Behind The Mask

Chapter 32: The Empty Cage

POV: Maxwell

My head felt like it had been split open with an iron axe.

I groaned, rolling onto my back. The sheets twisted around my legs, damped with sweat I didn't remember sweating. My mouth was completely dry, tasting like bitter ash and stale whiskey, and my brain felt like it was wrapped in thick cotton that someone had soaked in acid.

The bright morning sunlight stabbing through the windows of the master suite felt like an attack behind my eyelids. It sliced through the silk curtains I'd forgotten to draw last night, turning the room into a stage in under a spotlight. I threw my forearms over my eyes but it didn't help. The light was already inside me.

I reached my arm out across the silk sheets, expecting to feel the cold space I had slept next to for the last month.

Instead, my hand brushed against warm, bare skin.

The contact was wrong in a way that made my stomach lurch before my brain even caught up. Skin that wasn't cool with distance. Skin that was soft, relaxed and asleep.

A spike of confusion cut through the fog in my head. I froze. My hand hoovered, fingers half-curled against the curve of a shoulder I didn't recognize. A soft, content sigh drifted from the pillow next to mine. Intimate.

Then, the smell hit me.

It wasn't the light, clean scent of citrus and vanilla that Fiona always wore. That scent clung to our sheets, to her scarves and to the empty side of the bed l’d been avoiding. This was different. It was suffocating and entirely too sweet. It was an expensive designer perfume, the kind that lingered in a room long after the person had left.

My heart completely stopped in my chest.

I snapped my eyes open, ignoring the blinding sunlight, and pushed myself up on my elbows. The movement sent a wave of nausea rolling through me. My vision swam, then focused.

Lying in the center of my bed, tangled in my sheets, was Camilla Jones.

Her hair was spread across the pillow, one strap of her nightgown slipped down her shoulder. Her lips were parted in sleep and face peacefully relaxed.

An unadulterated horror crashed over me like a freezing wave. It started at my chest and spread outward. I stared at her hair spread across the pillow, at the curve of her throat, at the bare skin my hand had touched seconds ago. My stomach churned violently.

No. No, no, no.

The word was a mantra in my head. I scrambled backward, hands scrabbling against the silk, desperate to put distance between us. My legs kicked free of the sheets, and I fell out of the bed and crashed hard onto the carpet. The impact jarred my shoulder, but I didn't care about the pain in my shoulder.

I pressed my back against the wall, dragging in ragged breaths, my hands shaking uncontrollably as I stared at the bed. At her. At where I'd done.

What had I done?

The question echoed, hollow and accusing.

I squeezed my eyes shut, desperately trying to force my brain to remember. To give me something, anything, that would explain this. The memories were a jagged, blurry mess. Every time I trito grasp one, it cut.

I remembered coming home from the gala. The car ride had been silent, expect for the sound of my jaw grinding. I remembered the pain of seeing Fiona laugh with Gabriel Lawson. The weather head had tipped back, the way his hand had brushed her elbow like he had a right to it.

I remembered walking into my study. I remembered taking in whiskey from the glass. The burn had been the only thing I felt.

And then... the whiskey.

Camilla standing in the doorway. She had looked concerned. Desperately concerned.

“Maxwell,” her voice had been soft. “I heard you come in. You don't look well.”

Camilla handed me a crystal glass.

I poured that for you. To help you relax.

The memory hit me with sickening clarity. The sudden dizziness that had come too fast and hard. The way the shadows in the room had warped and twisted along the edges of my vision. The hallucination.

I thought it was Fiona.

This realization made bile rise in my throat. and my breath caught.

Camilla hadn't just poured me a drink. She had drugged me. She had slipped a sedative into my glass, waited until my brain completely detached from reality, and guided me right into my own bedroom.

A wave of explosive rage ripped through my body. I wanted to drag her out of the bed and throw her out the front doors myself. I wanted to shake her until she told me what her evil intentions were.

But then, a much colder, much more terrifying thought paralyzed me.

Fiona.

She was at the gala. She had to come home. If she had walked down the hall... if she had heard anything through the doors… if she had seen…

I couldn't finish the thought. The imagination was scary.

I didn't bother putting on a shirt. I didn't say a word to Camilla, who was still sleeping soundly in the ruins of my life.

I pushed myself off the floor and bolted out of the master suite. My bare feet slapped against the cold marble of the hallway.

"Fiona!" I yelled, my voice tearing through the silence of the mansion.

I ran down the long corridor, my bare feet slapping heavily against the floors. I completely ignored the pounding headache splitting my skull. The pain was a distant thing compared to the panic flooding my veins. I rounded the corner into the East Wing, my chest heaving.

"Fiona, please!" I shouted, sprinting toward the final guest room at the end of the hall.

I reached her door and didn't even try the handle. I hit the wood with my shoulder, bursting into the room. The frame cracked with the force of it.

The words died in my throat. I completely froze in the doorway.

The room was hauntingly quiet.

Sunlight filtered through the curtains. Dust mites floated in the air, undisturbed.

Lying in a discarded pile on the rug was the stunning emerald green gown she had worn to the gala. The silk was wrinkled. It looked discarded and abandoned.

I took a slow, shaking step into the room. The carpet was cold under my feet.

The bed was perfectly made. It hadn't been slept in.

The small desk in the corner was completely bare. No laptop. No charger. No stack of books she had been reading. Her laptop was gone.

I looked toward the closet. The door was wide open, and the black leather bag she had brought from Paris was missing.

I stood in the center of the room, staring at the green dress on the floor.

The suffocating silence of the house pressed down on me, heavier and darker than it had ever been before.

I fell to my knees, my shaking hands grabbing the green silk of her dress. The fabric was cool under my fingers. It smelled faintly of here- citrus and vanilla.

I pressed the dress to my face, breathing her in like a drowning man.

I had pushed her to the edge. And last night, I had finally pushed her over it.

Fiona was gone.