Page 47 of Sweet Obsession (Savage Vow #1)

MISHA

The mansion was too quiet when I got home. The kind of silence that didn’t feel like peace but absence. A hollowed-out kind of stillness that clung to the walls.

I ran a hand through my hair, jaw tight, head pounding from back-to-back meetings. The Irkutsk wanted more ports. The Amur alliance wanted weapons. And I—as the newly crowned Pakhan, had barely taken a sip of water all day, let alone eaten. The weight of it all sat on my shoulders like iron chains.

And for what?

Power? Territory? Control?

No. It had stolen from me. From us.

The title gave Luna and me security, yes, but at a price I never agreed to pay. It took something quieter, more vital. The stolen glances. The easy silences. Her laughter in my chest. It buried the tenderness we’d bled for.

I couldn’t even remember the last time she smiled just for me. Not out of habit. Not for show. But the kind of smile that said I was still hers.

She called this afternoon. Told me to come home for dinner.

I’d known, the second I heard her voice—something was off.

I asked what was wrong.

She paused, then said softly, “I just want to talk.”

I told her I’d be there.

I meant it.

But the meeting with Irkutsk’s advisors ran long. Then the Amur arms broker dropped a last-minute demand I couldn’t ignore. Calls. Negotiations. A crisis in Chita I had to smooth over. One thing after another until the hours bled into night.

I told myself she’d understand. She always did.

But now, standing in our room, the silence screaming at me, I knew I’d miscalculated.

It hit me the second I walked in. Her perfume was faint, faded, like a memory. The bed was untouched. The books on her nightstand were gone. My blood turned to ice.

No. No, no, no.

I crossed the room in three long strides and yanked open the closet. My gut twisted as I looked at the empty space where her luggage used to be. Her coats. Her boots. The small suitcase she always kept ready for emergencies, gone.

Gone.

My heart slammed against my ribs. I turned, stormed into the hall, phone already in my hand. I dialed Sofia first. Then my chief of security. My voice was deadly calm when I spoke, but inside, a storm was ripping through me.

Sofia got there first. Her eyes widened the second she saw my face.

“Where is she?” I asked. My voice was sharp enough to cut steel.

“I... I thought she was here,” Sofia stammered, her eyes wide. “She said she was waiting for you. I didn’t know she planned to leave.”

The chief security officer rushed in behind her. “Sir, there’s been no record of her leaving the estate. No footage. No guard alerts. Nothing.”

“No?” I turned slowly toward him. “Then where the fuck is my wife?”

Sofia hesitated. Then her voice came again, quieter this time, careful, like she already knew the storm was about to break.

“I just checked the cellar,” she said. “The latch to the ravine exit was unlocked. I think... I think she used the hidden path.”

I froze.

She planned this.

She used my estate’s secrets against me.

The rage was instant. It shot through my veins like a match to gasoline.

I moved before I could think, closing the space between us in two long strides. Sofia flinched as I loomed over her, my shadow swallowing hers against the hallway wall.

“You knew,” I hissed, my voice low and lethal. “You knew she was planning something and you said nothing?”

Her breath hitched. “I didn’t—I swear, Misha, I didn’t know,” she said quickly, eyes flicking to the ground, then back to mine, wide and terrified. “I just found the latch. I thought she was still here until... until just now.”

My hands flexed at my sides. I wanted to break something. No—someone.

“You were with her all week! You didn’t see anything? Didn’t sense anything?” I grabbed her by the collar, slamming her back against the wall.

“Misha... please,” she gasped.

The security chief stepped forward. “Sir, we’ll find her. Let me just...”

I pulled my gun and fired at the floor near his feet. He jumped back, pale. “You were asleep on your fucking job. She slipped past every alarm, every checkpoint, and none of you noticed?”

Sofia was shaking in my grip. “Let me help you find her—”

I’d lost control. My hands still shook, not just from rage, but shame. I’d nearly hurt the only people who stayed loyal to me. And for what? To feel powerful when everything else was slipping through my fingers?

I released her with a shove. “Don’t help me. Don’t speak to me.”

I was already dialing.

Nikolai picked up on the second ring.

“She left.” My voice was steel. “Find her. Now.”

I didn’t wait for his reply. I was already moving back to the bedroom, hands trembling—not from fear, but fury. The kind that cracked bone and tore through logic.

I opened the drawer on my side of the bed. And there it was.

A single sheet of paper, folded neatly. Crisp. Clean.

I pulled it out and opened it with numb fingers.

My name. Her name. A date. A signature.

The fucking divorce papers.

Signed. Tucked away like a secret she couldn’t say aloud.

My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall. I just stood there, staring at it. My hands clenched, veins pulsing, heart breaking open and bleeding all over that single fucking page.

She left.

Not because she stopped loving me, but because I stopped showing her I did.

I’d been so busy guarding empires, I hadn’t realized I’d let her slip right through my hands. I’d built a kingdom. But I lost my queen.

I crumpled the paper in my fist, my jaw locked so tightly it ached. My eyes stung, but no tears fell. They wouldn’t. Not yet. Not until I got her back.

The Pakhan title—the power I once would’ve killed for—felt like poison now. A crown of thorns. I hated it. I hated everything it had cost me.

For the next hour, I paced like a caged animal. Drank whiskey straight from the bottle. Tore through every drawer in her studio. Reread every note she’d left me. Looked for something—anything—that said she still loved me.

And then my phone rang.

