His Private Hell - Chapter 51: Chapter 51

Blackout!
The world outside Ally’s Inc was sleepwalking through nightfall—dripping in rain and muted headlights. But inside the penthouse suite, the lights cut off in an instant. Every surface turned to shadow. The power outage wasn’t citywide. It was personal. Targeted. The kind of silent threat that said I see you, in the language of darkness.
Eella’s breath hitched as she froze on the edge of the leather couch, heart pounding, nerves raw. The walls, once sterile in their luxury, now pulsed with the memory of what had happened on this floor before—what Darcie had lived through. Or not lived through.
Garrison stood behind her, motionless. He didn’t flinch at the blackout. Didn’t curse. Didn’t move.
He was used to it.
That was worse than panic.
“I paid them to keep this floor immune to outages,” he said quietly, voice like a slow blade. “If the power’s down, it’s because someone wanted it down.”
“Who?” Her voice trembled in a way she hated.
He walked forward, his hand grazing the small of her back—grounding her, yet coiled with the unspoken. “Get dressed. We’re not alone.”
She didn’t ask how he knew. She just obeyed.
She was starting to learn the rules of .
⸻
Five minutes later, they were in the emergency stairwell. Garrison’s phone light cut through the gloom, illuminating blood-slick memories painted on concrete walls that didn’t belong to them—but maybe belonged to Darcie. Eella didn’t dare ask. She didn’t need to. The silence was already screaming.
“What happened on this floor?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer.
He pressed a code into a hidden wall panel near the service elevator. The doors opened without a sound, revealing a sleek, private chamber built like a bunker.
“Get in.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I need to see who did this.”
“Garrison—”
He turned, mouth crashing to hers like a man who might not come back. “Don’t open this door unless I tell you. No matter what you hear. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, breathless.
And then he was gone.
⸻
Eella waited in that steel coffin of silence.
The walls were soundproofed. She couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t feel anything. Just her own heartbeat and the echoes of everything she’d done to bring herself here.
She wanted to believe she was smart. Strategic. That sleeping with the boss had been a necessary casualty of obsession—not desperation.
But her obsession had teeth now.
And it wasn’t just about Garrison anymore.
Something had happened on this floor. Something even he hadn’t come back from.
She ran her fingers along the inside wall. Found the faint groove of a second panel. Pressed. It popped.
Inside was a thin folder labeled: DARCIE VALE.
Eella’s pulse quickened.
She opened it.
Photos. Pages of intake reports. Audio transcripts. All dated within the three months leading to Darcie’s disappearance.
And a note scribbled in the margin: She opened the door. She saw what she shouldn’t have seen.
The door.
The one Garrison had warned her about.
Eella swallowed hard, staring at the photos. Darcie, bruised. Darcie, smiling at some kind of gala with Garrison beside her. Darcie, in the same penthouse Eella had been sleeping in.
And then: Darcie’s last known location—right outside the 33rd floor.
And one more line, scrawled hastily on the bottom page.
There’s no hell worse than the one he built for himself.
The lights flickered on.
The bunker hummed.
And Garrison’s voice came through the intercom, gravel-slick.
“Open the door. It’s over.”
⸻
She stepped out.
The hallway was immaculate again. But Garrison stood there with his knuckles bloodied, breathing heavy, his suit rumpled in a way she’d never seen before.
“Who was it?” she asked.
“A warning,” he said. “Someone trying to remind me that hell always circles back.”
“Darcie?”
His jaw clenched. “Don’t say her name.”
“She was on this floor.”
“She died on this floor,” he said, each word like fire. “And I was the one who left the door open.”
The ache behind his voice wasn’t just guilt. It was punishment. Ongoing. Consuming.
She stepped closer, placing a hand on his chest. “I’m not her.”
“I know,” he said, tracing her jaw with his blood-slicked thumb. “You’re worse. Because I care now.”
His kiss wasn’t gentle this time.
It was possession under siege.
He yanked her against the wall of the hallway, uncaring of surveillance. His mouth moved with vengeance across her neck, collarbone, breasts—marking her like territory. She moaned against him, dizzy with the spiral of him unraveling, thread by furious thread.
“You want to live in my hell?” he growled.
“Yes,” she panted.
“Then scream for it.”
He dropped to his knees right there, ripping her skirt apart with one hand, and dragging his mouth between her thighs like salvation was buried in her heat. He didn’t care about decorum. About location. About sanity.
He was descending.
And she was his tether.
Eella braced herself against the wall, gasping, crying out, as his tongue claimed her with skilled cruelty. Circling, flicking, consuming. She writhed, nearly collapsing from the force of the orgasm he pulled from her with violent grace.
When he rose again, his mouth was slick with her.
“I won’t survive you,” he whispered, voice wrecked.
“Then don’t,” she whispered back.
He growled, spinning her around, unzipping his slacks and plunging into her in one brutal thrust. Her scream echoed in the corridor—filthy and raw and perfect.
He fisted her hair, lips dragging over her shoulder as he fucked her like she was both punishment and prize.
“I should’ve stopped this the night we met,” he groaned.
“But you didn’t,” she cried, body shaking with every thrust.
“No,” he rasped. “Because your hell feels like home.”
He slammed into her once more, sending them both over the edge—grunting her name like a curse, her cry shattering through the silence like glass.
And then there was only breath.
Only sweat.
Only the sound of two people bleeding in ways no one else could see.
⸻
Later, in the silence of his penthouse bed, she asked the question she hadn’t dared before.
“What did she see?”
Garrison stared at the ceiling, eyes empty. “Me. She saw me.”
“She loved you?”
“She thought she did.”
“And you—”
“I never gave her what she wanted. But I gave her too much to survive.”
Eella turned her body into his, curling against his chest. “You don’t scare me.”
“You should.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve already planned ten different ways to keep you from leaving.”
Her breath caught. “What kind of ways?”
He didn’t smile. “None that end well for either of us.”
She didn’t sleep that night.
And not because of the sex.
Because something had changed.
Something was unraveling.
And now the door wasn’t just open.
It was wide.
⸻
In the weeks that followed, Garrison’s obsession doubled. He had her transferred permanently to the 33rd floor. No more shared departments. No more morning meetings with other execs. No more witnesses.
He watched her like he was afraid she’d disappear. Touched her like a man waiting for her to turn into a ghost.
And Eella—Eella leaned into it.
She wanted to know every inch of his damage.
Wanted to taste every twisted corner of his grief.
But the deeper she sank, the more she realized—this wasn’t about love.
It was about control.
Possession.
Redemption, in its most broken form.
One night, she woke up with his hand wrapped around her throat, holding her still even in sleep. His lips were moving in a dream she couldn’t hear. His body was trembling.
“Garrison—” she whispered, gently shaking him.
He snapped awake, eyes wild.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
He pulled away like he couldn’t bear the weight of himself.
“I dreamed you left me,” he said quietly. “Like she did.”
“She died, Garrison. She didn’t leave you.”
“She looked me in the eyes before she jumped. That was her leaving.”
Eella froze.
“I thought it was an accident,” she whispered.
He laughed hollowly. “There are no accidents in hell.”
⸻
The next morning, she found a small box on her desk.
Inside was a single key.
No note.
No explanation.
But she knew what it opened.
The locked door.
The one she wasn’t supposed to touch.
She stared at it, heart slamming.
What was he saying?
That he trusted her?
That she was ready?
Or that she was next?