His Private Hell - Chapter 120: Chapter 120

Eella didn’t feel the floor when she hit it.
The world was red.
Not crimson like blood, not blush like seduction—but red like something burning, collapsing, consuming itself. Her body trembled under the echo of what had just happened. What she had done. What he had done to her. What they’d become.
Garrison’s hands were still in her hair. Tangled. Twisted. Bruising. His breath was ragged against her throat, the scent of sin and war on his skin. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t speak.
He just stared.
And in his stare was the wreckage of everything they used to be.
“You didn’t scream,” he finally rasped.
“I was choking,” she said flatly.
He smirked. “So was I.”
Her slap was silent thunder. It cracked across his cheek, but Garrison didn’t even flinch. If anything, his lips twitched into something hungry—something that belonged to a man standing on the edge of an abyss, daring gravity to drag him in.
“I almost killed you,” he whispered, reverently.
“You’ve been trying to for years,” she whispered back, the admission tasting like broken glass.
There was a pause. A dangerous, slow pause. And then Garrison leaned forward, his lips brushing her temple with deceptive gentleness. “Let’s stop pretending we don’t like it.”
“No,” she breathed, heart hammering. “Let’s stop pretending we’ll survive it.”
He chuckled, low and unhinged. “You won’t.”
They were lying on the floor of the 44th suite—the room no one used. The room Lazarus had given her after the Choir’s first performance. The place reeked of silence, of secrets soaked into the wood, the walls, the velvet drapes. It had no soul. Neither did they.
“I saw Darcie,” Eella said quietly.
Garrison’s spine stiffened.
“On the 33rd floor,” she continued. “Or someone wearing her smile.”
His grip on her loosened for the first time, but the damage had already spread like ink beneath her skin. “You weren’t supposed to go there.”
“I didn’t mean to. The elevator glitched. It stopped there.” Her voice dropped. “She was humming.”
Garrison stared at her for a long, long moment. “She’s gone, Eella.”
“No,” she said, eyes wet but defiant. “She’s changed. She’s different. Her eyes didn’t look like hers anymore. Like someone else was puppeteering behind them.”
He stood. Not quickly, not slowly—just deliberately. The air around him felt colder, heavier.
“You don’t understand what happened with her,” he said.
“Then tell me.”
He didn’t. Not with words. But he did walk to the glass bar in the corner, pour himself something black as midnight, and down it like water.
Eella sat up, clutching the torn fabric of her dress to her chest.
“She kissed me,” she added, and something shattered behind his eyes.
“Don’t,” he warned.
“She whispered something in my ear.”
“I said don’t.”
“She said: ‘He broke me open, and something else crawled in.’” Eella stood too, voice shaking now. “What the fuck does that mean, Garrison?”
He turned, stalking toward her with the kind of rage that didn’t yell or scream—it breathed. It pulsed. It kissed you with knives.
“I told you she’s gone,” he hissed. “Because I put her there.”
The world went silent. Then Eella’s heart did something terrifying. It stopped.
“You… killed her?” she asked, disbelieving.
“No.” His smile was cruel. “I left her alive enough to remember me. That’s worse.”
She couldn’t move. She didn’t know how.
“I had to,” he said. “Darcie was never innocent. She opened a door she should’ve left shut. When Lazarus found her, she was already—”
“Stop lying to me.”
He walked to her again, and this time, when he grabbed her, it wasn’t out of lust or fury—it was desperation.
“She wasn’t supposed to survive the Ritual,” he whispered.
Eella’s blood went cold.
“What Ritual?”
“The Choir has more than songs, Eella,” he said, mouth against her ear. “They feed Lazarus. They are Lazarus.”
“You’re talking in riddles—”
He kissed her.
Hard.
Like he needed to shut her up before the truth swallowed both of them.
But she bit him. She bit him hard enough to draw blood. He pulled back, lips stained, eyes shining with something more than pain.
“You’re not like her,” he said, voice fraying. “You can’t be like her.”
“I already am.”
The moment cracked like lightning. He slammed her against the wall, body pinning hers like a vice. Her legs wrapped around him, instinct or insanity—she didn’t know anymore.
“You think this is love?” she spat. “You think what you’re doing to me is devotion?”
“I think it’s war,” he whispered.
And then he fucked her like it.
No rhythm. No mercy. Just ruin. The way he moved inside her felt like he was trying to scrape his name into her bones, erase anything that didn’t belong to him.
“Say it,” he growled. “Say you’re mine.”
“I’m not yours,” she gasped, arching into him. “You ruined me.”
“Exactly,” he groaned. “No one else will want what I’ve made of you.”
And it was true.
She didn’t even want herself anymore.
They came like two people dying. Gasping. Writhing. Fighting to stay human.
And then it was over.
Garrison pulled away and sank to the ground beside her. “We can’t do this again.”
“No,” she agreed.
But they would.
They always would.
⸻
Later that night, in the surveillance room above the east tower, Lazarus watched the tape on loop.
The kiss.
The slap.
The blood.
The whisper about Darcie.
He leaned back in his throne-like chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin.
“Eella,” he murmured. “You’ve finally started to rot.”
Behind him, a figure stepped into the darkness. Barefoot. Eyes glowing faintly.
“You said she wouldn’t last,” the woman said.
“She won’t.”
“She’s stronger than Darcie.”
“She loved harder than Darcie,” Lazarus corrected. “But that’s what will break her.”
The figure moved closer. Hair long and wet. Lips curved in something monstrous.
“She’s mine now.”
“Not yet, Darcie,” Lazarus said without looking at her. “Not until Garrison lets her go completely.”
Darcie smiled.
“He’s already started.”