Page 34 of Charmingly Obsessed
Somewhere in the kitchen, probably making more of that tea I don’t actually like but pretend to enjoy just to see her fuss. I don’t look around the room Serafima Pylypivna has generously offered me. I don’t want its unfamiliarity to distract me.
I should open that door. Go to her. I’ve always been prone to obsessions, to hyperfixations. It’s how I built my empire. But this? This isn’t business. This isn’t strategy. This is… something else entirely.
Something from a parallel universe. One where my dependency on her, my need for her, grows exponentially with every passing second. I fucking hate every moment I’m not near her, not touching her, not breathing her in.
And I’m not usually the type to hate anything.
There’s no fear anymore. Not really. Maybe it’s like they say about falling from a skyscraper – in those last few seconds before impact, the terror fades. Replaced by a strange, almost peaceful resignation. Because at least it’s finally going to be over.
Turns out, she’s too modest. Too shy. Too goddamn insecure about things that drive me absolutely fucking insane with desire. And that knowledge, that vulnerability… it torments me.
As if everything else – the three years of self-imposed exile, the constant ache of regret, the knowledge of what I did, what I am – wasn’t enough torture. Now, there’s this too.
This exquisite agony of wanting her so badly it feels like my bones are on fire, and knowing she’s holding back, terrified.
I’ve always wanted all of her. Every part. However, whenever. No conditions. No reservations. But she hesitates, she withdraws, she hides. And I… I just plummet deeper into my own personal abyss, the most destructive one yet, at a speed I’ve never experienced. Adrenaline floods my veins, hot and sharp, instead of blood. I’ll drive her mad. The way she’s driven me. The way I’ve driven myself. If only she’d finally, finally fucking believe me. Believe in me.
I lower my head, staring at the worn, black-streaked parquet floorboards.Yeah, Larrington. Good question. How the hell do I make sure this whole Royce gambit, this whole new life I’m trying to build, isn’t just another day I’ll regret for the rest of my miserable existence?
I’ve already had a day like that. One is more than enough.
I always knew she existed. My one. My counterpoint. My missing piece.
I just never once, in all my arrogant, self-assured imaginings, pictured that I’d be the one to ruin everything. In the very first goddamn minute.
Never imagined that of all people – me, Mykola Frez, the charmer, the closer, the man who gets along with everyone – I’d be the one to be so monumentally, unforgivably cruel. To her.
That day. September first. Three years ago. My team was supposed to introduce me to the new hire.I didn’t know we hired her to be a fucking marketing designer.Diana Bilova. Artist. My future. My undoing…
15
Chapter 15 That Day
Three Years Ago
The job title was straightforward enough: Manager, Art Collections.
My ever-expanding fund of canvases and sculptures, a tangible representation of wealth I barely registered, had grown unwieldy. It needed a dedicated eye, a curator with taste and business acumen. Diana Bilova. The name on the HR file.
I arrive at the office before anyone else. A first. A genuine, unheard-of anomaly. The pre-dawn quiet of the thirty-fourth floor, the city still a slumbering beast below.
I choose a seat off to the side in the conference room, deliberately avoiding the head of the table, the central throne of authority. Today, I want to observe. To assess.
I make a piss-poor boss when I’m distracted. And something tells me distraction is imminent.
Someone, probably Albina from HR, has already prepped the room. A carousel of images glows on the massive screen at the far end. Paintings.Ah, samples of her acquisition proposals.Smart. Proactive.
One in particular snags my attention. A bizarre, almost childlike landscape – a bubblegum-pink hill, an apple tree with impossibly round fruit, all trapped beneath an emerald-green sky. The inverted, unnatural color scheme stirs something… sentimental. A cheap trick of the heart, maybe, but effective. It’s… oddly compelling.
The door clicks open. A woman steps through. Slender. Dressed in something white and crisp. A cascade of light hair.
Diana Bilova.
And just like that, the world goes silent. Not a metaphorical silence. A literal, deafening, brain-wipingcrashof absolute quiet inside my head. As if someone, somewhere, flipped a cosmic off-switch.
Her.The word echoes, a single, resonant chime in the sudden void.Her.
She hesitates on the threshold, a flicker of uncertainty in her posture, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Then, her head lifts. Her eyes, light and unreadable from this distance, meet mine.
