All Chapters of The Debt of His Desire: Pregnant by the Devil: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The rain in the city didn’t wash things clean; it only turned the grime into a slick, oily sheen. Lizaib "Iza" Moreno stood outside the obsidian-glass monolith known as the Thorne Tower, her cheap coat soaked through to her shoulders. She looked at the gold lettering on the heavy glass doors—Thorne Global Holdings—and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the freezing October wind.She wasn't here for a job interview. She wasn't here to beg for a loan. She was here to sell her soul to a man who didn't believe in mercy.Her father, a man whose spine had been snapped by the weight of his own bad luck and a crippling addiction to the poker table, was currently hiding in a basement three boroughs away. He owed five million dollars to the Valerius Syndicate. In this city, that kind of debt didn't lead to a courtroom; it led to a shallow grave in the marshlands. But the rumors said there was one man who could make any debt disappear—for a price that most people were too terrified to payy

The dining room of the Thorne penthouse was a cathedral of glass and cold stone. A table made of petrified wood, polished until it shone like a dark mirror, sat beneath a chandelier of jagged black crystals. It was a room designed to make anyone feel small, but as Iza sat at one end, she felt more than small—she felt exposed.The red silk of her dress felt like a brand against her skin. Every time she moved, the fabric hissed, a constant reminder of the man sitting at the opposite end of the long table.Dark hadn't spoken since he entered. He ate with a cold, mechanical precision, cutting into a steak that looked as rare as the atmosphere in the room. He didn't look at his phone. He didn't look at the city. He looked at her. His gaze was a constant, heavy weight, tracking the way her fork trembled, the way she swallowed, the way her collarbones shifted with every breath."You aren't eating, Izaib," he said finally. The sound of his voice in the quiet room was like a stone dropped in

Two weeks had passed, and the penthouse had become a world of sensory overload. Iza had stopped counting the days by the sun and started counting them by the sound of the elevator chime at 8:00 PM.She was a law student; she understood the concept of Stockholm Syndrome. She had read the case studies on captives who began to identify with their captors. But this wasn't that. It wasn't a delusion. It was a chemical reaction. Dark Valerius Thorne was a narcotic, and despite every instinct screaming at her to run, her body was beginning to crave the very man who had enslaved herr.It was a Tuesday night, and the humidity in the city was stifling. Even the high-powered cooling system of the Thorne Tower couldn't seem to touch the heat simmering between the walls of the master suite.Iza stood in the center of the room, wearing a slip of black lace that cost more than her father’s car. She was staring at her reflection, hating the way her eyes looked—darker, wider, filled with a hunger she

The world returned to Iza in fragments of gray and silver. The first thing she felt was the cold—the sterile, biting chill of the leather sofa in Dark’s office. The second thing she felt was the weight of a hand on her stomach.Her eyes snapped open.Dark was hovering over her, his face a mask of such intense, concentrated focus that it was terrifying. His large palm was splayed flat across her abdomen, right over the emerald silk of her dress. He wasn't moving. He was simply... feeling. As if he could sense the biological shift through her skin."Don't," Iza gasped, her voice coming out as a dry croak. She tried to sit up, but her head swam, and she fell back against the cushions."You fainted, Izaib," Dark said. His voice was unnervingly calm, the kind of calm that preceded a hurricane. He didn't move his hand. "People do not simply drop for no reason in my presence. Not unless I’ve put a bullet in them.""I told you... the bug," she whispered, her heart hammering so hard against he

The air in the penthouse had changed. It was no longer charged with the electricity of a new affair; it was heavy with the sterile, suffocating weight of a sanctuary that felt like a tomb. For three days, Iza had played the part of the broken bird. She ate the flavorless, nutrient-dense meals Elena prepared. She took the vitamins. She sat by the window and stared at the skyline like a woman who had forgotten how to speak. But inside, the law student was mapping the terrain. She was studying her captor’s patterns. Dark Thorne was a man of absolute control, but every man with a god complex had a weakness: they needed to be worshipped, or at the very least, they needed to believe their dominance was absolute. Iza stood before the vanity, staring at the array of expensive cosmetics. She didn't reach for the heavy foundation today. Instead, she chose a subtle, shimmering highlighter that made her skin look ethereal, almost fragile. She applied a tint to her lips that made them look bit