Page 72 of Sweet Obsession
“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?”
