CHAPTER 247: THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK: PART ONE

Elise’s voice was somewhere on the edge of my hearing, her hand on my shoulder, soft and warm. She was saying something—maybe "Are you okay?" maybe "What’s wrong?"—but the words couldn’t land. They slid right off me like rain on glass.

Because my phone was a black hole in my hand.

The video had ended. My thumb hovered over the screen, trembling, and before I could stop myself, I hit play again.

Adrien.

Clara.

Red dress.

His tie undone.

Her hands on him.

His voice—his voice—rasping something that sounded like my name, but not to me.

My throat closed. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and twisted it.

My thumb trembled on the glass, the faint glow of the phone pulsing like a heartbeat. Every instinct screamed for me to smash the phone, to rip the screen from my hands and fling it into the street but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

"No," I whispered. The sound barely left my throat. "No... this isn’t real. Adrien wouldn’t—he wouldn’t—"

But my thumb hit play again.

Clara’s dress sliding off her shoulders. Her voice like silk over glass.

Adrien’s eyes following her like he was—

A bitter, broken sound escaped me before I even knew what it was. It took me a second to recognize it as my own laugh. Short. Harsh. Cracked down the middle.

I stared at the screen, at the man who had carried me out of hell, the man whose jacket I was wrapped in when he saved me that night, the man who called me princess like it meant something—

The man who, on this screen, was whispering the same things into another woman’s skin, the man who is the father of my child, the man who had proposed to me like it was a fairytale.

My chest tightened, my breath sticking in my throat. It felt like someone had stuffed my lungs with glass. A faint ringing started in my ears, soft at first, then louder, louder, until Elise’s voice completely disappeared.

When?

How?

Was it all a lie?

Was he with her and me at the same time?

The questions tumbled over each other, a vicious, choking spiral. My fingers dug into the phone until it cut against my palm.

"No... he wouldn’t," I muttered again. "He wouldn’t."

But the screen glowed on, indifferent.

The gala. It had to have been that night. My pulse pounded so loud it roared in my ears. I remembered the champagne fizzing bitter on my tongue, the heat spreading through my veins that hadn’t felt like normal tipsiness. Adrien leaving my side for just a moment. Clara pressing a room key into my palm, murmuring that I looked exhausted and should lie down while she fetched her purse.

Her purse.

She’d disappeared for ten minutes—maybe more. Long enough for me to grow woozy, to curl against the bedspread with the edges of the world slipping. Long enough for footsteps to approach that weren’t hers. For rough hands to reach. For Adrien to burst in, fury incarnate.

A chill crawled across my skin, though the car was warm.

Had that been the plan all along? Clara stalling me, drugging me, leaving me helpless—so she could go to him? So they could be intimate?

Had he... lied to me?

My stomach rolled. The memory of those men’s shadows loomed like smoke in the back of my mind. If Adrien hadn’t come...

I pressed a shaking hand over my mouth.

No, no, no. Adrien wouldn’t betray me. Not him. Not after everything. But the images blurred into one another—the video, my fractured memory, Clara’s laugh, Adrien’s slurred voice. They wove together, a story I didn’t want to believe but couldn’t unsee.

Elise squeezed my shoulder harder, leaning close, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. My whole body had gone cold even as my palms burned. My breathing went shallow, then sharp, then stopped altogether.

I was crying before I realized it. Silent, stupid tears slipping down my face, landing on the phone screen, warping Clara’s image until she blurred.

I couldn’t look away.

I couldn’t breathe.

"Darling."

Elise’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears, sharper this time, threaded with alarm. Fingers pressed insistently into my shoulder until I finally blinked and turned.

She had leaned all the way across the seat, her face close, eyes wide with worry. The sight of my own reflection in her gaze startled me—I hadn’t realized I was crying until I saw the streaks glistening down my cheeks.

"Darling, look at me," she said again, firmer now, not giving me room to retreat. "You’re shaking. What happened? What did you see?"

I sucked in a shuddering breath, trying to swallow the jagged lump in my throat. The words wouldn’t come. My phone was still glowing in my hand, Clara’s blurred outline frozen mid-frame, Adrien’s face bent too close to hers. I clutched it so tightly my knuckles ached, as if loosening my grip meant admitting it was real.

Elise’s hand rose, hesitated, then cupped my face gently, thumb brushing one damp cheek. "Isabella. Tell me."

The dam cracked. A broken whisper slipped out before I could stop it.

"It’s Adrien."

Her brow furrowed, confusion flashing into something colder, protective. "What about Adrien?"

I shook my head violently, as if the movement could erase the image burned into my mind. "No—it’s not true. It can’t be true. He—he wouldn’t."

Elise’s gaze flicked to the phone still trembling in my hand. "Show me."

I froze. The thought of letting anyone else see that video—of Elise’s eyes confirming what mine had just watched—made my stomach pitch. But Elise’s grip on my chin was steady, unyielding.

"Darling," she said softly, but with a steel I hadn’t heard from her before, "you’re not alone in this. Whatever it is—you won’t face it alone."

Before I could even decide, the phone buzzed violently in my hand.

Bzzzt.

Bzzzt.

Once. Twice. Then again, again, until the vibrations blurred into a frantic rattle.

I blinked down at the screen. It wasn’t frozen anymore. My wallpaper—the soft one Adrien had taken of me half-asleep on his sofa—was back, clear and innocent as if nothing had happened.

But the notifications were endless.

Message after message stacked over each other in a waterfall of chaos.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Every app I had lit up in red: Lonkin, Snapgram, even my email. Dozens—no, hundreds—of alerts.

My breath stuttered when I saw the missed calls. Aria. Leo. Aria. Leo. Aria again, fifteen times in a row.

My pulse hammered as I swiped at one of the notifications. Lonkin opened, loading sluggishly under the flood of alerts.

At the very top, bold letters screamed at me.

THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK.

I didn’t even think. My thumb tapped.

The page loaded.

And the world tipped again.