Bought by the underworld CEO

Chapter 11 ( I own everything, including you.)

_CRACK._

The wood splintered. The lock gave. Ares kicked the door in.

Zoya scrambled off the bed, heart slamming against her ribs, and backed into the corner. Her hands shook as she grabbed the lamp from the nightstand — her only weapon. The ceramic was cold and heavy.

Ares filled the doorway. His knuckles were bleeding, split open from banging on the door for fifteen minutes. His eyes were black, empty of anything human. Suit jacket gone, shirt half-unbuttoned, the white bandage from Ch 10 soaked red at his palm. Alcohol and rage rolled off him in waves.

He was drunk, furious, and quiet. That was the scariest.

Ares said, "Why are you moving away, Zoya? Why are you being scared of me?"

“Aren't you the one who made me do this, Zoya?” he said. His voice was soft. Too soft.

Zoya lifted the lamp higher. “Stay away from me!” Her voice shook, but she didn’t cry. She refused to give him tears. Not again.

Ares stepped inside. The broken door hung off its hinges behind him. “You slap me for that boy? You let him hug you. You laugh for him. But for me?”

His gaze dropped to the lamp. A slow, cruel smirk touched his lips. “Put that down. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I’ll hurt YOU,” Zoya spat, and swung.

Ares moved faster than humanly possible. He crossed the room in two steps and caught her wrist before the lamp could connect. He twisted, not enough to break, but enough to make her gasp. The lamp fell from her fingers.

He threw it. Glass shattered against the wall, raining across the floor like broken ice.

Then he pinned her to the wall. Not the bed. The wall. His body caged hers, one forearm across her collarbone, the other hand gripping her jaw. Not tight enough to bruise. Just enough to control.

His forehead pressed against hers. Both of them were breathing hard, sharing the same hot, angry air.

“You think 18 is better?” Ares snarled. His bloody breath hit her face. “He’s a child. I _made_ me. I bled for this empire. I clawed my way out of hell. He... He just plants _flowers_.”

Zoya turned her head as far as his grip allowed. “At least he doesn’t buy people like things .”

Ares flinched. Actually flinched. Like she’d slapped him for a third time. For one second, his grip loosened.

Zoya used it. She drove her knee up — not to his groin, she wasn’t stupid — but hard into his thigh. Muscle against muscle.

He grunted and stumbled back a step. It was all she needed.

Zoya bolted for the broken door. She made it three steps.

Ares caught her around the waist from behind. He lifted her off the floor like she weighed nothing. She kicked, clawed at his arms, screamed.

He didn’t hit her. He didn’t throw her.

He dragged her, still thrashing, into the en-suite bathroom. With his free hand, he turned the shower knob all the way to COLD.

Water, icy and brutal, blasted from the rainfall head.

He shoved her under it. Clothes on. Shoes on. Everything.

The shock stole her breath. It was like being plunged into a frozen lake. Zoya gasped, choked, and clutched at her chest.

“You want to act like a child?” Ares roared over the water. He held her there by her shoulders, not letting her escape the freezing spray. “I’ll treat you like one. Wake. Up.”

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. The cold was a knife in her lungs. Her whole body seized.

After three minutes that felt like thirty years, he yanked her back out and turned the water off.

Zoya collapsed to the tiled floor, soaking wet, shaking so violently her teeth clattered. She looked like a drowned corpse.

Ares stood over her, chest heaving. Water dripped from his own hair, his ruined shirt plastered to his chest. He grabbed a thick white towel from the rack.

He didn’t give it to her.

He crouched down and started drying her face himself. The motion was rough. Angry.

He saw her lips. They were blue from the cold. His jaw ticked. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

“You could have died at the auction,” he said, voice low and raw. “Starved. Sold. Trafficked. I saved you.”

Zoya threw her head back and laughed. It was an ugly sound. Broken. Hysterical. The sound of sanity fraying. “You saved me? You CHAINED me. You put a collar on me like a dog. You’re threatening my FAMILY. That’s not saving. That’s _owning_.”

Zoya was still trembling with cold but said it in anger.

Ares went completely still. The anger drained from his face, leaving something worse. Something blank.

“Leo hugged you,” he said quietly. “You didn’t flinch. You smiled. You _laughed_. I touch you and you look at me like I’m a monster.”

Zoya pushed his hands away, finally finding her voice. It was a whisper, but it cut deeper than any scream. “Why? Aren't you a monster?”

For three seconds, Ares’s mask cracked.

In those three seconds, he wasn’t a 29-year-old billionaire CEO. He was a 5-year-old boy standing at an orphanage gate, watching his mother’s back as she walked away and never looked back.

His eyes — those cold, green eyes — filled with something raw. Hurt. Confusion. A little boy’s pain.

Then the mask slammed back down. Harder than before.

He threw the towel at her chest. “Change. You’ll catch pneumonia and die. And then who will I punish?”

He stormed out of the bathroom, leaving her shivering on the floor.

---

Zoya changed in the bathroom, hands still shaking. She locked the door while changing.

Ares was leaning against the wall outside. He wasn’t leaving. Water still dripped from his hair onto the marble floor. His ruined shirt clung to him.

He spoke through the locked door, his voice flat. “New rules. One. No one touches you. Not maids. Not Leo. Not anyone. Two. You eat every meal at my table. Three. You sleep in my room.”

Zoya stepped out in dry clothes — a plain black sweater and leggings he’d left for her. “What? No.”

Ares pushed off the wall. “Do you want Leo and his uncle to get fired? If I see that boy around my property again, Zoya, he’ll lose more than a job.”

Zoya’s blood turned to ice. “You can’t do that. He didn’t do anything wrong!”

Ares stepped close. Too close. He smelled like rain and blood and expensive whiskey. “I can. I own everything in this city. The police. The judges. The gardening company he works for. I own everything. Including you. Especially you.”

He reached out and grabbed her chin. Not hard. Just enough to force her eyes to his. His thumb brushed her lower lip, and she hated how her body betrayed her with a shiver.

“Say it,” Ares whispered. “Say, ‘I belong to Ares Blackwood.’”

Zoya stared at him. Tears pooled in her eyes but didn’t fall. She pressed her lips together. She would not say it. She would _never_ say it.

Ares searched her face for a long minute. Then he let go. A slow, terrifying smile spread across his face. It wasn’t his real smile. It was the smile he gave competitors before he destroyed them.

“You’ll say it,” he said. “Soon. Now come. My bed is bigger. No chains needed. I don’t need steel to keep you. I have your family. I have Leo’s future. I have _you_.”

He turned and walked down the hall toward the master suite.

He didn’t look back.

Because he knew she’d follow.

She had no choice.

The camera in the corner of the hall blinked its red light.

_Watching. Always watching._

_End of Chapter 11_

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