Page 130 of Sweet Obsession
I didn’t need to.
Because I believed him.
God help me, I believed him.
More than that—some part of me, bruised and exhausted and quietly desperate, was grateful.
And that was the part I feared the most.
Not Vargas.
Not Chernov.
But this. This slow, treacherous pull toward the man I wasn’t supposed to trust.
My voice barely rose above a whisper. “And as for the banquet holding tomorrow... we don’t have to go. If we stay back, the vote will go to Chernov, but we’ll be safe.”
“No,” he said immediately.
“You’ll lose.”
“Better I lose a title than you.”
He turned to the table, unfolding Chernov’s letter again. He didn’t just read it—he studied it, like every sentence was a trap he needed to dismantle.
His jaw tightened. “This is bait. He wants me to withdraw. Vargas wants me to offer myself up. But I won’t play by their rules.”
“Misha...”
“I will show up,” he said, cutting me off, voice like iron. “I will not hide. I will not run. And you...” He turned back to me. His hand touched mine this time. No hesitation. Just heat. Steady and sure.
“I’ll take you with me to the banquet,” he said. “You’ll be under guard, under my eye. You won’t leave my sight.”
“That won’t be enough.”
“I’m not done,” he said quietly. “I’m bringing my own men. Locking down every entrance, every corridor. Chernov wants chaos, but he’ll get a wall of knives instead.”
“And if the Vargas Cartel shows up?” I swallowed hard, the weight of the situation sinking deeper. “In solidarity with Chernov? They’ll have more men than you, you’ll be outnumbered.”
His gaze hardened, the cold certainty in his voice sending a chill through me. “Then I end them all.”
Just like that.
I stared at him. At the man standing so calmly in the middle of this storm. Not flinching. Not folding.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, barely audible.
He looked at me for a long moment, and something softer slipped through the fire in his eyes.
“I do,” he said. “Because they already threatened you. That makes it mine.”
There was no air left in the room. Not between us.
Only heat. And blood. And something that sounded a lot like faith.
I didn’t know what scared me more—going to that banquet, or realizing I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
Not even a little.
