Page 121 of Cruel Obsession

With my bound hands, I grab the metal handrail and haul myself up onto the first step. The movement sends pain lancing through my cut palms, but I don’t stop. I push inside, into the relative coolness of the air-conditioned interior.

The driver stares at me, shock in his wide eyes. I must look deranged—disheveled, wrists bound with zip ties, blood on my hands, and scrapes on my arms. But there’s no time to explain, no time for anything but raw desperation.

“Please,” I rasp, the word catching in my dry throat. “Those men—they took me—”

The driver’s eyes shift to something behind me, his expression changing from shock to fear.

Cold dread washes through me. I turn just as a hand snaps out and grabs the bus door, preventing it from closing. Kostya stands there, one foot already on the bottom step, his face twisted with a mixture of anger and satisfaction.

“There you are, darling,” he says in accented English, his tone falsely sweet. His eyes, however, promise violence. “You’ve had your little adventure. Time to go home now.”

Our eyes lock.

There’s nowhere left to run.

I turn back to the bus driver. “Go!” I scream. “For God’s sake, just drive!”

Chapter Forty-Three

Arkady

Eight pm.

The hospital sits across town—answers waiting, a child I didn’t know existed until hours ago. Rosanna’s child. Maybe mine.Blyad.Everything about this situation is wrong, twisted in ways I can’t untangle right now.

And that’s the problem.

Right now doesn’t belong to me.

The rescue operation can’t wait. Mirabel might be in my father’s cellar. Stefan’s daughter definitely is. Other girls, too—how many, we won’t know until we’re inside. My men are good, but they need me for this. They need someone who understands how my father thinks, where he hides his worst sins.

The baby will have to wait. The hospital, the paternity test, the questions piling up—all of it gets pushed back. Lives are crumbling right now, this minute. A dead woman’s child, whoever the father is, can survive a few more hours without me.

But Mirabel…

Something in my gut twists when I think of her. The knowledge that she might be at my father’s house burns like gunpowder in my blood. Not a conscious thought until now, but it’s been driving me from the moment we suspected he’d taken her. My father having his hands on what’s mine—unacceptable.

I down the rest of my vodka, the burn doing nothing to settle the war raging in my head. The glass hits my desk harder than intended.

Focus, dolboyob.

I need to compartmentalize. Lock away the hospital, the infant with Rosanna’s features, the possibility that I’m a father. Lock it all in a box and deal with the immediate crisis.

Mirabel first.

The girls.

Then I’ll face whatever the hell is waiting for me in that hospital room.

I head to my office, fighting to keep a sense of calm. The walk feels longer than usual, each step weighted with too many futures branching off in directions I can’t predict. The hallway smells faintly of leather and old wood—familiar, grounding. I focus on that instead of the chaos threatening to split me open.

Yanis and Stefan are already there waiting, both men radiating tension in different ways—Yanis with his calculated stillness, Stefan with barely contained fury. The blueprints of my father’s estate wait on my desk, corners weighed down with small silver paperweights.

Stefan looks up when I enter, and I see it immediately—the desperation he’s trying to mask with professional detachment. His jaw is set so hard I can see the muscle ticking beneath the skin.

I spread the papers wider, flattening them against the polished surface. “Let’s go over it again.”

“Here, here, and here,” Stefan points to the cellar entry points. His finger jabs at the paper with enough force to nearly tear it. “Three access points. Guards typically positioned at two.”