Owed to the devil

Chapter: 6

Put her to work.”

Like I was some appliance that just got delivered.

And with that, Grayson Voss—the man who saved me at the club—turned his back on me.

Because the man standing infront of me—the one who once draped his coat over me like I was something to protect—looked right through me this time.

No warmth. No flicker of recognition. Not even a second glance.

Just one low command:

I didn’t have time to speak. To scream. To remind him.

Because the two goons wasted no time yanking me forward.

“Let’s go,” one of them muttered, shoving me down a narrow hallway.

“Hey! Don’t touch me—!”

“Save it,” the other snapped. “You're lucky the boss even let you in the house. You think girls like you last a day here?”

I clenched my teeth as they half-dragged me through winding corridors. The mansion was endless—rooms lined with black marble, art I couldn’t name, and that strange, cold silence that only really rich men carried like perfume.

Eventually, we stopped at a metal door tucked into the far wing of the house. One of them knocked twice. A woman answered.

She looked maybe forty, with sharp cheekbones, black heels, and a clipboard. The way her gaze sliced down my body made me straighten up instinctively.

“Another one?” she said flatly.

“Boss says put her to work. House side,” the taller guy grunted.

The woman sighed. “Fine. Strip her room, uniform her. No breaks unless I say so.”

They nodded and disappeared without a word.

I blinked. “Wait—what do you mean uniform me?”

But she was already walking away. “You work here now. Unless you’d rather go to the auction house instead.”

That shut me up fast.

I didn’t know what the auction house was, but I had a feeling it wasn’t about fine art.

---

The Gray House

They gave me a uniform.

Black. Stiff. Starched. A plain maid’s dress that made me look like I’d been plucked out of some 1950s punishment fantasy.

No phone. No name tag. Just an ID number pinned to my chest.

I was handed a cleaning list, a thin mattress in the basement quarters, and a warning:

“No talking to the boss. No entering the West Wing. You see something, you forget it. Or you disappear.”

I tried to ask questions, but I was met with slaps of silence or blank glares.

There were other girls. Maybe a dozen. Most of them didn’t speak. Just moved like shadows through the halls. I heard whispers of punishments for those who slacked off or tried to leave.

My days blurred quickly into scrubbing marble floors, polishing furniture that cost more than my old rent, and ironing endless rows of dark suits that definitely smelled like blood money.

And yet… every time I passed him—

Grayson Voss.

I felt it.

The same pull. The same cold heat.

Like the air changed in the room the second he stepped into it.

He never looked at me.

Not once.

Even when I set down his glass of scotch. Even when I stood inches away during briefings in the main hall. Even when he walked by during security sweeps.

It was like I’d been erased from his memory.

Or maybe… maybe I was never real to him in the first place.

That night, I sat on the mattress with my back against the stone wall. My hands were blistered, my arms sore, and my chest?

Empty.

How could someone save you like that—touch you like that—and then pretend you’re invisible?

I wanted to scream. To kick something. To make him see me again.

But more than anything…

I wanted to know why he’d let them take me in like this. Why I was here. What I was being punished for.

And deep down, under the fury and the heartbreak...

There was something even worse:

A small, stupid flicker of hope.

That maybe—just maybe—he did remember.

He was just pretending not to.

But pretending… can kill you all the same.