Chapter 12
Gideon
I stepped into the study, let the door swing shut behind me. The click echoed louder than it should have—soft wood meeting soft frame, nothing aggressive about it. Just final.
Belle stood frozen by the shelf. Dust smudged her fingertips. Guilt painted her face in shades I could read from across the room.
She'd found it.
The photo tucked behind trophies and press clippings, hidden where most people wouldn't think to look. Where I'd convinced myself no one would bother searching.
She'd bothered.
I didn't move closer. The space between us already felt too small, crackling with the kind of tension that came from exposure neither of us had asked for.
She touched the one part of my life I refuse to let anyone see.
Possession flared hot under my skin. Territorial. Instinctive. The kind that made my hands curl into fists before I could stop them.
Not because she'd disobeyed.
Because she'd seen.
That small boy with careful eyes and bruises he'd learned to hide. The woman who'd stopped fighting back years before the camera caught her stillness. The man whose shadow I'd spent my entire life trying to outgrow—and failing, because monsters didn't die when you walked away from them.
They followed.
They lived in your bones.
Belle swallowed. I watched her throat work, watched her try to find words that wouldn't land wrong.
She wouldn't find them.
There were no right words for this.
I let the silence stretch. Let her feel the weight of what she'd done—not just snooping, though that mattered. But understanding me in a way I hadn't given her permission for.
Understanding was intimacy I didn't offer freely.
She'd stolen it, anyway.
My voice came out quieter than I intended. Controlled, because losing control now would prove every fear that photo represented.
"What did I tell you?"
Her eyes widened. Confusion flickered before realization hit.
"Eat," I continued, each word deliberate. "Then come to bed."
Not complicated instructions.
Not unreasonable demands.
And yet here she stood, in my study, touching my past like she had any right to it.
"You chose to explore instead." I tilted my head, studied her the way I studied opponents on the ice—looking for weaknesses, openings, the exact place to press that would make them crack. "Why?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
I took one step forward. Just one.
She flinched. Not much. Just enough to tell me she remembered exactly what happened the last time she'd tested me.
“There are rules in my house, Belle. And when you break them… you’re punished.”
My voice stayed low, steady, the way it did right before a fight on the ice. Not rage. Precision. The kind that made grown men hesitate.
She backed into the edge of the desk, breath catching like she’d tripped over fear she didn’t want to name.
“Your father did an inadequate job teaching you consequences.”
The hit landed. Clean. Sharp. I watched it ripple across her face—hurt first, then fury rushing in to cover it.
“And yours did so much better?”
The words came out of her like a blade she hadn’t meant to draw. A reflex. Pure nerve. I felt them slice under my ribs, quick and surgical, targeted in a way she didn’t even understand.
My jaw locked. Heat flared behind my eyes. A muscle jumped beneath my cheekbone, the traitorous twitch I hadn’t felt since I was fifteen.
Her gaze flicked there.
She saw it. She realized she’d struck something real, and the shock in her eyes told me she hadn’t expected to get that close to anything that mattered.
I took a slow step toward her. Controlled. Measured. Every instinct in me wanted to crowd her against the desk until the edge dug into her spine. Not to frighten her—no. To remind her what happened when people pushed where they shouldn’t.
“You don’t want to talk about my father,” I said, calm enough to make the temperature in the room drop.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. But her chin lifted, the slightest shake in it. Defiance woven through terror.
“You brought him up,” she whispered.
“No,” I corrected, closing the distance by another inch. “I brought up yours.”
She swallowed hard. I watched the pulse hammer in her throat.
“You crossed a line,” I added.
Her fingers curled over the desk behind her, gripping the edge as if it could anchor her. Or shield her. It wouldn’t.
She whispered, “So did you.”
The words hit my chest, softer but heavier, weighted with something she didn’t intend—an accusation that didn’t come from hatred. Something closer to disappointment.
It threw me.
Just for a breath.
I’d expected fear.
I’d expected more anger.
Not that.
Not the suggestion that somewhere in her mind, the worst thing I’d done wasn’t the contract or the house or the rules.
It was hurting her.
My breath left me in one tight exhale. I stepped closer until the desk blocked her escape on every side.
“Belle,” I said quietly, “don’t confuse your courage with safety.”
Her breath hitched.
I dragged a hand along the edge of the desk beside her hip, letting my knuckles brush the wood. Not touching her. Not yet. The slow scrape of skin against varnish was enough to make her flinch.
