Episode 6: Cracks In The Mask
551 Words
Morning sunlight poured through the penthouse windows, cutting across the glass table where Adira’s laptop glowed with unread messages. Clara, ever efficient, stood nearby with a steaming cup of coffee.
“Ma’am,” she said quietly, “Mr. Grey called. He’d like to see you again today.”
Adira didn’t look up from her screen. “He’s useful, but getting too curious. Delay the meeting.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Clara hesitated. “There’s one more thing. Mrs. Kane called your assistant’s line three times last night. She said it’s about a ‘potential partnership’.”
Adira’s fingers paused over the keyboard. “Send her a polite yes. And have security monitor her arrival.”
She finally looked up. The calm in her eyes could have frozen fire.
Across town, in a glossy kitchen that smelled of roses and desperation, Tasha sat with a private investigator.
“You’re sure?” she asked, sliding an envelope of cash across the table.
“I don’t want guesses. I want proof.”
The man nodded. “I’ll find everything. Real name, background, whatever this Adira Cole is hiding.”
Tasha’s nails tapped the marble counter. “Good. Because something about that woman doesn’t add up. She looks at Leonard like she knows his soul.”
Adira entered her office in a fitted grey suit, every step deliberate. She found Ethan Grey waiting, leaning against the glass wall like he owned the skyline.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.
“I’ve been busy.”
“With business or revenge?”
She met his eyes, silent.
Ethan’s tone softened. “You don’t have to fight everyone alone.”
“I’m not fighting,” she said coolly. “I’m winning.”
He laughed quietly. “Then tell me your secret.”
“Discipline,” she said, pouring herself coffee. “And the memory of everyone who thought I couldn’t survive.”
He stepped closer. “You survived. But are you living?”
Adira turned away. The distance was deliberate; the ache that followed wasn’t.
“Some of us don’t have that luxury,” she said.
That Night
Tasha walked into her study, a single sheet of paper trembling in her hand — a report from the investigator. The first page was blank except for one line:
> “Adira Cole did not exist five years ago.”
Her heart pounded. “No past? No records? No family?” she whispered.
The investigator’s voice over the phone was low.
“Whoever she was before, she erased it completely. But there’s something strange — her fingerprints are a match to a name that disappeared after a fraud scandal… a woman named Adanna Bello.”
The glass in Tasha’s hand slipped and shattered.
In her penthouse, Adira removed her earrings and stared at herself. For a brief second, she saw Adanna looking back — vulnerable, hopeful, naïve.
Then she blinked, and only Adira Cole remained.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Ethan:
> “Dinner tomorrow. No business. Just you.”
She typed a reply — Maybe. — then deleted it. Her thumb hovered above the screen before setting it down.
In the reflection, her eyes hardened again.
Love is a distraction. Revenge is the purpose.
But deep inside, she could feel it — the first c***k.
- Writer