Nikolai’s voice was grim when he answered.

“Bogotá,” he said. “She’s there.”

Of course she was. With her father. With the man who sold her to me like a prized mare at auction.

I felt bile rise in my throat.

I would go there. Tear Colombia apart if I had to. She wouldn’t run from me again. Not this time.

My phone buzzed again.

Unknown number.

I almost didn’t answer. But something in my gut said I had to.

I pressed it to my ear. “Who is this?”

Silence. A breath.

Then her voice.

“Misha... it’s me.”

Everything inside me stopped.

Her voice. Soft. Wary. Still mine.

My knees almost gave. I leaned against the desk, heart crashing against my ribs. “Luna...”

Silence. Not dead silence. Breathing. Her breathing. Choked. Controlled.

“Why?” I rasped, throat burning. “Why did you leave me like that?”

Still no answer.

“Why, Luna?” My voice cracked under the weight of it. “You couldn’t wait for us to talk? You had to run? Divorce me?” The word tasted like glass. “We could’ve worked through it. We always did.”

She exhaled, slow and raw. “I didn’t run this time.”

Her voice, God, her voice, was fragile and steel all at once.

“I chose to leave this time, Misha. Not out of fear. Not because I thought you’d chase me and drag me back.

I left because it was my decision, for once, mine.

And you don’t get to just show up and claim me like I’m something you lost and have the right to own.

My chest tightened. “That’s not what this is.”

“Yes, it is,” she whispered. “That’s what it’s always been. You forced a marriage out of obsession. You cornered me into it like a contract deal, and when I tried to run—twice—you dragged me back. But this time... I left. Because I want more than to be owned.”

I swallowed hard. “You are more.”

“But you didn’t treat me like I was.”

“You barely see me anymore, Misha,” she continued, voice shaking. “The man I married—God, he vanished under meetings, bloodshed, duty. You come home and I feel more alone than when you’re gone.”

I gritted my teeth. “I was doing it all for us. The position, the power—it was to protect you.”

“No,” she whispered. “You did it for control. And somewhere along the way, I disappeared from your list of priorities.”

I staggered back a step, like her words had winded me. “Luna...”

“The man I married was obsessed with me, haunted me, hunted me down and forced my hand into a marriage I never asked for. And yet... he still saw me. He still cared. This version of you?” Her voice cracked. “He’s colder than the man who once locked me in a cage.”

“You’re my wife.”

“I was your contracted wife,” she said bitterly. “And that contract expired. You said it yourself, you never wanted love. You wanted control. And you got it. But I want something more.”

“To hell with the contract.” My voice cracked, raw and guttural. “You’re mine, Luna. You always will be.”

“Then why didn’t you act like it?” she whispered.

Silence fell between us. My throat burned. My hands trembled. “What can I do to make this right?”

Her silence came first. Then a breath. Then: “Nothing.”

“Are you giving up on us? After everything we’ve been through?”

A stifled sob cracked through the speaker, and it felt like a knife twisting into my chest. “You can’t love me the way I want, Misha. And that’s okay. Just... focus on your empire. I’ll focus on rebuilding what’s left of me. What we had was real. It was beautiful... for a time.”

“I’ll come for you,” I swore. “I don’t care if your father has soldiers. I don’t care if the Vargas want my head. I’ll crawl through hell if I have to.”

Her voice steadied. “You won’t be foolish enough to come. You step out of Yakutsk and they’ll kill you before you even reach Bogotá.”

A pause.

“You don’t belong in this world anymore, Misha. Not the one I’m in.”

Then the line went dead.

And I broke.

I stood there, frozen in the wreckage of her words. Her absence. The empty closet. The damned divorce papers still sitting on the dresser like a death certificate.

My lungs burned. My fingers curled around the phone so tight I heard it crack, and I didn’t stop. I slammed it against the wall. Once. Twice. A third time until shards rained to the floor like glass rain.

“She left,” I muttered, as if saying it would make it less true. “She fucking left me.”

The drawer flew open and I grabbed the divorce paper, staring at her signature like it was written in blood. My name—the line beside it still blank. Untouched.

I never signed it.

I never fucking let her go.

With a roar, I tore it in two, then again, until the pieces scattered like ashes at my feet.

My breath turned ragged. My vision blurred.

The lamp on the nightstand went flying next. Then the chair. I dragged the sheets off the bed we used to share, that still smelled like her. The mirror cracked when my fist went through it—my knuckles split, blood smearing the glass like war paint.

“You were mine,” I rasped, staring at my reflection fractured into pieces. “You are mine.”

But she wasn’t here.

She was in Bogotá. Alone. With her evil father—And now she was willingly under his roof. Willingly out of reach. Willingly done with me.

I staggered back, chest heaving. My knees hit the floor and I let them. Let myself fold, fists clenched in my lap like they could hold me together.

She said I couldn’t love her the way she needed.

And maybe she was right.

But I still loved her. In the only way I knew how. Brutal. Obsessive. Consuming.

And now I was choking on it.

The walls of the Pakhan’s palace closed in on me like a tomb. My crown. My throne. My fucking empire. All of it felt like a curse now. Like I’d traded her love for this cage of power.

They said stepping outside Russia meant death.

But what did it matter?

I was already bleeding in a thousand places no bullet could reach.

I had to get her back.

“Luna,” I whispered. “I’ll fix this. Even if it kills me.”

Because if I didn’t, I was already dead.