Flashback
She didn’t even recognize the tone of her own voice anymore. This wasn’t how she thought this day would go. But in this moment, she knew she had to play the part perfectly to get what she needed. She had become the villain she feared.
Arnav’s eyes darkened like thunderclouds. He leaned in, voice a blade against her ear.
“Do you even hear yourself, Miss?” he hissed. “You have no idea how reckless your words sound, Miss,” he whispered, a chill slipping into her bones.
“Shall I teach you how to how to speak to those above you?” His fingers moved.
Not toward her wrist. Not her arm. Her mask.
“Shall I start,” he whispered, voice laced with cruel seduction, “by shutting that wicked mouth of yours with this?”
No.
No! anything but that.
Her mask.
He couldn’t remove it. He mustn’t see her face. He must never know who she truly was not now, not yet.
A sick dread twisted in her gut as his fingers brushed the edge of the fabric, gentle, deliberate.
Panic flared inside her as his fingers moved, slowly reaching for the straps of the mask. Her breath caught. Her body tensed. Was this it? Was her secret about to be exposed?
Raellyn’s world constricted. Her secret teetered on the edge of exposure. One wrong move and everything would be undone.
Would this be the moment her mask fell?
One Day Earlier…
"That bastard!" Raellyn’s scream tore through the rooftop air like a wounded animal's cry raw, broken, seething. Her voice rose into the bruised sky, swallowed by the wind, but not before it echoed with all the agony she had tried to bury. “How dare he throw me away like that? After everything he said, after everything we were supposed to be. I did nothing wrong! And now… he’s laughing on camera, holding another woman like none of it ever mattered!”
She stood on the ledge of a building far too high for someone with a heart that fragile. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Her eyes once soft with dreams now blazed with betrayal. Her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms until it hurt. The world around her felt like it was shrinking. Crushing her in the cage of her own humiliation. It hadn’t even been a week since Arsene, the man who had stolen her heart with a single look, had asked for her hand in marriage. Seven days since he knelt and told her she was his future. And now? he smiled for the cameras, draped over some sparkling new actress like Raellyn had never even existed. Everything had crumbled to ash. The love she nurtured, the future she envisioned… all swept away by a scandal plastered across entertainment news headlines.
Rage throbbed beneath her skin like blood boiling through poisoned veins. Her heart, a wound yet to scab over, led her to the one place she swore never to set foot in the talent agency where Arsene worked. She needed answers. Closure. Something more than the deafening silence he left her with. But fate greeted her with another slap in the face: he was gone. Vanished, they said. Out of town for three days. Typical. Unoriginal. Infuriating.
She hadn’t come here to cry. She had come for truth. Justice. She had barged into his agency like a storm, demanding answers, but instead she was met with indifference and guards who ushered her out like she was nothing. No explanations. No justice. Just a push back to the sidewalk, as if she were nothing.
But Raellyn wasn’t the kind of woman to be discarded. Now her name was dirt. A ghost in a tabloid scandal. A woman scorned by a rising star.
With a forged name tag clipped to her chest, she slipped past the security like a phantom. Invisible, yet burning with rage. If she couldn’t get to Arsene, she’d find the next best thing, his older brother. The Director. The man behind the curtain of this rotten, glittering world.
But again, disappointment met her like an old friend.
“He’s gone.”
“Come back in three days.”
“No, you’re not on the list.”
Ya, the office was empty. No trace of him. Not even a shadow. Defeated, she climbed to the rooftop. The only place in this godforsaken building where the sky didn’t feel like a ceiling.
The cold wind kissed her cheeks. Her hair, tousled by fury and fatigue, danced like broken threads in a storm. The city below glimmered as if mocking her pain.
She screamed. At the skyline. At the heavens. At the absurdity of it all. At love, so cruelly weaponized against her.
But then she smelled it.
A scent, faint but sharp. Bitter. Smoky. Tobacco. Filtered nicotine. Expensive.
She wasn’t alone. She turned sharply.
There, half-shrouded behind a dying rooftop light and a potted ficus, stood a man. His silhouette was striking tall, poised. Imposing. Dressed in black like the night itself. He wasn’t watching her. Not yet. But something about his stillness set every nerve in her body on edge. His presence demanded the marble floors of a private penthouse, not concrete and rusted rails.
Raellyn hesitated, then said coolly, “Excuse me. Do you mind if I have a cigarette?”
She didn’t know why she asked. Maybe because it was absurd. Or desperation. But the pain needed somewhere to go. Even into smoke. Her father would’ve slapped her for even saying the word smoke. But he wasn’t here anymore. No one was.
The man didn’t respond. Not a word. Not even a glance.
She stepped closer, chin lifted. ““I’m not asking for charity. I’ll pay.” she added, louder this time. “Just one.”
Still, silence.
Then, finally he moved.
With a slow, almost theatrical grace, he tossed the cigarette to the ground, turned his back to her, and began to walk away. Dismissive. Like she was dust on his sleeve.
Raellyn’s pride flared. She stared at the glowing ember near her feet. Was her pride worth less than a puff of stolen smoke?
Maybe it was.
She bent down, picked it up with a smirk, and slid it between her fingers.
“Hey,” she called after him. “Wait a sec.”
The man stopped. Turned.
Raellyn lit the cigarette, reached into the pocket of her worn jeans, and then threw a coin that landed with a sharp clink at his feet. It spun before landing right between his polished leather shoes.
“Keep the change,” she said with a sneer.