Page 28 of Sweet Obsession (Savage Vow #1)

MISHA

In my study, seated. I watched Luna through the CCTV feed, her fragile form curled on the couch in her wing. I had moved her closer. into my part of the house—since I brought her back from Colombia. But still, we didn’t stay in the same room. Not yet.

A blanket was draped over her shoulders, her cheeks flushed with fever.

The illness had come on fast yesterday, sudden and burning, her voice weak but still razor-sharp as I carried her to bed: “ I don’t need your help, Misha .

” But she did. She always did. And I couldn’t stay away.

Couldn’t stop the way something inside me clawed toward her—this desperate need to protect, to fix what I’d shattered.

It wasn’t just a fever. Not really.

Her body was still recovering from the beating it took when she fought off Chernov’s men in that alley, the bruises along her ribs, the split lip, the way she’d hidden her pain until her body finally gave out. I should’ve been there.

I should’ve kept her from ever having to lift a finger, much less a blade. She bled because of me, because Chernov thought he could steal her like she was nothing more than leverage.

That bastard. That coward. He touched what’s mine, he made her bleed, and I’ve never hated a man more.

I want him to suffer. Slowly. I want him to feel what she felt.

The fear, the pain, the betrayal. And I want to be the one who delivers it.

He thinks he’s untouchable because of the Odessa name, but I’ve ended legacies before.

I’ll burn him to the ground, quietly, methodically, and when I do, I’ll make sure he knows it was for her. For Luna.

I’d told Sofia to bring soup, medicine, anything she might ask for. But Luna hadn’t asked for warmth or comfort, she’d asked for a cat.

A small gray thing with sharp green eyes that now purred in her lap, her fingers stroking its fur, a ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. A real smile. The kind I hadn’t earned.

Jealousy twisted low in my gut, hot and bitter.

I gripped the edge of my desk, watching her laugh faintly at something the damn animal did.

That softness, she gave it so easily to something that wasn’t me.

That’s what gutted me. Not her silence. Not her distance.

But the fact that I had destroyed the part of her that could once look at me like that.

The door opened. Nikolai stepped in, his scarred face grim. “Gabriela’s gone,” he said. “She told the guards she wanted air, said she wanted to get familiar with Russia... then disappeared. They lost her. Sloppy bastards.”

My jaw clenched. I already knew what he was going to say next.

“We think Chernov or the Vargas cartel reached out. Promised her sweet things. The girl’s na?ve enough to believe them.”

Rage cracked through me. I was really trying, not to start a war. But they were forcing my hand. Chernov had never tasted war. Not real war. Not the kind where you watched your people bleed out on marble floors while your city burned around you. I had. And I wasn’t afraid to go back there.

But I knew the cost.

Defeating the Odessas here in Yakutsk and wiping out Vargas in Colombia would take blood. And the ones who mattered most, Luna, my father—were the ones who would bleed first.

I glanced at the drawer, where the folder sat locked away. The documents Luna stole from her father, proof of Odessa’s deals with Luis Rojas—weren’t just leverage. They were blood-soaked currency. A fuse waiting for my match. And when I strike, it won’t be loud. It’ll be clean. Surgical.

My throat was tight. Beneath the fury, guilt churned in me like rot. I had promised Luna I’d protect her sister. That no one would touch Gabriela. And now she was gone. Just like Stepan. Just like everything I’d once failed to protect.

I’d burned Luna’s past to ash. Forced her into this world. And now that world was eating away at everything she loved. I had made her a queen of rubble.

“I’ll find her,” I snarled. “Take Viktor. Take Oleg. Every man we have. Tear the city apart if you must. But bring Gabriela back, alive, untouched. No one tells Luna until she’s safe.”

Nikolai gave a tight nod and left, the door thudding shut behind him.

Alone again, I turned to the feed. Luna’s image flickered on the screen. My tether. My undoing.

A memory pulled me under, the first ambush at the warehouse. The second attack, not even forty-eight hours later.

The blood. Her panic. The way I’d held her while her body trembled in mine, whispering she was safe even when I knew she wasn’t.

Chernov had tried to take her from me. I could still see it, her body pressed against that cliff’s edge, blood soaking through her shirt, fighting off several men alone.

What a strong woman my wife is. She didn’t scream.

She didn’t beg. She fucking fought like death itself owed her something.

I should have ended Chernov that night. But I didn’t.

And that mercy, that hesitation, it would cost me everything.

