Behind The Mask

Chapter 17: The Silence

POV : Maxwell

The penthouse suite of the Four Seasons was big, an opulent cavern entirely covered in white marble and gold fixtures. It cost ten thousand dollars a night, a sum that wouldn't even register as a rounding error in my bank accounts. It was designed to make its occupant feel like a king, standing above the rest of the world. But as I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the intense thunderstorm tearing through Paris, it felt exactly like a gilded prison cell.

"Maxwell, darling, are you even listening to me?"

The voice grated against my eardrums like dragging metal. I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes locked on the dark, rain-soaked streets far below, watching the headlights of tiny cars blur in the deluge.

"No, Camilla," I replied, my voice hollow. "I'm not."

Camilla let out an annoyed, dramatic sigh from the center of the room. She had been draped over the plush sofa for the last four hours, drinking my most expensive vintage champagne and complaining endlessly about her first-class flight. She was trying so desperately to act like nothing had changed, like the last two catastrophic years hadn't happened. She wanted to play the perfect, untouchable billionaire's girlfriend again. She prattled on about the turbulence, the lack of beluga caviar on the menu, and the shopping spree she had planned for tomorrow on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

I felt absolutely sick to my stomach.

Every time I heard the crystal of her champagne flute clink against her manicured rings, a fresh wave of nausea washed over me. I looked down at the watch strapped to my wrist.

It was 8:00 PM.

Where is she? When I stood in the lobby of the United Nations headquarters earlier today and ordered Fiona to take that hotel key card, it was a colossal, highly toxic gamble. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth. But the second she had looked at me with those painfully cold eyes, the ruthless corporate predator inside my head had taken over.

She had made me feel so weak, so utterly transparent and desperate in the back of the limousine just hours prior. I hated feeling weak. I had spent my entire life, built my entire empire, ensuring I would never be at anyone's mercy. Yet, Fiona Caldwell, with her quiet strength and her unyielding boundaries, had stripped me of my armor without even raising her voice. I wanted to regain control. I wanted to remind her that I was the apex predator, that I was the one who bought her precious charity project, that I was the one pulling the strings of her world.

I thought she would explode. When I dangled Camilla in front of her, when I threw that key card down and treated her like a lowly maid, I fully expected the carefully constructed Ambassador Caldwell to crack. I expected her to pick up that key card, march her way through the rain to this very hotel, throw the plastic directly at my head, and scream at me. I wanted her to slap me. I wanted her to fight me. I craved the fire, the passion, and the reckless anger that would prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she still cared. Hate was fine. Hate was a burning emotion. Hate meant I still mattered.

Instead, she had just looked at me like I was nothing, turned on her heel, and walked away.

She'll be here soon, I told myself, gripping the edge of the freezing glass window so tightly my knuckles turned white. "She just needs to cool off. She's smart. She'll realize she can't abandon the children's schools, and she knows I hold the purse strings. She'll come walking through that door any minute now, demanding terms."

"Come sit with me," Camilla cooed, pulling me from my thoughts. I heard the rustle of silk as she walked up behind me. Then, I felt her perfectly manicured hands sliding over the broad set of my shoulders. "The bed is huge, Max. We have the whole night to ourselves. Let's not waste it staring at the rain."

I completely froze. My muscles locked down instantly. The smell of her perfume- heavy and cloyingly sweet- filled my lungs, making my jaw clench so hard my teeth ached. This was the woman I had blown up my marriage for. This shallow, empty, glittering thing. The sheer absurdity of my past mistakes threatened to suffocate me.

"Don't touch me, Camilla," I growled, shrugging her hands off my suit jacket.

"Excuse me?" Camilla snapped, her voice pitching upward as she stumbled a step back in surprise. "I dropped everything and flew across the world for you! You practically begged me to come!"

"I didn't beg you for a damn thing," I said, my voice perilously low, lethal, and devoid of any warmth as I finally turned to face her. The look on my face must have been terrifying, because she instantly shrank back. "I sent you one automated text message to prove a point to my wife. That's it. You are a prop. You are here to play a role because I needed a weapon, and you were conveniently available. Sit on the couch, drink the champagne you didn't pay for, and keep your mouth shut until I tell you otherwise."

