WHISPER OF POWER AND PASSION

Chapter 2: A Game Of Mask

That night, after the ball, the aftermath was sharp and merciless. Alessia sat at her desk, the soft light of the desk lamp dancing across heaps of files and papers strewn over it before her. She traced those pages with her fingers, very uninterested, while her mind was still far from whatever information lay on these pages. On the wall hung a clock showing slow-running hours. Her mind was doing gymnastics, and her thoughts always strayed to Damian Blackwell, a man she felt was way more dangerous than what she perceived.

The string-pulling amount of pull he had- couldn't have been more vital and blatant than any one of the many businessmen enveloped by the underbelly of Metropol, their strings to the Santoros and the rest. It was a sham; Blackwell wasn't a man behind the scene-he was the shadow. And the reach of his control seemed to go way further than she could imagine.

Alessia looked down again at the file in front of her, her fingers tracing in absent-mindedness the names of the key players in the Syndicate: the Santoros, the Obsidian Network. All roads seemed to be leading her back to Blackwell. What game he was playing, she didn't know, but one thing she knew, she had underestimated him.

"I underestimated him," she muttered, frustration edging her voice.

Her phone buzzed on the desk, shrill in the quiet. Alessia picked it up, her gaze snapping to the screen, where she read the message in her head:

"Damian Blackwell is looking for you."

Her stomach bottomed out; she knew it would be only a matter of time before he came after her. Hoped, though. More time for the next move, time to get her footprints covered. Far sooner than expected, it seemed, here was the timing. For him, the gala was a disaster, and now he was onto her tail. There he would want answers: who was she, what did she want?

Across town, Damian Blackwell sat in his penthouse office drumming his fingers on polished wood. His eyes were directed at the files in front of him, but his attention was elsewhere. Alessia Varela, that feisty little translator who upset his business applecart in more ways than one that night at that charity gala, was foremost on his mind. He'd ordered his men to dig inside of her history to find anything. Whatever was dug up just didn't seem to add up. "Julian Rivera," Damian muttered to himself, flipping through the associations enclosed within the file. "What is your relationship with her, Varela?" his voice continued to drawl, his eyes narrowing while he flipped to the next couple of pages. The alias she was working under didn't raise any flags at the moment, but something about her-something in the way she worked, in how adroitly she managed to get in the way of his deal-didn't sit quite right. She wasn't a regular translator. A translator would have no way in the world of getting any of that. No translator would even know how to blow up a deal of that size, which is what he was working on. She was playing a much bigger game.

Damian leaned back in his chair as his mind began to whirl. It didn't take long for curiosity to boil over into something else-something darker. He wanted answers. Who was she working for? And why had she come after him?

---

A Week Later

It was full-throat: buzz-ens of cash and clout that few in Metropol City were privileged or sometimes even bothered to garner. Alessia stood at the back of the room, different in her role of translator when compared to dozens of others milling about the place, offering their services. The tension in her shoulders betrayed her. Her instincts were screaming that something was about to pop. The thought of Damian Blackwell somewhere out there running a mile in her heart.

She was ready for this; she had to be. But nothing would quite have prepared her for what happened next.

And then, it did.

Damian Blackwell stepped into the room, and whatever the topic of conversation had been, whatever action had been unfolding ceased. His gaze swept the crowd then paused for a moment when his eyes found hers. The briefest flicker of recognition danced between them. He didn't smile. Yet his gaze turned hot-intense. Fixed. Alessia's belly coiled.

"Alessia," Damian's voice cut through the air like butter, silky and unnerving, drawing her attention in an instant.

She turned toward him, her heart playing skips. "Mr. Blackwell," she returned, forcing the corners of her mouth to rise in a polite smile. "I was just here to do my job."

His lips tugged into a slight smile, but his eyes did not change. "I did not expect to see you so soon.

But in a single moment, the racing of Alessia's mind was overgrown with the icy chill of her brain to reply calmly: "It's a big city, Mr. Blackwell. It would be bound to happen that our paths cross somewhere.

His eyes appeared to narrow now, holding her in their depths, with intensity trickling along her skin. "You have more than crossed each other's path, it seems," he drawled low and then moved in closer. "Why meddle with my business?"

Alessia swallowed as her heart began to pound. She had expected it, yet the reality was altogether different. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said easily, feigning innocence.

Damian did not turn away from her face, and his eyes clouded with a surge of intensity. "Don't play coy with me. I have seen your work. You are not just a translator, Alessia. You are so much more than that.

Alessia's heart quickened as she retreated a step, her apprehension barely reaching her face. "I am just doing my job. Nothing more."

"Lies," Damian growled under his breath. "Tell me the truth. What is the game?"

"I am not playing any games," Alessia returned, firm on the outside when her chest constricted tighter. "You have games to be played. You hide stuff from me.

For a moment, Damian said nothing. His eyes clung to hers, boring into her, a challenge. The air seemed heavy with silent confrontation, the unspoken challenge thrown between them. He leaned forward and spoke deliberately in a voice turned low.

Perhaps you shall watch who you're accusing of hiding things, Alessia returned with a voice gone darker because you are hiding something, and I will find out what it is.

Alessia's breath had caught in her throat, but she didn't flinch; defiance etched upon her features. "We'll see about that.

Damian stepped back, his eyes unrelenting on hers, as if he wanted to read every move. He was playing at something, but so was she. Only the rules of this game would be much more dangerous than either one of them perceived.

The seconds ticked on, each deadlier than the last. Alessia could feel his gaze upon her, surveying her once more and taking one final look before he finally turned his back and disappeared into the tide of humanity. His form melted into the crowd, but Alessia did not budge an inch. The game had only just begun.

She stood there a moment, the beating of her heart deafening in her ears as she had just walked right into the lion's den, Damian Blackwell knowing full well. What he didn't know, what neither of them didn't know, is that they were being drawn into a trap from which neither would walk away alive.