Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 60

Obedience.

Conner

I’ve never been good at waiting. Not for shipments, not for meetings, not for men who mistake my patience for mercy. But this isn’t patience, it’s paralysis with a clock on it. Nico can’t pin a trace that holds for more than eleven seconds. Every time he thinks he’s got a vein, the line goes dark and reroutes through a dead node like the place itself is changing its face to spite us. Matteo is the metronome in the room, steady and infuriating. “Forty–eight hours,” he keeps saying, like repetition can turn a threat into a plan. Liam’s worn a trench into my carpet long and deep enough to plant a tree. He mutters and curses and checks his phone as if she might text “be right back” like this is a bad date and not a walk into a meat grinder. I pace the perimeter of my own house and hate every wall. Nico spins me heat maps and packet captures; I nod like I can feel her through the static. I can’t. I sit. I stand. I count to one hundred until the numbers turn into her breath in my head. I’ve never been with a woman I couldn’t shield with men and money and a name that makes doors open. I’m learning the shape of loving someone who doesn’t need a shield, she needs me to wait. It feels like drowning slow.

Sage

They gave us three hours in the cell and called it sleep. Concrete under my spine, thin blanket over my bones, a camera pretending not to stare. Naomi’s was shoved into a cell beside me for her ‘smart mouth and her breath evened out against the wall, drug fog finally fully burned off; every sixth exhale hitched and then smoothed, a tell that anyone else would miss. I slid my shoulder against cold steel until the ache sharpened into something I could measure, then let my eyelids fall. When the door rasped open, the air changed. He doesn’t rush. Yakov walks in like time belongs to him and waits for rooms to arrange themselves. Five hooded figures were placed on their knees, lined up on the painted seam where the floor meets the wall, wrists bound behind their backs. No insignia. No files. No names. Just shapes. The kids in the cells went very still; even their fear got quiet.

“Stand,” a handler said. We did.

Yakov didn’t look at me. He didn’t have to. “Obedience,” he said mildly, like he was reading a menu. “Instruction without context. Ghosts don’t choose.

Ghosts execute.”

He nodded once. A guard set two pistols on a tray and brought them forward like offerings in a chapel. Real rounds. Weight that meant it. “One each,” Yakov said. “No hesitation. No speech. On the mark.”

The room narrowed until it was just the tray and the five hoods and Naomi’s sleeve brushing my wrist as she reached. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at her. We both know the math: fail this and you don’t walk out; pass this and you carry it. My fingers wrapped the grip like they remembered being small and taught. On the mark. Naomi stepped left; I stepped right. Knee level. Cloth, rope, the faintest flinch of breath under canvas. It would be cleaner to the head; it would be quicker to the heart. I aimed center mass because that’s what drills teach and cameras like symmetry. I didn’t count. I didn’t pray. I put a hole where a command told me to put a hole and I didn’t watch a body fall because my body already knew the shape without my eyes telling it. The shot cracked like a door slamming two rooms away. Naomi’s answered it on the other end of the line. Two figures folded. Yakov didn’t smile. He doesn’t smile for this. He raised a hand. The remaining three were dragged away and the tray was gone. They didn’t say “good.” They didn’t say “enough.” They just moved us to the next room like the last thing hadn’t happened. Ice baths. Metal tubs that stank of disinfectant and old metal. I lowered myself when they told me to lower; Naomi went down beside me with a hiss and a muttered swear the guard pretended not to hear. The water stole heat like a thief with time to spare. It climbed my skin inch by inch until bone stopped being inside me and became a bell someone else was striking. Breathe in on three. Out on five. The first shock came as a hum around the rim, subtle, mean, the kind that makes muscles spasm without leaving pretty marks. “Hold,” a voice said over a speaker, pleasant as a concierge. We held. Another shock, higher. Fingers cramped into claws. Shoulder screamed white light up the side of my neck; I counted the pain and filed it. Naomi started humming some nonsense pop hook under her breath, off–key on purpose; the guard nearest her shifted his weight like annoyance could keep him warm. “You’re flat,” I said, because words placed carefully are as much armor as anything else. She grinned without opening her

eyes.

“Out,” the speaker said. We stood. Skin the color of old porcelain, lips numb, hair dripping little rivers that the concrete drank. They swapped the ice for heat pads and wired leads to our forearms, biceps, traps. Not enough juice to stop a heart. Enough to make a body dance if the mind forgets that the body is furniture.

“Obedience,” the voice said again, and sent current through the wires.

The trick isn’t to be stone. The trick is to let the flinch happen and choose where it lands. I sent it to my calves, let the knee buckle the way the file expects, kept the shoulder quiet. Naomi rolled her eyes at the ceiling like she was bored at a bad date and the handler marking tallies wrote down what he wanted to see: compliance under stress.

By the time they uncoupled the leads and moved us, the yard had shifted. The kids sat straighter on their concrete lip, learning the way the world works from the worst teacher it has.

“Final,” the voice said, from somewhere behind glass. The sticks came out. We gave them what they asked for, harder. I took a welt along the bicep and let it blossom for the camera; I put mine where Naomi’s thigh could absorb it. “Enough,” the voice said finally, flat and bored and hungry for paperwork.

1/2

7:26 pm D

Obedience.

We were lined and counted. Pens scratched. Somewhere, the morning shift poured coffee.

ཅ:|

“Cells,” a guard ordered. We turned in unison and walked where we were pointed. I counted footsteps because numbers are doors when rooms don’t have

any.

One more long blink. Forty–eight hours almost up. I lay down on concrete and pulled the blanket over my ribs and closed my eyes like a good ghost. “I’ll make it back to you, darling. I thought to myself.

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