenched my fists in my lap, nails biting into my palms. Trying to hold on to the version of him I was supposed to hate.

Because the truth, the dangerous, stupid truth, was slipping through my fingers. And if I didn’t run now, I might never run at all.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered to no one. “If Misha Petrov wants a war, he’ll get one.” Cause I sure as hell was never coming back here. Once the funeral was over, I’d disappear with my sister. Gone, for good.