All Chapters of His velvet obsession : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

81 Chapters

Chapter 11

Astrid povI didn't touch the chocolate pastry. The smell of it, buttery and sweet, felt like a bribe, and I wasn’t for sale. I pushed the plate back toward the center of the table with the tip of my finger, the porcelain scraping against the marble like a fingernail on a chalkboard."I'm not hungry, Xavier."He didn't move. He just sat there, his silhouette framed by the jagged peaks of the mountains outside the glass. The sunlight didn't make him look warmer; it just highlighted the sharpness of his jaw and the cold, calculated stillness in his eyes. He looked like something carved from the same granite as the cliffside."You were always a terrible liar," he said, his voice dropping an octave. The humor from a moment ago hadn't just evaporated; it had been a mask he’d decided to drop because it wasn't working. "Your stomach growled the moment you walked through the door. Eat. I don't have the patience for a hunger strike today.""Then let me go," I whispered. The silence of

Chapter 12 - The ghost of the boy I knew

Astrid povI needed a weapon. Not a gun—I wouldn’t even know how to flick the safety—but something. A tool. A way to prove that this mountain hadn’t swallowed my soul yet.I stood before the rows of books, my eyes blurred with tears I refused to let fall. He thought he knew me because he bought me Powerless. He thought he owned my mind because he’d tracked my reading logs in London.I reached out and grabbed a heavy, leather-bound encyclopedia from the bottom shelf. It was thick, dense, and felt like a brick in my hands. I sat on the floor, hidden behind the velvet swing chair, and began to systematically pull books from the lower recessed shelf.He’s watching, my mind screamed. He’s in the room next door, behind that wall, watching the pixels move on his screen.I tried to act natural, flipping pages as if I were looking for a quote, but my fingers were searching the wood of the shelf. I felt a snag. A tiny, jagged edge where the walnut paneling met the floor. I dug my nail into i

Chapter 13

Astrid pov I didn't move. I couldn't. The screwdriver was a heavy, cold weight against my palm, hidden in the folds of my lavender sweater. I stared at the dark smudge on Xavier’s forehead—it was blood, I was sure of it now. It stood out against his pale skin like a brand."I said move!" he roared, and the sheer volume of it made the crystal glasses on the island vibrate.He didn't wait for my legs to find their strength. He lunged forward, his hand snapping around my wrist like a steel shackle. He dragged me out of the kitchen and into the dark throat of the hallway. The house felt different now. The warm, amber lights had been replaced by a strobing, rhythmic crimson that turned the walnut walls into something that looked like raw meat."Who is it?" I gasped, struggling to keep pace with his long, predatory strides. "Is it Viktor?""Viktor is a scavenger," Xavier spat, not looking back. "This is worse. This is the rot our father invited into the house. They aren't h

Chapter 14 - she's a debt.

Xavier's pov The metallic tang of blood in my mouth was the only thing keeping me grounded. Every breath felt like a serrated blade in my chest broken ribs, definitely but the pain was secondary. It was a distraction. A static hum in the background of a much louder symphony: the sound of boots on the concrete above.I leaned my head against the cold, damp wall of the sub-corridor. My vision swam, the red strobe lights of the alarm system turning the world into a stuttering nightmare. I had underestimated them. Not their strength—I knew their numbers—but their desperation. They weren't just here to kidnap her; they were here to burn the mountain down with us inside it.I checked the magazine of my sidearm. Three rounds. Three. A pathetic number for a man who claimed to be a king.I closed my eyes for a second, just one, letting the darkness of the mountain take me. I saw her at seven years old, wearing a dress that was too big for her, hiding behind

Chapter 15- BRIDE?

Astrid povThe cold air of the ventilation shaft bit into my skin, but it was nothing compared to the ice in my blood. I had crawled until my knees were raw, the jagged edges of the metal ducts scraping against my shoulders. I had left the lavender sweater behind it was too bright, too easy to spot in the dark and now I was just a ghost in a thin undershirt, moving through the veins of Xavier's fortress. I reached a grate that overlooked the library. I froze. Below me, the world was breaking. From my height, the library didn't look like a sanctuary anymore. It looked like a crime scene. Two men were tossing books my books off the shelves. Leather covers hit the floor with heavy, sickening thuds. They weren't looking for me; they were looking for whatever secrets Xavier had buried behind the mahogany. The man with the scarred face—the one from the screen—was pacing. His boots clicked on the marble, a slow, predatory rhythm. The air up here was thick