I thought I knew betrayal. But finding out her own father had sold Stepan out, offered him like a lamb to her ex-boyfriend’s family cartel, split me open in a way I hadn’t felt since I buried my brother.

It wasn’t just treachery. It was a knife twisting through everything I thought I understood about pain.

And it was Luna who found the proof. Luna who discovered what I hadn’t seen. She pieced it together when I couldn’t. She’s always seeing more than I want her to.

I couldn’t tell her about her sister’s disappearance. Not yet

Not when she was sick, raw, already balancing on the edge of breaking.

I shut off the monitor. I couldn’t stand watching her give her gentleness to anything but me. I left the study, boots echoing on cold marble, and walked straight to her room, heart thudding like war drums.

I knocked once, then stepped inside.

She looked up, bleary-eyed, her voice weak but laced with suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

The cat leapt from her lap. She pulled the blanket tighter around her body. She looked fragile. Achingly so.

“You’re sick,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended.

I walked toward her slowly, kneeling beside the couch. “I couldn’t stay away. Not when you’re like this. Not when I know I’m the reason you’re hurting.”

Her expression shifted—just for a moment. A flicker of something that wasn’t hate.

“I’m just learning to live alone,” she whispered, eyes shining. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t.” I reached for her hand, brushing her knuckles. Her skin burned hot. Too hot. “Let me take care of you.”

She didn’t pull away. That was all the permission I needed.

I poured her a glass of water from the tray, kneeling again, pressing it into her hands. “Drink.” My fingers brushed hers. She drank, slowly, watching me the whole time. I adjusted her blanket, tucking it tighter, touch lingering.

Then I reached into my pocket, pulled out a velvet pouch, and placed it in her lap.

“I found this... in the safehouse. With Stepan’s things. A locket. Your mother’s. The ones you told me about. I thought you’d want them back.”

Her breath caught. She opened the locket with trembling fingers, and there they were. A faded photo. A pressed flower. Her past, cradled in silver.

Her tears were soft, quiet.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I didn’t deserve her gratitude. Not even a drop of it. But I drank it down like a dying man.

She shifted under the blanket. A strap of her nightgown slipped from her shoulder, revealing warm, flushed skin. My breath hitched. My gaze dropped, my body betraying me again.

I reached out, brushed her cheek with my knuckles.

“You’re beautiful, Luna,” I said hoarsely. “Even when you’re sick. Even when you hate me. I can’t stop wanting you.”

Her eyes fluttered. She leaned into my touch.

“Misha...”

My name on her lips—half-sigh, half-warning.

She gripped my shirt, fingers trembling.

I leaned closer. But I didn’t cross the line. Not yet. She was too fragile. I had too much left to fix.

I stood, voice strained. “Rest, malyshka. I’ll be here when you wake.”

She drifted off, beads still clutched in her hand.

I sat on the edge of the bed, watching her breathe. The weight of everything pressed down—Stepan’s death. Chernov’s obsession. Gabriela’s disappearance. Luna’s father—the bastard who sold my brother for favors.

I remembered what Stepan once told me, in the snow, long ago: “ You’ll find someone worth protecting, Misha. Someone who’ll make you better.”

I hadn’t believed him then. But now, looking at her, I did. She was the only thing keeping the darkness in me from winning.

And maybe I was losing. Because every day, I got more obsessed with her. Every day, she slipped further beneath my skin. I didn’t just want her.

I needed her.

And I would burn the whole world to keep her.

LUNA

The fever had finally broken, leaving me weak but alive, my body aching as I lay in the bed, the morning light filtering through the curtains, casting soft shadows on the walls.

I’d woken to the memory of Misha’s hands on me yesterday, his touch gentle as he’d cared for me, the beads he’d returned a quiet weight in my palm, a piece of Mama I thought I’d lost forever.

The crescent moon pendant he’d given me hung around my neck, a symbol of his promise, a promise I wanted to believe in, even as the hate for what he’d done in Colombia lingered, a fire that refused to die.

The door creaked open, and Misha stepped inside, a tray in his hands.

His eyes softened when they landed on me, the smile on his lips a small but genuine thing that made my heart stutter despite the anger still boiling beneath my skin. “Breakfast,” he said, voice low and rough, setting the tray down.

I sat up, blanket slipping from my shoulders, the thin fabric of my nightgown clinging to my skin.

His eyes lingered, heat flashing in them. I flushed, shifting uncomfortably. “You didn’t have to,” I murmured, taking the tray.

“I wanted to,” he said, his voice steady, but there was an edge of something deeper in it, need, hope.