Page 18 of Sweet Obsession (Savage Vow #1)

MISHA

The first clue was the silence. Not the kind that comes with snow. The kind that comes with betrayal.

I was in the east wing, finalizing the shipment routes for the Irkustk handoff, when Nikolai slammed the doors open, breath steaming, eyes wild.

“Boss.” His voice cracked. “She’s gone.”

A beat passed before the words hit. Then they detonated.

“Who?” I asked anyway, already knowing the answer.

“Luna.”

His voice was quieter now. Almost guilty.

“She’s not in her quarters. Her clothes, what little she brought, they’re gone. Chernov’s jet took off three hours ago. Private clearance, no trail.”

Three. Fucking. Hours.

The schedule slipped from my hand.

I stood slowly. “Flight path?”

“Scrubbed. But the heading... silence on all traffic logs... it’s Colombia.”

I turned toward the window. Snow blurred the pane like static.

She left me. Not for another man. Not for freedom. She ran home. To the same gilded prison she once begged to escape.

She ran back to the devil she knew, because she thought it safer than the one she married.

I grabbed my coat. And my gun. There’s only one thing worse than betrayal. Betrayal that walks out in silence. I told her to stay the fuck away from Chernov.

That snake has back doors built into everything. And now she’s using them to crawl out from under me.

“She underestimated me,” I said coldly.

Nikolai didn’t reply.

“How did she slip past six of my men?” I asked.

Nikolai flinched. “Chernov’s routes. We didn’t catch them in time. He’s been testing our surveillance for weeks.”

“And you’re just telling me now?”

The look on his face made me want to rip his jaw off. But I didn’t. Not yet.

I turned back to the window. My knuckles white against the sill.

I’d been careful. Distant. Controlled.

Trying to leash the obsession crawling through my veins every time she entered a room.

I wanted her with a kind of hunger that made men monsters. So I buried it. Froze it. Made myself colder than I already was. Because I knew, if I ever gave in, I wouldn’t stop until she bled my name.

And she left me. No note. No goodbye.

Just the ghost of her perfume and the fucking pierogi she made half-burnt, half-laughing.

“She thinks she’s free,” I muttered.

“What now?” Nikolai asked.

I didn’t answer.

I walked across the room, picked up the estate inventory file she’d been working on. Her sketches were inside. Beaded necklaces. Rings. Wire art.

I paused at one drawing. A chain with a red ruby in the center, one I saw her weaving yesterday. She’d already made her decision then. Even while pretending to stay.

“She wants to provoke me,” I said.

“Is it working?”

I didn’t answer. Because I’d already sent the order. No planes in. No planes out. And a quiet message, delivered to Colombia’s airstrip.

I don’t chase. I hunt.

Three days passed.

Nothing.

No message. Only confirmation she was at the Rojas compound. I called her once.

The line rang, then died.

No voicemail. No goodbye.

I didn’t call again. I don’t beg.

But the phone hasn’t left my desk since.

I’d barely had three hours of sleep in the last seventy-two hours.

I called Nikolai. Again. “Any word?”

He shifted like a man on coals. “Nothing. She hasn’t left the compound.”

“She’s being watched?”

“She moves like someone who knows it.”

Of course she does. She learned from me.

It was past midnight when the call came. Not Luna. Worse. My father.

His voice in Russian was a gunshot through my skull.

“You are a disgrace, Misha. She ran.”

“She rebelled,” I snapped. “But I know where she is.”

“I don’t care if she’s buried under Bogotá. You married her. Her father made a deal. She belongs to the Bratva now.”

My fingers curled around the phone.

“Lose her,” he said, “and you lose the Irkustk port. The Chita arms route. The five bratva families will turn. You will be nothing but a glorified dog with no leash.”

“I didn’t set her free.”

“Then prove it.”

The line went dead.

I stood in the dark. Silent. Burning.

Then I picked up the phone. Called a name I hadn’t spoken in years. A man who worked in shadows. Who’d buried problems for me before I learned how to clean the blood myself. Requested the men I swore I’d never use again.

Not for her. For me. That’s what I told myself.

But in the shadows, under all the ice, I already knew the truth. She’s not free. Not yet. And if I have to burn Colombia to the ground, I’ll remind her...

Luna Rojas doesn’t run from Misha Petrov.

She returns.

On her knees.

Twenty hours later, my jet touched down beneath Colombia’s cloud-heavy skies. Rain threatened but never fell.

The air smelled like old blood and burning sage.

Nikolai waited at the landing strip, already soaked with Colombian humidity. He’d come ahead to ensure our reach extended where it needed to.