“You want to weaponize my past?” I leaned in, my voice a murmur against the tension between us. “Be very sure you understand the cost.”
Her lips parted, ready to fire back.
I didn’t give her the chance.
“Because you’re right,” I said.
Her eyes widened.
“My father didn’t do better.”
I stepped closer, letting the words land between us like stones dropped into still water.
"My father taught discipline. Pain. Silence. And winning."
Each word tasted like ash. I watched Belle process them, watched her expression shift from anger to something worse—understanding she didn't want.
"It got me into the NHL."
Not pride. Not justification. Just fact.
The truth no one asked about when they watched me on the ice, when they screamed my name from the stands, when they counted my goals and my earnings and decided I'd won at life.
Belle flinched.
Not at the words themselves.
At whatever she heard beneath them.
The hollow places I'd learned to fill with achievement. With dominance. With the kind of control that kept everything else from bleeding through.
Her mouth opened. Closed. She looked at me like I'd just confirmed something terrible.
I hated that look. Hated that she'd dragged this out of me when I hadn't decided to give it.
"Don't," I said quietly.
"Don't what?"
"Pity me."
Her jaw tightened. "I wasn't—"
"You were." I leaned in, close enough to see the pulse hammering in her throat. "I can see it. That shift. That softening. Don't waste it on me, Belle."
She shook her head, the movement small but defiant. "I don't pity you."
"No?"
"No." Her voice hardened. "I just understand you better now."
The words hit like a fist to the sternum.
Understanding.
The one thing I'd spent my entire adult life making sure no one ever got close enough to claim.
She'd taken it, anyway. Stolen it from a photograph I'd barely remembered leaving out.
My hands flexed at my sides. Control slipping. Rage and something dangerously close to grief warring beneath my ribs.
"That doesn't change anything," I said.
"It doesn't," she snapped. "You're still a monster."
My fingers closed around her wrist before she could pull away. Not gentle. Not cruel. Just certain. The kind of grip that said resistance was irrelevant.
I yanked her forward, spun her, bent her over the edge of the desk. The same fucking desk from the photograph. The same goddamn wood that had held my childhood like a cage.
She hit the surface with a sharp exhale, palms slapping against the varnish. The impact vibrated up my arm, satisfaction and something darker twisting together.
Her jeans were already loose from earlier. I hooked my fingers into the waistband and dragged them down—far enough to expose skin, far enough to make her gasp.
The sound cut through the room.
Not pain.
Not yet.
Shock. Humiliation. That sharp, bright edge of fury that came when someone realized how little their defiance actually mattered.
Her fingers clawed at the desk edge. Knuckles white. Breath coming too fast.
I didn’t speak.
Didn’t explain.
My hand came down sharp against the back of her ass—once, twice—hard enough to sting, not hard enough to bruise. Not yet.
She jerked, a broken sound tearing from her throat.
“Obedience keeps you safe,” I said, voice low.
Her body tensed. Waiting. Bracing.
I leaned in, my mouth close enough to her ear that she’d feel the words more than hear them.
“Defiance keeps you hurt.”
The air between us went electric. Her breath hitched, caught somewhere between a sob and a snarl.
I straightened, watching the way her shoulders trembled, the way her fingers dug into the wood like it could save her.
It couldn’t.
Nothing could.
Not here.
Not now.
I smoothed my hand over the spot I’d struck, feeling the heat rise under my palm. Her muscles locked, but she didn’t pull away.
Good.
She was learning.
"You're alone. You're an NHL player, but you're alone. You only got me here because I'm desperate, not because I want to be here."
My hand stilled against her skin.
The heat beneath my palm suddenly felt irrelevant. Distant. Everything narrowed to those words—sharp, surgical, perfectly aimed at the one place I never let anyone strike.
She twisted her head to look at me over her shoulder, eyes bright with tears and fury and that terrible, awful certainty that came from hitting the mark.
She could see it.
The emptiness I'd wrapped in achievement and dominance and the kind of control that kept people at a distance. The hollow at the center of everything I'd built.
She saw it.
And she weaponized it.
My chest constricted. Rage flared hot under my ribs, but something colder followed—the kind of truth that lived in shadows, the kind I refused to drag into daylight.
She's right.
I released her. Stepped back.
The loss of contact felt louder than it should have.