His Private Hell - Chapter 64: Chapter 64

Eella couldn’t breathe.
She stood at the threshold of the private gallery Garrison had forbidden her from ever entering. Her hand was still on the antique doorknob, cool brass against her trembling skin, but her eyes were glued to the canvas in front of her—the one that changed everything.
Darcie.
Naked.
Painted in oils, sprawled across the canvas like some divine sacrifice. Her body tangled in ropes, smeared in crimson and gold. The colors bled, like pain frozen in time, her expression one of ecstasy and terror. And beneath the signature at the bottom—an ornate black “G”—was a date.
Three months before Darcie disappeared.
Behind her, Garrison was silent. She hadn’t heard him approach. But his presence was a storm across her skin—heat and pressure and the unmistakable edge of danger. She felt it before he spoke.
“I told you never to come in here.”
His voice was death.
Eella turned slowly. Her heart thudded in her chest like it wanted out. But she didn’t move. She didn’t run. She just stared up at him—at the man who had fucked her into madness, whispered poetry and ruin into her ear, made her believe in something broken and beautiful—and now stood like a monster unmasked.
“What happened to her?” Her voice was hoarse. “Darcie.”
Garrison’s eyes didn’t flinch. He was dressed in charcoal, black-on-black. A thread of red satin peeked from the inside of his suit jacket, matching the exact shade smeared across the woman’s thighs in the painting.
“I told you she left.”
“You lied.”
He closed the distance in three steps.
The air snapped tight.
She thought he’d raise his voice. Thought he’d lash out. But instead, his hands caught her face with a cruel kind of reverence—like he wanted to tear her apart but still couldn’t stop worshiping her.
“Careful,” he whispered, “how deep you dig, Eella. You might not survive what you find.”
“I’m already in too deep,” she said, voice shaking. “You put me there.”
His mouth descended before she could breathe.
Not a kiss. A punishment.
He slammed her against the wall, mouth devouring hers, hand tangling in her hair so hard she cried out. But she didn’t push him away. She wanted it. Needed it. Because the truth was a knife and he was the only one who could make her bleed in the right places.
Her blouse tore at the shoulder, buttons scattering. Garrison shoved his thigh between her legs, lifting her, grinding her against him as if he could erase the memory of what she saw. His mouth moved to her throat, biting, licking, sinking.
“You think I’m the monster?” he hissed. “You haven’t even seen the beginning.”
“Then show me,” she gasped.
And he did.
He dropped to his knees like she was god and goddess and sin in one. Yanked her skirt up, ripped her lace panties down her thighs with one brutal tug. Her heel scratched against his back as he pinned her leg over his shoulder.
One lick. One sinful, deep, possessive stroke of his tongue—and she almost screamed.
He didn’t pause. Didn’t blink. He worshiped her with the same dark hunger she saw in the painting. Every movement was possession. Obsession. Damnation. She fisted his hair, begged his name, her body arching into his mouth like a prayer. And when she shattered—again and again—he didn’t stop until she was gasping, boneless, shaking against the gallery wall.
Then he stood, his eyes wild.
“You were never supposed to get this far,” he said.
“What did she do?” Eella rasped. “What did Darcie do?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he lifted her. Carried her straight into the elevator—button already pressed to the 33rd floor. The forbidden floor.
The ride was silent but electric. Eella’s heart thundered. Her limbs weak. Her body still recovering from the storm he’d unleashed between her thighs.
The doors slid open.
The hallway was nothing like the others. No sterile white. No art. No light except the soft flicker of low amber sconces along the walls. Garrison walked her past thick glass doors into a room that shouldn’t exist.
Leather cuffs hung from steel beams.
An entire wall of ropes. Masks. Implements she didn’t have names for.
The center of the room held a four-poster bed—obsidian wood, scarlet velvet, chains.
Garrison set her down on her feet and locked the door behind them.
“I told her no,” he said quietly. “And she didn’t listen.”
Eella’s pulse stopped. “She came here.”
He nodded. His back to her.
“She wanted what I never promised her. Thought sex meant forever. Thought pain was love. When I pulled back… she tried to force my hand.”
“What did you do to her?”
He turned. Slowly.
“I left her here. One night. I told her it was over. She disappeared after that. No body. No note. Just… gone.”
“And you never reported it?”
He stepped forward, until his breath touched her skin.
“You think I killed her?”
She swallowed.
“I don’t know what to think.”
His hand slid along her jaw. “But you’re still here.”
“Maybe I’m as fucked up as you are.”
Garrison’s expression twisted into something savage. His mouth crashed into hers again, pulling her into a kiss that ripped the air from her lungs. She clawed at his shirt, tore it open, her nails scraping across his chest. He grabbed her wrists, shoved her to the bed.
He cuffed her.
One wrist. Then the other.
She arched beneath him as he undressed her completely—slow, brutal, reverent. Her body burned. Her mind swam. When he pushed into her, there was no gentleness, only raw, brutal need. She cried out, but it wasn’t pain—it was salvation.
And when he bent to whisper in her ear, she knew this wasn’t just sex.
“This is my hell,” he said. “And now you’re a part of it.”
⸻
Eella lay there afterward, chest rising and falling. The cuffs still around her wrists. Her body marked by his touch—bruises, bites, sweat-soaked skin.
He sat at the edge of the bed, naked, staring at the floor.
“What now?” she asked.
Garrison didn’t look at her. “I didn’t kill her, Eella. But I let her go, knowing she was broken.”
“Was she in love with you?”
He nodded once.
“And you?”
His voice broke. “I can’t love. I destroy everything I touch.”
Eella sat up. Her wrists red. Her voice soft. “Then let me be the first thing that survives you.”
He looked at her then. Really looked. And for the first time, his eyes weren’t fire—they were drowning.
A knock pounded on the elevator door.
Both froze.
Garrison moved first—grabbing his slacks, yanking them on. Eella reached for a robe from the bedpost.
When he opened the door, Astrid stood there.
Her hair soaked from the rain. Her eyes rimmed in mascara and fury.
“You need to come downstairs,” she snapped. “Now.”
“Why?” he asked, voice like a loaded gun.
Astrid didn’t blink.
“Because Darcie just walked into Ally’s Inc. Alive.”