“They’re burying the boy. Yuri. Today. You want to wait?”

“No.”

His mouth tightened. “We’ve locked down the cemetery perimeter. We’ve got five hundred. Silent but ready.”

“Good.”

He stared at me, something unreadable in his eyes. “You going in loud or quiet?”

I didn’t answer. Because I was already walking in rage.

I thought she’d run because of our fractured marriage, because I kept her locked behind silence and steel. But it wasn’t just that.

It was him. The dead lover.

Yuri.

She came for him. And that made the burn worse. Deeper.

She’s mine.

I never wanted to admit it, not to myself, not to her. But I’ll claim her today. Every piece of her. She doesn’t get to stand over another man’s grave and pretend she’s not still bound to me.

And God help her if she’s even remotely involved in what happened to Stepan. I’ve buried the suspicion under layers of loyalty and want, but it lingers. Quiet. Like a bomb waiting to detonate.

The graveyard sat on the edge of a hill. Beautiful and sacred. Too clean for men like Yuri.

I stepped from the black car as the procession knelt by the fresh earth.

I sighted my wife. Luna, standing near the headstone, black veil covering her hair, hands gripping the edge of her shawl.

She didn’t see me. But the others did.

My men moved in perfect silence, five hundred brutal and well trained Bratva soldiers lining the edges of the burial site like shadows. No weapons drawn. No threats made.

Just presence. Overwhelming. Inescapable.

As soon as we appeared in sight, Yuri’s mother gasped. A priest muttered something in Latin and stepped back. Even the Rojas guards flinched.

I walked the center aisle, every step deliberate.

And then she saw me.

Luna’s eyes widened. Just slightly. But she didn’t move. She stood taller.

Good girl.

Her father started toward me, hands raised. “Misha...”

“Don’t speak,” I said flatly.

And the silence that followed split the air in half.

I didn’t look at Yuri’s body. Didn’t glance at his grieving mother. My eyes were only on one thing.

Her.

She looked like a ghost in black. A dagger with a soft heart.

I stopped in front of her. “You ran,” I said quietly.

She didn’t answer.

“You embarrassed me. You endangered our alliance. You abandoned your vows.”

Still, she didn’t speak.

I stepped closer. “Do you have any idea what I gave up for you?”

Her lip trembled. But only once.

Then she said, cold as the Colombian earth under our feet: “You don’t own me.”

I smiled. Dark. Cruel. Certain. “We’ll see.”

I turned to the crowd, raised a single hand.

“Everyone not blood,” I said, “leave now.”

The crowd scattered like ash in the wind, their footsteps muffled by the damp earth. Yuri’s mother clutched her rosary, her sobs fading as she stumbled down the hill with the priest.

The Rojas guards hesitated, their hands twitching toward holsters, but a single glance from Nikolai flanked by my five hundred shadows, sent them retreating.

Even Luna’s father, that spineless weasel, backed away, his protests dying in his throat as he realized the weight of my presence. The cemetery emptied until it was just us: me, Luna, and the ghost of the boy who thought he could take her from me.

Only my soldiers remained in the shadows, eyes averted, backs turned. There were no witnesses now.

Yuri’s grave lay open, a gash in the earth, his polished wooden casket gleaming under the overcast sky. A single white lily rested on its lid, its petals bruised from the morning’s drizzle.

The headstone read Yuri Andres Salazar, 1998–2025 , the dates carved with a precision that mocked the chaos of his end. I didn’t care who mourned him.

Luna stood like a queen in mourning, defiant in black. Her veil fluttered around her face, and I could see the skin where Stepan’s necklace used to rest.

My jaw ticked. I stepped closer, lowering my voice.

“You thought you could run,” I said, my voice low, a blade wrapped in silk. “You thought Colombia would hide you. That Chernov could shield you.” I tilted my head, studying the way her lips parted. “You were wrong.”

Her breath hitched, so slight it would’ve gone unnoticed by anyone else.

“You left me,” I murmured. “Like I meant nothing. Like we meant nothing. Did you forget my very first warning? That running from me would have consequences?”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak. She stood there, a statue of obsidian and fury, her veil catching the faint light filtering through the clouds.

The wind tugged at her dress, plastering it to her legs. My eyes lingered too long. I hated that. Hated how even now, after everything, I wanted her.

She’d ripped something out of me when she left.

And now I was going to take it back.

I circled her slowly, the mud soft under my boots. “You came here to mourn him?” I asked, voice low. “To cry over a boy who died trying to take what’s mine?”

I stopped behind her. Close enough to hear her breath hitch.

“You don’t get to mourn him, Luna. You don’t get to choose him over me.”