Semua Bab OWING THE DEVIL: Bab 11 - Bab 20

GIDEON VALEThe den was always quieter during the day.Not silent, Just… restrained.Like a beast that knew how to sit still when it needed to.I stood at the far end of the corridor, half-shadowed, watching.Blossom’s voice carried first. Bright and chirpy. It didn’t belong here, and yet it threaded through the walls like it had always existed inside them.Then her.Matilda.She walked beside Blossom, slower. Not hesitant-she wasn’t the type-but observant. Her eyes moved constantly, taking things in, dissecting, refusing to look overwhelmed even when she should have been.Most people shrank the first time they stepped past the walls.She didn’t.She absorbed.That was worse.My jaw tightened slightly.“Careful,” Ashton’s voice slid in beside me. “You’re staring.”“I’m observing.”He snorted softly, like I’d just told a joke I didn’t realize I made.“Right. Observing,” he echoed. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”I didn’t look at him.“She’s new,” I said flatly. “I need to know how

MATILDA’S POVThe building didn’t look like the kind of place that ruined people.That was my first mistake.Glass. Steel. Clean lines that caught the sunlight and threw it back like something expensive and untouchable. Everything about Gideon Vale Automobiles whispered control. Not chaos. Not danger.Control.The kind that didn’t need to raise its voice.The car slowed as we approached the entrance, and before it even fully stopped, the doors were already opening.Not automatic.People.Waiting.Of course.I didn’t move immediately when the car door opened for me. I don’t know why. Maybe some part of me thought if I delayed long enough, I wouldn’t have to step into whatever this was.Gideon stepped out first.No hesitation. No pause.The same way he did everything.And just like that, the air shifted.It was subtle, but I felt it.Heads turning. Conversations lowering. Movements sharpening.No one greeted him loudly. No one rushed him.But everyone noticed.That was somehow worse.I

MATILDA’S POVThe hum of the city was a distant buzz beneath the sharp stillness of his office. It was familiar, and yet, it was different this time—like déjà vu wearing a new face. I stood still, my eyes tracing the same floor-to-ceiling windows that I once thought were a luxury. Now, they felt like a cage—an invisible wall separating me from the ground below.I leaned against the glass railing, letting the skyline blur until it felt like I could fall if I leaned just a bit too far. But I didn’t fall. I couldn’t. Not when my heartbeat was still pounding with the echo of Gideon’s stillness behind me.When I turned, he was already sitting at his desk, his fingers steepled, gaze heavy. He wasn’t rushing me this time. He wasn’t hovering. He was just waiting for me to ask, or maybe—waiting to see if I would break first.I couldn’t stand it anymore.“What is your plan with me?” I asked, the words sharp as glass. “It feels like I’m just a puppet in your wild game—like I’m supposed to sell c

GIDEON VALEI can’t get her out of my mind. She’s turning my carefully built world upside down and it’s fucking annoying. I’m slipping up. I don’t ever slip up. I couldn’t afford it.The thought doesn’t come once. It loops. It presses. It lingers like something unfinished, something scratching at the inside of my skull, refusing to be ignored no matter how many times I try to file it away under irrelevant.Matilda Monroe.Even her name feels like disruption. Too sharp. Too alive. It doesn’t sit quietly the way everything else in my life does. It doesn’t obey structure. It doesn’t fit.I stare at my phone longer than necessary, thumb hovering just above the screen, already knowing what I’m about to do before I actually do it. This is not hesitation. I don’t hesitate. This is calculation. This is correction.Distance is necessary.Control is necessary.She is neither.Don’t come in today.I type it out. Simple. Direct. No room for interpretation. No room for her to twist it into somethi

GIDEON VALEThe door closed behind me with a quiet finality that most people would have mistaken for calm.It wasn’t.The room was soundproof. Clean. Deliberate. Built for moments exactly like this, where noise didn’t need to escape for damage to be done. The man stumbled forward the second my men let go of him, catching himself on shaking hands before turning back, eyes wide, breath uneven, panic already setting in like rot.I stepped forward slowly, rolling my sleeves up with measured precision, my gaze fixed on him in a way that made men understand, very quickly, that this was no longer a situation they could talk their way out of.“I didn’t— I didn’t know—” he started, his voice breaking over itself as he backed up a step. “I didn’t know she was—”“Mine?” I finished calmly.The word hung in the air. Not loud. Not dramatic.But absolute.His throat bobbed. “I wasn’t trying to— I just asked for her number, that’s all. I swear, that’s all—”I tilted my head slightly, studying him lik