His Private Hell - Chapter 57: Chapter 57

Fire Beneath The Floor
The 33rd floor was still off-limits.
Still sealed behind that biometric lock and wrapped in the kind of silence that screamed. Eella didn’t ask why. She didn’t have to. Garrison’s mood had curdled since the night they’d fought like animals and kissed like liars. The sex had been explosive. The aftermath had been worse.
He kept her close—his hand on her thigh during meetings, his mouth in her hair as he passed behind her chair—but every time she asked about Darcie, his silence carved a hollow in her bones.
That morning, his eyes had been storm-dark as he dragged her into his office and fucked her against the window like he needed to feel her shatter. But she saw it. The moment after, when he pulled away and stared out at the skyline with his fists clenched and his demons louder than her gasps.
Now, she stood alone in his penthouse, bare except for one of his button-down shirts. She padded across the dark hardwood floors, her breath soft as the ghosts that lived between the walls.
Her eyes landed on his desk. On the tablet left open. A message glowed.
Security breach. Floor 33. Motion detected.
Access override authorized: D. Hart.
Her blood chilled. D. Hart.
Darcie.
No. It couldn’t be—
She moved before logic caught up, throwing on her coat, ignoring the warning her own reflection screamed at her from the hallway mirror. She took the elevator. The 33rd floor didn’t appear on the panel. But the keycard in Garrison’s discarded jacket worked.
The elevator hummed.
Then the doors slid open.
The air hit her first. Cold. Sterile. Smelling faintly of antiseptic and secrets.
The hallway was long, all glass and shadow. And silent.
She stepped out.
To her right, a room with steel doors stood half-open.
Inside—
A bed.
Straps.
Monitors.
Cameras.
It looked like a psych ward had mated with a luxury dungeon.
But the walls—Eella choked. The walls were covered in photographs. Her. Darcie. Garrison. Overlapping. Intertwined. Cut and pieced and layered like a shrine—or a crime scene.
She stumbled back.
Footsteps.
“No one told you to come here.”
The voice was not Garrison’s.
It was female.
Soft.
Eerily familiar.
Eella turned.
And came face-to-face with her own mirror.
No. Not a mirror. A woman.
Dark hair. Pale eyes. Fragile beauty.
Darcie Hart.
Alive.
“Surprised?” Darcie smiled, tilting her head like a doll come to life. “Men always forget to delete the ghosts.”
Eella couldn’t move. “You’re dead.”
“Am I?” Darcie twirled, bare feet whispering over the cold floor. “Garrison said I was dead, didn’t he? Did he weep for me in his sleep? Moan my name when he buried himself in your thighs?”
“You need help.”
Darcie laughed, and it was the sound of glass breaking. “I had help. His name was Garrison Wolfe. My therapist. My monster. My everything.”
Eella shook her head. “You’re lying.”
“I’m living. Because he locked me away when I stopped behaving.”
There was a gleam in Darcie’s eyes—manic, tragic. Terrifying.
“He thought I was broken.” She stepped closer. “So he rebuilt me. Here. In this place. On that bed. Again and again. And when I became inconvenient—when I loved too hard, bled too much—he said I was dead and started over with a new toy.”
“You’re insane.”
Darcie smiled sweetly. “And you’re next.”
Eella moved—fast, desperate—but Darcie was faster.
She lunged.
The two women hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and hair and breathless screams. Eella’s elbow connected with Darcie’s rib. Darcie hissed, clawed at her face, and the door slammed open—
“Enough.”
Garrison’s voice didn’t roar. It whispered.
But it froze them both.
Eella scrambled up, blood on her lip.
Darcie laughed, curling like a cat at Garrison’s feet.
“She saw,” she whispered. “You forgot to hide the horror show this time.”
Garrison’s face was carved from stone.
He bent down. Picked Darcie up. She clung to him like a lover, arms around his neck, head against his chest.
“I told you,” she murmured. “She’s not ready.”
He looked at Eella. And in his eyes—no guilt. No fear.
Only resignation.
“I wasn’t trying to protect you,” he said. “I was trying to keep you.”
“Is that her?” Darcie’s lips grazed his neck. “The one who makes you beg in your sleep?”
“Don’t,” Eella whispered. “Don’t play this game with me.”
“It was never a game.” Garrison’s voice was sandpaper. “But this… this was always part of the hell.”
Eella backed toward the hallway. “You locked her here.”
“I saved her.”
“You destroyed her.”
His eyes didn’t flinch.
“No, Eella. You want to see destruction?” He set Darcie down gently. “Then look at what you’ve done to me.”
He crossed the room in three strides, and suddenly his hands were in her hair, his mouth crashing over hers, violent and punishing and begging. Her fists pounded his chest, but her mouth opened. Her body betrayed her.
He broke the kiss.
“She was the first,” he said low. “You’re the last.”
The elevator dinged.
Security.
Darcie smiled.
“I called them.”
Everything blurred.
She was pulled back, hands gripping her arms, someone shouting, her name echoing through the steel corridors like the punchline to a joke she didn’t understand anymore.
And Garrison—he just stood there.
Watching.
Not stopping them.
Not saving her.
As the doors closed on the 33rd floor, on him, on the girl who wasn’t supposed to be breathing—Eella realized something.
Hell wasn’t beneath them.
Hell had been built for her.
From the ground up.