Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 88

What Can You Do?

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Pa didn’t look away. His gaze held hers like iron, a man who’d stared down war and loss and wasn’t afraid to stare down her ghosts too.

“I’ve heard of him.” Pa said finally. “Yakov. And of what his ghosts can do. Always wondered what kind of bastard makes a girl into something like you.” He leaned in just enough, his voice low, deliberate. “Tell me how. Tell me what you went through. Tell me what you can do.”

The air in the hall tightened, every man at the table drawn forward by the weight in his voice.

Sage’s eyes flicked around the room, measuring. She didn’t flinch, didn’t soften, just spoke, her words flat, like a blade being laid bare.

“He breaks you first,” she said. “Takes away food. Sleep. Comfort. He makes you fight until your bones snap, and when you can’t stand, he makes you crawl. He makes you watch others fail, watch them being dragged away, until you learn the only way to live is never to fail at all. You don’t eat unless you’ve earned it. You don’t breathe unless he allows it. And if you so much as hesitate? Someone else dies for it.”

Some of the rookies shifted in their seats, pale, but she went on without pause.

“He tears out the human parts and replaces them with instinct. He teaches you to vanish in plain sight. To slip in, cut a throat, and be gone before the blood cools. He drills it until your body moves before your brain can catch up. Until you don’t ask questions. You act.”

Her voice dipped lower, but sharper. “And he doesn’t just stop at your body. He turns your mind into a weapon, too. We learned every lock, every security measure, every camera and circuit. How to shut down an entire grid from a phone in our pocket. How to build our own surveillance networks out of scraps. How to scrub an identity clean and slip into a new one by dawn. How to ghost not just through shadows, but through systems. By the time I was seventeen, I could navigate any security feed, any firewall, like the back of my hand. Yakov didn’t raise killers. He raised living, breathing viruses.”

The room had gone dead silent. Even the veterans stared, their forks frozen halfway to their mouths.

Sage leaned back in her chair, voice cooling to flat indifference. “That’s what he does. That’s what I am. A tool sharpened against the world. Useful. Replaceable.”

The last word landed harder than anything else, and it lodged sharply in my chest.

Pa’s jaw tightened. He pushed up from his bench, the wood groaning under the weight, and came around the table slowly, boots heavy on the floorboards. Sage’s shoulders straightened, as if she were bracing for judgment or rejection.

Instead, Pa gripped the back of her chair, turned her to face him, and bent to haul her up into his arms. His frame swallowed hers, but his voice carried over her head, low and rough as gravel.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, girl. But you’ll not carry it alone anymore. My family stands by you now. And your friends too.”

The men watched in stunned silence. Pa didn’t embrace anyone outside blood, not ever. But here he was, holding Yakov’s ghost in his arms like she was one of his own. And my girl, my dangerous little storm, stiffened for a heartbeat before sagging into him and wrapping her arms as far as she could around his back.

Pa lowered her back into her chair with a gentleness that didn’t match the size of him, then set his hand firm on the backrest. “You’ll show us what you can do tomorrow, yeah?” he asked, voice low but certain. Not a question, really. A statement dressed up as one.

Before Sage could answer, Naomi piped up, practically bouncing in her seat on Liam’s lap. “Oh, I already told everyone,” she said cheerfully, grinning like she’d just lit a firework. “They’re getting special training. From me and Sage.”

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12:51 Mon, Oct 20

What Can You Do?

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A ripple of laughter and muttering went down the line, most of the men exchanging looks. One of the older lads at a table across leaned back, arms crossed, a smirk curling his mouth. “I don’t need training from a couple of little girls,” he drawled, loud enough for everyone

to hear.

The air shifted in a blink.

Naomi didn’t even hesitate. She snatched up her steak knife, flicked her wrist, and the blade spun across the hall, slamming into the wood just beside his head. The handle quivered from the force. The man froze, eyes wide for a heartbeat before his shock broke into a laugh. “You missed!” he barked, and the lads around him laughed too, some slapping the table, some jeering.

But before the sound even died down, Sage’s hand moved. No wasted motion, no warning, just steel singing through the air. Her knife buried itself in the wood on the other side of his head, close enough that a lock of his hair drifted down from the impact. The laughter died sharp.

Sage leaned forward, her voice cool and sharp as glass. “She didn’t miss. She just didn’t want to spill your blood over this nice spread of food.” Her eyes pinned him where he sat, unblinking. “But keep talking, and I’ll show you just how deadly our fucking aim is.”

Silence slammed over the hall. The man’s jaw worked as he looked between the two blades boxing him in, then down the table at Naomi’s wicked grin and Sage’s cold stare. Finally, a slow, shaky chuckle slipped out of him, and he raised his hands. “Alright then. Point made.”

The room erupted, half the men laughing nervously, half slapping the table in approval. Pa didn’t so much as blink, but he caught my eye with a smirk and a nod, as if to say, “I like her.”

And beside me, Sage calmly picked up her fork and went back to her meal, like she hadn’t just promised to paint the walls with blood and made Pa, my father, the man made of stone, smile, something that was usually only reserved for Ma and the kids.

Chapter Comments

Tanya Gordon

4 days ago

family is a beautiful thing. she is making her own “little/big” family

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