Page 35 of Sweet Obsession (Savage Vow #1)

The hallway is cold. The floor beneath me slick with something dark and sticky.

My feet are bare, the blood coating the tiles smearing as I run, my body failing to obey the command to escape.

I can feel it, that sickly warmth beneath my skin, like my blood and his are one in the same.

It clings to me, drags me down. I turn the corner, and there he is.

Stepan.

His face is unrecognizable. His lips swollen, bruises covering the skin like an abstract painting of pain. But his eyes—his eyes burn. They’re still green, still alive, still full of the fire that used to haunt me in better days.

“Run,” he whispers.

I can’t move. My body is frozen, trapped in some invisible cage.

A gunshot rips through the silence, and his head snaps back. His body jerks. Blood explodes from the wound, painting the walls, the floor, his face. I feel it before I see it, the red. It coats my hands. My skin. My dress. I’m drowning in it.

I wake up with a scream that feels like it’s tearing me in half.

I’m shaking. My chest heaves, struggling to catch the air I can’t seem to find. Stepan’s blood. I can smell it, like iron and death, still on me. It clings to my skin, to my soul. The heat of it feels like a sin.

And then, the door bursts open.

Misha.

“Luna!” His voice is frantic. He’s there, hovering in the doorway, panic flashing in his eyes as they scan the room for danger.

I scramble back, my back hitting the headboard, the sheets tangling around me. “Don’t touch me!” I scream, my voice raw, desperate.

His hands freeze, suspended in the air. His face softens with something I can’t place. “Luna, it’s me.”

But all I see is green eyes. Stepan’s eyes. His blood. His body. The necklace.

I reach for the glass of water beside me, and without thinking, I throw it at him. The water shatters, spraying across the floor in a deadly dance with glass shards.

He doesn’t flinch. Not even a twitch.

“Get out.” My voice cracks, the last shred of control slipping away.

Misha steps back. It isn’t because he wants to, but because he knows. He understands. He knows what it’s like to wake up haunted by the past.

He stands there in the doorway, silent for a long time, then speaks in a voice so quiet, it almost breaks me.

“I see him Stepan... He was shot...” My voice trembles, but it comes out anyway.

His throat tightens. “I see him too,” he says. “Every time I close my eyes.”

He takes a slow step forward, and I flinch.

“Leave,” I whisper, raw. “Please... just go.”

But he doesn’t move.

Not yet.

“I’m not your enemy,” he says softly, his tone almost too tender. Then he turns, and this time, he goes.

The door shuts behind him with a soft, final click.

And I am alone. But not really. Not anymore.

Because out there, pieces of the past still bleed. Stepan’s ghost is still here, trapped in my mind. And Misha... he’s no longer just my protector.

He’s a storm.

And I’ve invited him into the eyes.

The next morning, the silence hangs between us like an oppressive weight.

I can feel Misha across the table, but I refuse to look at him. The air crackles with unspoken words, heavy and suffocating. The weight of everything unravels in the quiet, each tick of the clock, each scrape of silverware, more deafening than the last.

Sofia brings in fresh bread, but it does nothing to ease the tension. The smell is too sharp, too real. The warmth of the fire crackling behind us is just another reminder of what I can’t escape.

I can’t bring myself to look at him, not once. Not even when the knife trembles slightly in my hand, betraying me.

Misha is still across from me, his coffee untouched. His posture is too perfect, too composed. He watches me like a king surveying his battlefield. But the battlefield is me. And I’m not an enemy to be conquered.

I can feel the intensity of his stare. It burns into the side of my face. His presence, the sheer weight of it, presses down on me.

But I don’t look at him. I can’t.

Because if I do, I’ll fall apart.

His voice is flat, but I know the anger beneath it. The frustration. The need to break me, to make me acknowledge him.

“You had a nightmare.”

I don’t answer.

“I heard you screaming through the walls.”

Still nothing. The silence is deafening, stretching between us like an abyss.

“I told Sofia not to come. I didn’t want you waking up with strangers crowding you.”

I don’t even blink. I just keep my focus on my toast, my hands moving mechanically. Butter. Bite. Chew. Swallow. But nothing tastes right. The sweetness of the jam, the warmth of the bread—they all taste like copper. Like blood.

I can feel his eyes, his gaze, burning into me.

“You had a nightmare,” he says again, softer now, almost asking.

I don’t answer.

“You saw him.” A pause. “Maybe your dreams can help us figure out who actually fired the shot that killed him. I know who betrayed him—your father, the Vargas cartel. And I swear to you, they’ll bleed for it. But I still don’t know who pulled the trigger.”

