The Mask
1451 Words
Draven Kincaid did not get panic attacks.
At least, that was the lie he’d worn so long it felt like a custom-made suit—hand-stitched, immaculate, impenetrable. Panic was for weaker men. Softer men. Men who could afford to fall apart.
He was not one of them.
Yet as he stood in the private washroom adjoining the boardroom—hands braced against the marble counter, breath trapped just beneath his ribs—he felt that same cold, familiar pressure coiling up his throat like a fist.
Not now.
Not in front of them.
Not when the vultures were already circling.
He shut his eyes. Counted backward. Five. Four. Three. His jaw clenched with every number, but the pressure refused to loosen.
The clock on the wall ticked in ruthless clarity. The meeting had started five minutes ago. His absence would already be noted. His father’s former partners—older, hungrier—would be exchanging glances, smelling opportunity the same way they smelled fear.
He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with air that felt too thin, too sharp. A beat. Then another. He straightened.
He could control this. He still controlled everything.
Except his own body’s betrayal.
His reflection stared back at him: flawless suit, flawless composure, flawless lie. His eyes were the only thing out of place—too bright, too sharp-edged.
Get it together.
He adjusted his tie, not because it needed it but because the movement steadied his hands. Then he stepped out of the washroom, smoothing every trace of emotion from his face before the boardroom doors swallowed him.
The room fell silent.
Twelve of the most powerful stakeholders in his empire looked up simultaneously, their expressions sliding from annoyance to something colder—curiosity.
He hated curiosity.
It meant people thought there was something to discover.
“Apologies for the delay,” Draven said, voice even, controlled, edged with quiet command. “Let’s begin.”
And because nobody dared challenge that tone, they did.
But the silence that followed him into his seat felt like another pair of eyes, waiting for him to slip.
⸻
The first thirty minutes passed like a slow dissection. Numbers. Projections. Market fluctuations. The sterile logic of business usually grounded him, but today his heartbeat remained a fraction too fast, a little too heavy in his throat. He took a sip of water, careful not to reveal the shakiness in his fingers.
Across the table, Silas Ward—the oldest member of the board and the only one with the audacity to dislike him openly—watched him with thin, probing interest.
“You seem distracted today, Draven,” Silas commented, tapping his pen against his notepad. “Everything all right?”
Meaning: You slipped. I saw.
Meaning: Are you finally going to fall like your father did?
Draven met his gaze with a stillness so sharp it made the room tighten.
“Everything is fine,” he said.
Lie. Delivered flawlessly.
“But thank you for your concern, Silas. Should I be extending it back? You’re trembling. Might want to get that checked.”
A collective inhale rippled around the table. Silas’s hand jerked once before he steadied it—proving Draven right.
The older man’s eyes narrowed. “Watch yourself.”
Draven leaned back. “Always.”
His assistant, Callen, sitting near the corner of the room for minutes, shot him a glance—half concern, half warning. Draven ignored it.
The meeting moved on, but his chest remained tight. The air always felt different in these rooms—thin, metallic. Like the coldest part of his childhood. Like the winters when he’d learned the hard way that love was a transaction, affection a currency, and weakness a debt nobody forgave.
“We’ll continue with the Westbridge acquisition,” someone said.
But Draven’s focus shifted for a fraction of a second—he thought of her.
The woman from the gala.
Liora Hayes.
The only person in weeks who had looked him dead in the eye and not flinched. The only person whose disdain had felt startlingly…clean.
He didn’t want to think about her. He hadn’t planned to. But her voice flickered through his memory—sharp, fierce, unbothered by his name.
He envied that.
Focus, he ordered himself.
The remainder of the meeting dragged, his composure never cracking again—but the board saw something. Maybe they didn’t know what it was, but they’d sensed the faintest tremor behind the steel.
That alone made the room feel suffocating.
⸻
When the meeting finally adjourned, Draven exited with the same calm authority he always projected. His stride was smooth. His breathing controlled. His expression unreadable.
Only Callen followed him out, closing the door softly behind them.
“You need to rest,” Callen said once they were alone in the hall.
“No.”
“Draven—”
“I said no.”
“Your hands were shaking.”
Draven stopped walking.
Callen nearly collided with him.
The silence between them grew sharp.
Draven didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“Do not mistake proximity for permission.”
Callen swallowed hard. “I wasn’t— I just… you haven’t had an episode in a long time. I thought—”
“It was not an episode.”
Callen said nothing. Which annoyed Draven more.
He turned away, walking again, slower this time.
He needed air.
Space.
Distance.
He pushed open the doors to his private office—the crown jewel of the Kincaid Tower’s top floor. Glass spanning floor to ceiling. The entire skyline spread beneath him like an empire carved for one man.
His pulse steadied at last.
But the aftermath lingered—the burn behind his ribcage, the anger at himself for feeling anything at all, the pressure of the life he’d built tightening around him like a steel collar.
He crossed to the bar cart and poured himself water—not whiskey. Whiskey loosened things he preferred locked away.
Callen hovered near the doorway, hesitant.
“There’s the investor gala this evening,” Callen said cautiously. “Do you want it canceled?”
Draven’s jaw tightened. Canceling would be seen as weakness.
“I’ll attend,” he said.
Callen nodded. “I’ll have a car ready.”
“And Callen?”
“Yes?”
“Not a word about today.”
“Of course.”
Draven turned his back to him.
He didn’t watch Callen leave, but he listened for the soft latch of the door. Only after it clicked shut did he exhale, allowing the weight he’d been holding to settle across his shoulders.
He removed his cufflinks. One by one. Slow, deliberate movements. The kind he used to steady himself when the walls felt like they were tilting.
Perhaps it wasn’t the meeting that triggered him.
Perhaps it was the acceptance contract sitting on his desk—the one binding him to a fake marriage. A partnership built on the very thing he hated most.
A transaction.
A performance.
A lie.
He despised it. But he needed it. Needed the stability it bought. Needed the family-friendly image it created for the investors threatening to fracture everything he had built.
He picked up the contract.
The name glared up at him:
Liora Hayes.
He didn’t know her.
She didn’t know him.
But something in her eyes last night—bright, furious, unafraid—had struck him in a place he never let anyone see.
She wasn’t pretending with him.
She wasn’t trying to impress him.
She didn’t want anything from him.
Which made her more dangerous than anyone in his world.
And she has no idea what’s coming.
He set the papers down, but his fingers lingered on the edge.
He didn’t know yet that she was about to need him.
He didn’t know yet that he was about to need her far more.
But something in his chest tightened at the thought—and for once, it wasn’t panic.
It was instinct.
Possessive.
Sharp.
Unwelcome.
He shoved it down.
Emotions were liabilities. Attachments were traps. People were disappointments waiting to happen.
And yet…
He thought of the way her chin had lifted at the gala—defiant, stubborn, unyielding.
A slow, unwanted interest coiled through him.
Against his will, he wondered what breaking her composure would feel like.
What it would take to make her look at him again.
What it would mean to keep her.
Draven exhaled sharply.
No.
He didn’t have time for obsessions.
And Liora Hayes would never be anything more than a temporary, contractual necessity.
He would make sure of it.
Even as something in him began whispering a promise he refused to acknowledge:
You’ve already begun to fall.
- Writer