Chapter 16

Astrid pov I didn't give him the chance to see me coming. I didn't scream, and I didn't hesitate. As he turned his head to shout an order to the men in the hallway, I drove the jagged, broken end of the screwdriver into the meat of his thigh. He let out a sound that wasn't human a strangled, wet grunt of pure shock. His grip on my hair vanished as he stumbled back, his hands instinctively flying to the wound. "You little—!" I didn't wait for the insult. I bolted. My bare feet slapped against the cold marble, the sound echoing like frantic heartbeats. I wasn't running for the door; the hallway was a death trap filled with his men. I was running for the only thing that offered a chance of escape, however terrifying it was. The balcony. I burst through the library’s glass doors, the mountain air hitting me like a physical blow. It was freezing, sharp enough to burn my throat, but it tasted like life. The storm had passed, leaving behind a moonlit world of j

Chapter 17- she's breathing.

Xavier POVThe moment the security feeds cut to the library's exterior, my heart didn't just stop—it shattered.Watching Astrid climb over that railing was like watching the only light in my world move toward an eclipse. She looked so small against the jagged, indifferent granite of the mountain .She was just the girl who used to hide in the library, and I was the man who had built her a cage so tall she thought jumping was the only way to find air.I moved with a desperation that bypassed the pain of my broken ribs. Every breath was a roar of agony, but I didn't care. I threw myself into the maintenance crawlspace, my hands clawing at the metal, until I reached the hatch.When I pushed the hatch open, the wind tried to tear my eyes out. And then I saw her.She was dangling by her fingertips, her legs swinging over four thousand feet of nothingness. Her face was pale, stripped of everything but pure, raw terror. In that second, the power dynamic I had spent years cultivatin

Chapter 18- careful little bird.

Xaviers povThe silence of the bunker was a living thing, heavy and suffocating. Every breath I took felt like a betrayal to the quiet, a jagged serration against the stillness she had finally found in sleep. I watched her—the rise and fall of her shoulders under that rough wool blanket—and felt a sickening sense of possession that I couldn't distinguish from terror.The security monitors to my left flickered. Gray-scale ghosts moved through the library three floors above. They were systematic, tearing the spines off the books I’d meticulously curated for her, looking for safes that didn't exist and secrets I carried in my head. They were vultures picking at a carcass, but as long as that steel door held, they were picking at the wrong body.My phone vibrated against my thigh—a low, rhythmic pulse. I pulled it out, the screen’s glare biting into my eyes.Unknown: The girl for the debt, Xavier. We know she’s in the mountain. Every minute you wait is a minute the interest grows.I de

Chapter 19- The traitor

Xavier's POVThe steel door of the bunker groaned as I disengaged the manual deadbolts. I shouldn’t have had to do it. This mountain was a fortress of my own design—triple-redundant encryption, biometric locks that required my specific pulse, and sensors sensitive enough to detect a hawk landing on the roof.No one "breaks" into my home. They are let in.The realization sat in my stomach like a cold stone. I had a traitor. Someone I had trusted with my life—and more importantly, with hers.I stepped out into the dim sub-level corridor, my hand tight on the grip of my sidearm. Astrid was behind me, her presence a soft, frantic heat at my back. I could hear the catch in her breath, the way her bare feet scuffed against the concrete."Stay close," I muttered, not looking back. I didn't need to. I could feel her.We reached the security hub just outside the main elevator. The emergency lights were pulsing a rhythmic, bleeding red. Standing by the terminal was Alex. He had been with me

Chapter 20- Hate me all you want.

Astrid PovThe blood on the floor was still steaming.I stared at the spot where Alex had been—where a man I had barely known for days had just been unmade by the person I was supposed to trust. My heart wasn't just racing; it was slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to break its own wings.Xavier stood a few feet away, his chest heaving, his knuckles slick and dark. He looked less like my brother and more like some ancient, vengeful god of the mountain. I hate you, I thought, the words a silent scream in my head. I hate that I need you. I hate that you’re the only thing standing between me and whatever is outside that door. I looked down at the tactical jacket he’d draped over me. It was too big, smelling of his expensive cologne and the sharp, metallic tang of the hallway. I felt like I was wearing his skin. It was suffocating, but as the sirens wailed and the mountain groaned under the weight of the intruders, I pulled it tighter.I wasn

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