Camilla’s painted mouth dropped open in pure shock. Her eyes welled with angry, humiliated tears, but I didn't care. I felt absolutely nothing for her. I turned my back to her again, returning my gaze to the storm outside.

The hours dragged by with an agonizing, torturous slowness.

9:00 PM.

10:00 PM.

11:00 PM.

The storm outside only got worse. Jagged forks of lightning flashed across the bruised purple sky, briefly illuminating the iron structure of the Eiffel Tower in the distance before plunging the city back into darkness. Thunder rattled the glass of the penthouse windows.

Inside the room, the silence was deafening. Camilla had wisely retreated to the far corner of the suite, drinking in sullen, terrified silence. Every single time I heard a muffled noise out in the carpeted hallway—a passing guest, the hum of the elevator, the rattle of a room service cart—my heart stopped dead in my chest. Every muscle coiled, expecting the handle to turn. Expecting it to be Fiona.

But the door never opened.

When the clock in the corner of the penthouse struck midnight, the chimes echoing through the vast space, the total silence that followed finally broke me.

The confident, arrogant illusion I had built around myself collapsed into dust.

She wasn't coming. She wasn't fighting back.

I pushed her too far. My hands started to shake. It wasn't a slight tremor; it was an uncontrollable shaking. Pure panic gripped my chest, squeezing my lungs until I couldn't draw a full breath. I miscalculated. I had played a game of emotional chess with a woman who had already flipped the board and walked out of the room.

I shoved my hand into my pocket, pulling out my encrypted phone. My fingers were clumsy, stumbling over the screen as I dialed the one secure number I knew by heart.

"Marcus," I barked the second my head of global security answered the line. I didn't wait for a greeting.

"Mr. Jordan. It's incredibly late. Is everything alright in Paris?" Marcus's deep voice was a stark contrast to the frantic beating of my heart.

"I need you to pull the UN security feeds right now," I ordered, my voice tight and breathless. I began pacing frantically back and forth across the floor, running a stressed hand through my hair, completely ruining it. "I need eyes on Ambassador Caldwell. Did she go back to her apartment? Is she with Julian Mercer? Tap into the city's traffic cams if you have to. Just find her."

"Right away, sir. Give me a moment."

I heard the rapid, precise clacking of Marcus's keyboard in the background. My pacing quickened. Camilla was watching me from the sofa, her eyes narrowed in bitter realization as she finally understood she wasn't the prize- she was just the bait. But she knew better than to speak a single word.

"Sir..." Marcus's voice suddenly changed on the other end of the line. The steady, professional calm that usually anchored him vanished. He sounded confused at first, and then deeply concerned.

"What?" I demanded, stopping dead in my tracks in the center of the room. The blood roared in my ears. "Where is she, Marcus? Tell me you have eyes on her."

"She isn't at her apartment, Mr. Jordan. The building security feed shows she never returned. And she isn't with Julian Mercer. According to the UN secure logs, Julian has been locked in a closed-door summit with the French delegate all night. He's alone."

"Then where the hell is she?" I yelled, the raw fear finally bleeding through the cracks in my voice, echoing off the high ceilings of the suite.

"That's the problem, sir," Marcus said quietly, the weight of failure dragging his words down. "When the cameras came up empty, I bypassed the standard protocol. I tried to ping the private, military-grade GPS tracker we placed deep inside her phone's motherboard two years ago. The one she never knew about."

"And?" I pushed, my chest heaving. "What does the ping say?"

"And... it's gone, sir. The signal isn't just lost or out of range. The device has been manually disabled. Wiped clean. Her phone is completely dead to our network, and her personal and UN credit cards haven't been swiped anywhere in the city since 2:00 PM."

The phone almost slipped out of my suddenly sweaty hand. The opulent white and gold room started to spin around me. The floor felt like it was dropping out from under my feet.

"What does that mean?" I whispered into the receiver, though the horrific realization was already clawing its way up my throat.

"It means she knew we were watching, Mr. Jordan," Marcus replied, delivering the final blow to my sanity. "She's off the grid. She's completely gone. And we have absolutely no way to find her."