“It’s not a dream,” I murmur. “It’s a nightmare.”

I stand, the chair legs scraping the floor behind me. My body’s trembling, but I force it to stay upright. Controlled. Distant.

I don’t have to look at him to feel it, the anger simmering under his skin, the desperation that’s barely masked beneath all that control. He wants the truth like it’s air. Like it’s blood.

But I can’t give it. Not when the memory feels like a wound still bleeding.

I turn toward the door.

“Luna.”

His voice cuts through me, low, cold, commanding.

I freeze. My spine stiffens. I don’t face him. I can’t.

“I won’t apologize for protecting you.”

I turn slowly, the words striking something deep and sharp inside me.

“Is that what you think this is about?” My voice trembles, not from fear—but fury. “You killed for me. Again. In front of all of them. You made it war.”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away.

“You don’t get to decide what I need protecting from, Misha. You don’t get to drag me into your blood-soaked crusade and then call it love.”

He steps forward, but I hold my ground.

“You want to protect me?” I continue, breath ragged. “Then stop using me to justify your rage. You want vengeance for Stepan? Fine. But don’t pretend it’s just for me. Don’t hide behind me to do what you’ve always wanted.”

A beat of silence.

He looks like I’ve slapped him. And maybe I have.

“Every time I close my eyes, I see blood. Yours, his, mine. I’m drowning in it. And you...” I inhale sharply, “you’re the only thing keeping me breathing, and the one pulling me under.”

His silence stretches, darker now. He’s unraveling. Quietly. Beautifully. Dangerously.

Finally, he says, “Then let me drown with you.”

As I turn to leave, a chill snakes through the air. But then—he’s there.

Misha’s hand shoots out, curling around my wrist, pulling me back towards him, his grip firm but not cruel. The force of it makes my breath catch.

“Luna.” His voice, low and dangerous, carries the weight of something much darker than anger.

I try to pull away, but he’s too strong, too steady. He doesn’t shout, doesn’t demand, I’ve heard him do that before. This time, there’s an edge of something else, something quieter, more insistent.

“You think I don’t see it?” His words are a rasp against the quiet, against my resistance. “You think I don’t see what’s broken inside you?”

I refuse to look at him. I can’t. The weight of his eyes is too much. His touch is burning into my skin, leaving marks that won’t heal. His fingers tighten, a subtle pressure, reminding me that he has the power to stop me from leaving, from running. And he will.

I try to jerk away, but he pulls me closer, until I’m standing between his knees, the heat of him radiating against me.

“I know what it’s like to be haunted by something you didn’t choose,” he murmurs. “But you’re not alone in it anymore.”

“I don’t want you in it,” I whisper. “I don’t want anyone in it.”

“That’s not a choice you get to make anymore,” he says, voice harder now, but not cold. Just resolute. “Because you’re in my world, Luna. You stepped into it the moment you became my wife. And this world doesn’t forgive women who look fragile.”

He releases my wrist slowly, but doesn’t step away. “I don’t kill for sport. Not even for Stepan. Not really.”

I finally look up at him, and there’s something raw in his expression. Something buried beneath the blood and brutality.

“I killed those men because they betrayed us. Because the second they thought you were mine, they tried to break you to get to me. I needed them to know what happens when anyone even thinks of touching what’s mine.”

I inhale sharply.

“It’s not about vengeance,” he says. “It’s about survival. It’s about power. About proving to every man in that room that if they so much as breathe wrong in your direction, they’ll lose everything.”

My chest tightens. “And what do I lose, Misha?”

His gaze softens, then darkens. “Nothing, if I can help it. That’s what all of this is for. The violence. The fear. The empire I’m clawing to hold onto. It’s not just about Stepan anymore. It’s about keeping you breathing in a world built to crush you.”

Silence hangs between us, heavy and suffocating.

“I don’t want to be a reason you burn the world down,” I murmur.

“You’re not,” he says. “You’re the reason I’m trying to build something from the ashes.”

He lifts a hand, hesitating, then brushes a strand of hair from my cheek, the same cheek where the scar still lingers.

“You don’t have to trust me yet,” he says, almost broken. “But let me protect you. Let me give them a reason to fear ever laying a hand on you again.”

And this time, when I close my eyes, it’s not to shut him out.

It’s because I want to believe him.

His lips brush against my forehead, soft and slow, but there’s nothing gentle about the way he holds me. There’s a darkness there, an inevitability, like he’s claiming me. Not with words, not with force, but with an understanding of what I need, even if I don’t know it myself.