His Private Hell - Chapter 35: Chapter 35

The door to the thirty-third floor opened before she touched it.
Eella froze.
She hadn’t pressed the key card. Hadn’t even reached for the brushed-steel handle. But there it was—opening like it had been waiting. Like someone, somewhere, wanted her inside.
She stepped through.
Silence greeted her like breath before a scream. The corridor ahead was slick with polish and dim with shadow. Not like the rest of Ally’s Inc. Not boardroom sleek. Not tech titan bright. Here, the air hung like fog in a graveyard. Rich wood panels. Recessed lighting. No buzzing fluorescents. No friendly signs. Just one long hallway, stretching to a single door.
And she already knew it was his.
Garrison Wolfe.
Her fingers brushed the folder she wasn’t supposed to carry. HR data, untouched. Something about new protocol ethics. That was her excuse. Her alibi. The flimsiest one she’d ever had.
This was the second time she’d been summoned to this floor. The first had shattered her perception. His lips. His touch. The way he’d made her feel like prey, and somehow… safe. Like danger had a heartbeat she could learn to live with.
But that was the thing about hell.
You never noticed you were burning until your skin was already gone.
She didn’t knock. She didn’t need to.
“Enter,” came his voice.
A single word, and the door cracked open like it belonged to him, body and soul.
She stepped inside.
The office was the same—obsidian and steel, heatless and elegant, like someone had trapped a thunderstorm in a glass box. But he was different.
He wasn’t behind the desk.
Garrison stood by the window, silhouetted in the bleak skyline, jacket discarded, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. His tie was loosened. His hair—usually precise—was rumpled like he’d raked his fingers through it in frustration. Or restraint.
“I didn’t use my badge,” she said, her voice too steady.
“I opened it for you.”
“Why?”
He turned. Slowly. Like he enjoyed the weight of her watching him.
“Because if I’d waited another day,” he said, voice low, “I might’ve ripped the whole floor apart just to see you again.”
Her breath caught. She didn’t want it to. Didn’t mean for it to. But damn him—he made her feel everything too fast.
This man was precision. Discipline. He ran an empire with silence and stares. But now?
Now he looked like the storm had won.
He stalked toward her—not a walk, not a glide. A deliberate, measured hunt.
She backed up a step.
“Careful,” he warned. “That’s not an escape route behind you.”
“I didn’t come here for this.”
“No,” he said. “You came because you’re curious. About me. About what’s on this floor. About what I’ll do when you stop pretending you don’t want me.”
She hated how right he was.
But there was something in his eyes tonight. Something she hadn’t seen before. Not just lust. Not just power. A crack in the armor. A scream behind his silence.
“You said this place had rules,” she murmured. “You said no one gets out clean.”
He stopped a breath away.
“And yet here you are. Still trying to play saint in the devil’s cathedral.”
She swallowed. “I’m not here to worship you.”
He smiled darkly. “No. But you’re here to bleed.”
Her knees buckled a little.
His hand cupped her jaw.
The touch was soft. Reverent. Cruel in its tenderness.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he whispered. “Hell isn’t punishment. It’s repetition. The same desire. The same mistakes. Over and over. Until the pain starts to feel like love.”
Her throat worked as he tilted her face up.
And then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a brand.
Hot. Heavy. Possessive.
Her file dropped to the floor. Forgotten.
She was drowning in him. His scent. His mouth. His dominance. And God, she didn’t want air. She wanted the burn.
He pressed her against the wall, one hand in her hair, the other on her hip, anchoring her like he already owned her soul.
“Tell me to stop,” he growled.
She didn’t.
“Say it,” he bit out.
She still didn’t.
“You don’t even know what I am, Eella.”
“I don’t care,” she breathed.
His eyes flared with something close to agony.
“You should.”
Then he kissed her again, harder.
But even in the grip of heat and fire and want, she saw it.
The flicker in his gaze.
The ghost behind his mask.
And she knew, then, that this wasn’t about lust. Not just.
This was about punishment.
His.
He wasn’t seducing her.
He was trying to drown himself.
When they pulled apart, their breath came in ragged waves. Her lips were swollen. His eyes were glassy.
She touched his chest—over his heart. “Why me?”
The question cracked him.
For a split second, his guard fell.
“Because you don’t flinch.”
And that terrified him.
He stepped back like her skin had scorched his hands.
“Go.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Before I do something we both regret. Before I show you how deep this hell goes.”
But she didn’t move.
Not yet.
Because now she saw it—truly saw it.
The loneliness in his stance. The weight of secrets on his spine.
And the door behind him.
The one even he never opened.
“What’s behind that door, Garrison?”
He went still.
The air dropped ten degrees.
“That’s not a door,” he said quietly.
“That’s a grave.”
She shivered.
“And one day,” he added, “you’ll wish you never asked.”
Then he turned away.
Dismissed her like a king to a peasant. But she knew better.
That wasn’t dismissal.
That was desperation.
Eella left the room with fire in her lungs and thunder in her bones.
And the truth twisted inside her.
She wasn’t falling in love with the man.
She was falling for the monster.