Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 117

Freedom Is Yours, If You Want It.

Conner

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A handful of Yakov’s men step forward, boots dragging in the dirt, heads ducked like dogs coming to a new master. They look row, shaken, unsure, but there’s a willingness there, the kind that comes from losing whatever stood above you and needing a place to put your feet. I watch them for a heartbeat, then shrug. If they want out from under that filth and they mean it, I’ll give them a chance. Better them under my roof than back in his pockets. The girls are a mess. Blood, mud, knuckles split; Naomi’s grin is half gone, but there’s fire in her eyes. Ari is steady as ever, already barking orders about radios and routes. Nico leans against a crate, hollow–eyed, but breathing. He saved us a thread tonight and played the part when it counted. That’s worth a lot.

Ari walks the perimeter and says what needs to be said: the rest of Yakov’s people need to hear that they aren’t following him anymore. They need to know there’s another option, one that doesn’t end with them whistling as they drag someone to a noose. I nod. She’s right. We need to spread the word and make it clear: choice, not chains.

I catch Jason at the edge of the clearing, pale and hands still shaking. The kid’s been quiet, eyes wide like he’s seen the world flip. I clap him on the shoulder, firm. “Get the cars here,” I tell him. “All of them. Load ammo, medkits, and blankets. We move as one unit, no lone runners, no split trails. We pull back to the compound, shore up the safehouse, and then we make the call on who stays and who goes.”

He bobs his head, adrenaline finally finding a use, and already he’s gone, sprinting to the vehicles like a man with an order to live by.

I look at Sage, at how she stands with mud on her boots and something like a new hardness in her jaw. I look at the men and women around us, some wanting to join, some already planning their exits. I feel the weight settle on my shoulders in a way that doesn’t choke me; it fits. We’ll take those who want to be taken. We’ll teach what they need. We’ll bury what we have to bury and feed who’s hungry.

“Load up,” I call, loud enough for everyone. “We move in ten.”

They move. We move. Family, messy and half–broken and alive, falls into the rhythm I know how to keep.

Ari

He’s dead. I still can’t quite make the words sit in my chest without the whole thing feeling unreal. Matteo won’t let me stop fidgeting: he hovers like a mother bird, and I let him. He’s clingy as hell, but right now I don’t mind that he won’t leave my side.

We pull up to the compound gate, and the two guards at the front straighten, weapons raised before they even see us. The moon skims the metal and throws long shadows over their faces. Sage, Naomi, Winnie, and I climb out slowly so they know we’re not bluffing.

“He’s dead,” I call out, loud and flat. “Let us in. We’ve got proof, and we need to tell everyone they’re free.”

One guard squints. The other barks back, voice hard: “Where’s your proof?”

Naomi is already bouncing on her toes like she’s about to explode. “Oh, Sage, show him, show him!” she urges, a grin crawling across her face.

Sage moves like she’s been saving the show for this very second. She reaches into the back of the van with casual hands, and the guards press their triggers a fraction harder. “Show your hands!” they shout, voices rough.

Sage’s answer is a whisper and a stare. “If I was going to kill you, you’d be dead,” she says, the kind of line that makes a man rethink his

instincts.

Then she pulls something from the van, a heavy, canvas–wrapped bundle, stained dark at the edges. She holds it by one corner and

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Freedom Is Yours, If You Want It.

dangles it between the guards like a proof on a chain. The thing is too small to be a body slung whole, too deliberate to be anything but evidence. The guards‘ eyes flick to it, then to each other. They don’t want this thing close. Their hands twitch on their weapons. Sage unties one knot slowly, with beautiful patience. She peels back the cloth and holds Yakov’s severed head by the hair. The two guards go pale in an almost comical way.

“See?” Sage says, voice low and sharp. “Open the gates. Now. Or I’ll take your heads next.”

Their fingers hit the radio like they’re trying to call for backup and find no courage in the words they send. The younger guard swallows, eyes flicking to the head.

Finally, the older guard straightens and jerks his head. “Open the gate,” he snaps to his partner, voice brittle, trying to make it sound like an order he still believes in. The bolt grinds. The chains clank. The metal rolls back.

We step through. The compound doesn’t feel like an enemy territory anymore; it already smells like a place people will move back into, or walk away from, on their own terms. Behind us, someone murmurs. It’s not a cheer. It’s close enough: relief and a kind of raw, awful

hope.

Matteo lets out a breath he’s been holding and drops his shoulders like a man who’s been told he can finally sit down. Naomi laughs, sharp and loud, and Sage tucks the canvas away. I let myself exhale and follow them in. I move through the compound like I know it by touch, past the lined barracks, over the cracked parade ground, up the metal stairs to the control tower where the bank of panels waits like an old friend. The place still smells of oil and bleach and the cheap coffee they always kept simmering for hungry men. My hands don’t shake as I flip open the mic; they’ve got other things to do than tremble.

The speaker crackles to life. I watch the room below through the dirty plex; shapes move, shadows lean, and a pair of guards at the gate glance up, puzzled.

I put the mic to my mouth and keep my voice flat and loud so there’s no room for it to be misinterpreted.

“Attention. Yakov is dead,” I say, and the words drop like a stone across the yard. “Open the cells. Everyone is free. Go to the training field if you want to see for yourself.”

Silence holds for a breath, a pause like the whole compound is listening to decide if it’s real. Then the intercom in the barracks starts to buzz, doors creak, and someone laughs, sharp with disbelief. The march of boots and the scrape of keys follow.

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