Page 46 of Beautiful Obsessions
And the man who sent them was obsessed with Antonella Cavalho.
The word didn’t sit right.
Obsessed.
I knew exactly what that meant.
Knew what it looked like when something got under your skin and refused to leave.When it rooted deep enough that everything else started to bend around it.I’d seen it in men before—watched it strip them down to something simpler, uglier.
I understood that kind of fixation better than I should.Understood what it was to look at a woman and feel your focus narrow until she was the only thing left in it.Until everything else blurred at the edges and ceased to matter.
I’d been fighting that exact thing since the moment I met her.And now I had to picture someone else looking at her the same way.
That some rich Spanish bastard had seen her—really seen her—and decided she was something he could claim.Something that belonged to him.
My jaw tightened hard enough to ache.
It did something to me.Something I didn’t like.Something I wasn’t interested in pulling apart or naming.
Because it wasn’t clean.It wasn’t reasonable.It was possessive in a way that had no right existing.
She wasn’t mine.
I had no claim.No history that justified it.No reason to feel anything beyond the job in front of me.
It didn’t matter.The anger was there anyway.Sharp.Territorial.Sitting just beneath the surface like it had always been there, waiting for a reason to show itself.And now it had one.
Machado thought he was circling her.Thought he had time.Thought he could reach into my world and take something while no one was looking.
I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down my face, trying—failing—to shake the pressure building behind my ribs.
He didn’t understand what he’d stepped into.Didn’t understand what it meant to put her in his sights.
Because obsession?I knew it.Lived it.And if he thought his version of it made him dangerous—he hadn’t seen mine yet.
I stoodat the safehouse window, one hand braced against the frame, the other locked around a mug gone cold.The street outside was dead quiet.
I watched the parked cars, the narrow lane.There was no movement where there should’ve been some.My reflection stared back at me in the glass—and behind it, hers.
I didn’t turn.I knew she was there.Awake.Watching me.
I could still feel last night under my skin.Her breath catching.Her mouth parting.The way she’d looked at me when she said I wasn’t as dangerous as I thought.
A lie.One I’d almost proved wrong.
I hadn’t almost kissed her.I would have.
There was nothing uncertain about it.The space between us had been gone.Her voice had dropped.My control had thinned to nothing.Another second and my hand would’ve been in her hair, my mouth on hers—consequences be damned.
The phone call cut through it.Sharp and perfectly timed.Like something had taken one look at the disaster we were headed for and stepped in before we could get there.
Another second—and it would’ve been a problem.A real one.But the call came, and just like that, it broke us apart before we could cross the line neither of us was pretending wasn’t there.
After that, everything cooled.
Words thinned.Distance crept back in.Not enough to kill it—but enough to stop us toppling over.
She’d folded into herself on the couch, legs tucked in, like she could ignore what had just happened.
