Page 220 of Reckless Obsession

“I am trying to make this right,” he says, his voice full of agony. “I’m trying to handle it so you don’t end up—”

I spin around, my finger driving hard into his bare chest, pushing him back.

“You’re not handling shit!” I yell, cutting him off my voice cracking down the center as the raw, bleeding fury pours out of me. “All you’re doing is protecting Jake. You’re shielding him from me because you know that the second I get my hands on him, I will rip him apart limb from limb.”

“I am doing this because I can’t lose you, Maksim!” Tristan roars back, his voice reverberating off the walls. “Everything I did was so I wouldn’t lose you.”

A wild, humorless scoff tears out of my throat.

“You lost me three months ago, Tristan!” I scream into his face, tears burning hot and humiliating behind my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. “Why the fuck can’t you see that? I stood in this apartment, stripped my entire soul bare, looked you in the eye and told you I loved you—and you still stood there like stone and let me walk out the door.”

The words detonate between us, leaving the room in a ringing, suffocating silence.

The grief carved into Tristan’s features is so profound that it makes my knees feel hollow. He takes a slow, desperate step towards me, reaching out to cup my face.

I flinch violently and step back into the shadows.

“Don’t touch me,” I whisper.

The command hits him like a physical blow. After the way our bodies just tangled together minutes ago, the distance is agonizing, a jagged knife turning in fresh wounds.

Tristan drops his hands, his knuckles tight as they ball into fists at his sides.

“I hate myself for every second you stood there loving me alone,” Tristan says, his voice breaking, stripped of every ounce of pride, each word so raw and ruined it makes my heart feel heavy. “I should have been loving you just as fiercely. I should have burned the whole city down before letting you walk away.”

He steps closer, unyielding, his dark eyes burning into mine with an intensity that pins me to the floor.

“I would get on my knees for you right now, Maksim, but even that wouldn’t be low enough to beg you not to leave me again.” His voice drops to a desperate, reverent whisper. “Put a bullet in me. Hate me. I will accept whatever punishment you think I deserve, as long as I get to have you in my life again. Just don’t walk out that door.”

I stare at him for a long moment, the weight of his confession still hanging in the air between us. Part of me wants to believe the raw honesty in his voice. The larger part of me is still bleeding from the three months he let me walk away.

And for the first time since I walked out three months ago, I don’t know what to do with the man standing in front of me.

“The only punishment I know you deserve,” I say quietly, “is to watch Jake die by my hand.”

Tristan’s expression tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt. I take another step back, putting more distance between us. The space feels necessary.

“If you’re going to hate me for what I’m going to do to him, then hate me.” My voice stays steady even as something twists under my ribs. “But I will do it. His life was always mine to take the moment he decided to keep coming between us. I’m done letting him screw with me. I’m done letting him screw with us.”

The finality of the words settles over the room like a closed door.

Tristan doesn’t move. He doesn’t try to stop me this time. Maybe he finally understands that some decisions aren’t his to control.

I turn towards the entrance without waiting for a reply. My hand finds the doorknob. For half a second, I almost look back, almost give him one more chance to say something that might alter the course of what’s coming.

I don’t.

I open the door, step into the hallway, and pull it shut behind me with a soft, decisive click.

Chapter 36

MAKSIM

The stairs beneath my grandfather’s mansion have always had a particular kind of silence.

Not the peaceful or the comforting kind, but the kind that makes you instinctively lower your voice, as if the walls themselves are listening.

My shoes strike against the stone as I descend, each step swallowed by the low amber lights lining the walls. The farther down I go, the colder the air becomes, carrying that familiar scent of concrete, metal, and something faintly antiseptic that never quite manages to hide what this place is.