Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 63

Her Obsession.

Beautifully Broken Little Ghost.

Liam swung into the driver’s seat, engine already growling. Naomi, bloodied but conscious enough to mumble curses at the seatbelt took the front passenger. That left the back for the three of us.

*Conner, time to move Sage, get in the rear bench. Now,” I said, already folding down the center armrest to make room.

Conner slid in first and I lowered Sage across his lap, her head cradled against his chest, oxygen mask fogging with shallow breaths. I climbed in after, knees braced on the floor, one hip half off the seat so I could keep a hand on her carotid and an eye on both IV lines. Nico started for the open door. The blonde caught him by the sleeve. “You’re with me,” she said, already backing toward her sedan. “I’ll ride tail. He needs the back seat.”

“I can…” Nico began.

“You can run comms from my car,” she cut in, sharp but steady. “Move.”

Liam punched us onto the frontage road, tires spitting gravel. In the mirror I saw headlights fall in behind, tight and disciplined.

“Smooth, not slow,” I told Liam. “Hold speed, no hard brakes. If she vomits, I need her on her side yesterday.”

“Copy,” he said, knuckles white on the wheel.

Naomi’s head lolled against the window. “Tell your road to stop moving,” she muttered, then softer, “You’re doing great, handsome.” He didn’t answer, but his jaw unclenched a fraction.

I tucked heat packs deeper into Sage’s blanket cocoon, checked the O2 hiss, nudged the saline drip slower. “Pulse is thready but present,” I called over my shoulder. “Resp twelve, shallow. Conner, keep her head midline. If she stirs, talk to her, low and steady.”

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he murmured into her hair. “Stay with me.”

Ari’s voice crackled over Nico’s open line from the trailing car. “I’m on comms. Call vitals every five minutes. If anything crashes, hit the hazards, I’ll pull alongside.”

“Let’s get them home,” Liam said, eyes on the dark ribbon of road ahead.

No sirens. No stops. Just two cars knifing through the night, one carrying our ghost, the other the only person in this mess who knew how close to the fire we were still standing.

Conner

Liam drove like the devil was tailing us, fast, smooth, no wasted motion. The cabin filled with the hum of tires and the thin hiss of oxygen. I had Sage cradled across my lap, her weight too light, her heat coming in stuttering waves through the blanket Matteo had wrapped around her. Every bump translated up my spine and into my teeth.

“Head midline,” Matteo reminded without looking up, two fingers at her throat, the other hand adjusting the drip. “Talk to her.”

“I’m here, sweetheart,” I murmured into her hair. “You’re safe. Stay with me.”

I forced myself to catalog, to make a ledger out of the damage. Vengeance needs numbers.

Left cheek: swollen high, purple flooding toward the eye, blunt force, at least two strikes. Split at the corner of her mouth, dried black. Nose tender but straight. New cuts across the browline, sharp gravel or stone. I touched them with a knuckle and logged it: three. Four. Five. Neck: faint ligature rub at the nape where a hood’s seam chafes wet skin. I’d seen water used that way. My jaw locked until it ached. That goes in the book. Shoulder, our old battlefield wound, packed dressing seeping through in a slow, angry blossom; not arterial, but steady. Matteo had cinched it tight. I could smell the sterile gauze under the copper of her blood. Clavicle and scapula mottled with fresh bruises, a long diagonal welt where a rattan stick had kissed and left its signature. Another entry. Ribs: 1 laid my palm on her sternum and felt how shallow she was breathing, how she guarded the right side. Fractures, plural. The stoning did that; I could see the pattern, ovals and crescents where rocks break skin but not spirit. Count them. Count all of them. Eight. Nine. Ten. I stopped at twenty because rage started to blur the edges. Hands: knuckles scraped raw, crescents of someone else’s blood under two nails. Wrists abraded where restraints bite when you won’t go quietly. Ankles the same. Hip, left, already blooming through the blanket where a throw met concrete. Thighs peppered with tiny cuts. Shins flayed in places like she’d run the belt barefoot and it tried to keep her. I recorded it like liturgy. I would give it back to Yakov in the same order he

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7:27 pm D

Beautifully Broken Little Ghost.

took it: stone for stone, strike for strike, breath for breath. He’d learn the weight of every tally he’d ever made.

Sage stirred, a tiny sound escaping her, not quite a word. I pressed my mouth to her temple. “That’s it, sweetheart. Easy. You’re almost home.”

Up front, Naomi shifted with a soft curse, seatbelt creaking. “Tell her… she still looks hot,” she mumbled, half–asleep, half ruined. Liam’s hands tightened on the wheel, and for once he didn’t have a joke. Headlights stayed welded to our bumper in the mirror, steady, unblinking.

“How long?” I asked, not taking my eyes off Sage’s face.

“Twenty–two minutes if he keeps it this clean,” Matteo said, checking the IV site. “Pulse is holding. BP’s low but responsive. She needs warmth, fluids, and hands off those ribs. No heroics tonight.”

Too late for that. I brushed the damp hair from Sage’s forehead and saw it then: grit packed into a shallow cut along the hairline where a stone had glanced and skipped. I breathed through the burn behind my eyes and added another mark to the ledger.

“You hear me?” I whispered. “I’m counting. Every one. I’m going to pay him back in exact change.”

Her lashes trembled. Maybe it was the road. Maybe it was me. I kept talking anyway, the way you do for the dying, even though she wasn’t dying, couldn’t be, wouldn’t be. Not after I finally had her in my arms and the world had finally made sense for five minutes together.

“Home stretch,” Liam said quietly. The city’s edge began to glow ahead, lamps smearing gold across wet asphalt. Matteo tucked another heat pack under the blanket, his forearms red to the wrist. “When we stop, you carry; I steer the bleeding. No jolts.”

“Back entrance,” I said. “Straight to my room.” Deja vu and a curse. If I believed in prayer, I’d have said one.

Sage’s fingers twitched against my chest like she was reaching for a trigger that wasn’t there. I laced mine through them, careful of the scrapes. “I’ve got you.”

In the mirror, the other car edged closer as we took the turn for the drive. Gates opened on our approach, our men spilling out to form a corridor of motion, quiet and efficient. They saw my face and didn’t ask questions.

I looked down at my beautifully broken little ghost and finished the accounting in my head. Then I closed the book and made a promise, not to the house, not to the men, not even to the God I’ve ignored my whole life.

To her.

“You rest, I’ll do the hurting.”

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