His Private Hell - Chapter 82: Chapter 82

The silence in Garrison’s penthouse wasn’t quiet—it roared. A low, thrumming tension vibrated through the space like a warning. Eella stood at the edge of the room, breath shallow, her body still buzzing from the last hour—Garrison’s mouth had been everywhere. His hands, rough and worshipful, had made her come apart on that marble kitchen island like a broken hymn.
But this… this stillness was worse.
He stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, shirtless, cigarette untouched between his fingers. The city glowed behind him, bleeding light through the glass like it was trying to get in and witness what no one else could see.
“Why did she scream your name like that?” Eella asked quietly, voice ragged.
Darcie.
The name still tasted like blood in her throat. She hadn’t meant to bring her up. Not now. Not when she could still feel Garrison’s mouth on the inside of her thigh. But the name sat between them, a ghost neither of them had laid to rest.
Garrison didn’t turn. “Because I didn’t let her leave.”
Eella’s breath hitched.
“She begged me,” he continued, the words cold and surgical. “Not to close the door. Not to make her into a monster like me. But I did. I locked it.”
“The 33rd floor.”
His head tilted slightly, but he still didn’t look at her. “She died with her nails clawing down that door.”
Eella’s heart nearly stopped.
“You want to know why I can’t stop touching you?” His voice dropped into something guttural. “Why I keep dragging you back into this hell with me? Because you wear her scent.”
She blinked. “What—”
“Not literally,” he snapped. “But her fire. Her defiance. The way you look at me like you see the man I was before I learned love is a loaded gun.”
He finally turned. And whatever had been simmering in his eyes erupted.
“I loved her,” he said, walking toward Eella with slow, dangerous steps. “But I chose you.”
He gripped her jaw, tilting her face up. “So don’t make me regret that.”
Her skin burned where he touched her. “Do you?”
“Not yet.”
His mouth crashed over hers with the force of everything he hadn’t said. And this time, it wasn’t desperation—it was possession.
He lifted her effortlessly, dragging her thighs around his waist as he carried her to the glass window. The city lights turned them into silhouettes—two shadows burning, breaking.
Her back hit the cold glass.
“Do you want to know how I ruined her?” he growled against her neck.
Eella trembled. “Yes.”
“Then beg.”
She whimpered as his hand slid beneath her. He touched her like he owned her—like her body was the last page of a book he had read a thousand times and still couldn’t get enough of.
“Garrison—”
“I told her I loved her the night I had her screaming into my pillow,” he whispered darkly. “Then I never said it again.”
He dragged his mouth down her collarbone, biting, tasting, branding. “Do you know what that does to a person, Eella? Being worshipped one moment and forgotten the next?”
She did.
Because she was already living it.
He thrust into her with punishing force, the kind that said this wasn’t about love. This was penance.
She arched against him, moaning, and he bit down on her shoulder.
“I made her believe she was everything. Then I buried her beneath my silence.”
“Don’t do that to me,” Eella gasped.
“Then don’t leave,” he snapped, slamming into her again.
Pleasure knotted inside her like a wire pulled taut. She clung to his shoulders, fingernails digging into flesh. Her body was on fire. His obsession coated her skin like oil—and she liked it.
She wanted to be his undoing.
He kissed her like it was the only language he spoke. And when she broke apart in his arms, the scream that ripped from her throat wasn’t just release—it was surrender.
He carried her to the bed after, laying her down like something fragile. His chest heaved. His eyes were wild.
“I’m not done,” he whispered.
“I don’t want you to be.”
A smile twisted his lips—dark, almost cruel. “Then we’re just getting started.”
—
The next morning brought no light.
Only smoke.
Eella woke alone. The sheets were cold, but his scent lingered. The space where he’d lain was wrinkled, marked, like her skin.
She sat up, ignoring the ache in her thighs. Her phone buzzed. Ten missed calls from Ronnie. A text.
“You need to get out. I think Darcie’s alive.”
Her blood iced.
She stared at the message like it was a hallucination. Her heart thundered.
No. She saw the tapes. She heard the screams.
But what if—
A knock shattered the silence.
She pulled on her robe and opened the door.
Astrid.
Her eyes were rimmed red, lips split with a cruel smirk. “You know what the difference is between you and Darcie?”
Eella stiffened.
“She believed Garrison’s love could save her. You’re just trying to survive it.”
Astrid pushed past her and dropped a file on the table. “Everything you never knew about the 33rd floor.”
Then she walked out without another word.
Eella stared at the file, hands shaking.
Inside—photos.
Surveillance footage. Emails.
And a photo of a woman with hair just like hers… locked behind glass.
The date?
Two weeks ago.
Darcie wasn’t dead.
She was imprisoned.
Garrison’s hand clamped around the back of Eella’s neck as he dragged her back into him, a gasp torn from her throat. There was no sweetness here. Only need. Only the burn of obsession ripping through every fiber of his control.
“You ran from me,” he growled into her mouth.
“You let me.”
“I never fucking let you.”
He slammed her against the marble pillar in the penthouse’s private lounge, a place no one was supposed to enter—not without being invited. But she was past the rules now. Past logic. She kissed him back like her sanity depended on it.
Because it did.
His fingers tore her blouse open. Buttons scattered like gunfire across the floor. “This—” he rasped, dragging the fabric off her shoulders, “—this is mine.”
“So take it.” Her voice was breathless. Bold. Reckless.
He froze.
Then his mouth was on her collarbone, her throat, his teeth grazing flesh like a predator scenting blood.
He didn’t make love. He took. Ravaged. Possessed. Every time she moaned, he growled. Every time she tried to take control, he slammed her back against the stone and made her feel just how out of her depth she really was.
But even in her submission, she had power.
Because he couldn’t stop.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he carried her down the hallway like she weighed nothing—like he’d done it a hundred times in his fantasies, in his obsessions. He slammed the bedroom door open with his shoulder, the sound echoing like thunder.
His lips left trails of fire down her stomach as he dropped her onto the sheets.
“I told myself I wouldn’t touch you again,” he said, voice frayed with guilt and lust. “But I’ve never been good at following the rules.”
He fell onto her like a storm breaking, devouring her until there was nothing left but heat, skin, and the dangerous thrum of the forbidden.
But just as the high began to crest—
The world tilted.
A loud, metallic knock.
Not from the door.
From inside the apartment.
Garrison jerked up, eyes narrowing. “Stay here.”
“Garrison—”
“Now.”
He pulled on his pants, not bothering with a shirt. The veins in his arms bulged as he moved, fury tightening his features as the knock echoed again.
He moved like a man ready to kill.
And when he yanked open the hidden panel behind the bookshelf, what he found there wasn’t a burglar.
It was a flash drive.
Taped to the wall.
A red ribbon wrapped around it.
And a note that made his blood run cold.
“I know what you did to Darcie on the 33rd floor.”
His world contracted.
Eella appeared behind him, half-wrapped in the sheet, eyes wide. “Garrison…?”
He turned slowly. The mask he wore every day slid back into place, but it cracked around the edges now. “Don’t ask me what that means.”
“But I am.”
He stepped forward.
She didn’t back down.
“Darcie,” she whispered. “You said she left.”
“She did.”
“You said it wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then why do you look like that note just gutted you?”
He didn’t answer. He reached up and caressed her cheek, voice a low, haunted whisper. “Because the dead don’t send messages.”
Her breath hitched. “Dead?”
“Darcie’s gone,” he said. “And no one knows it but me.”