Chapter 14 - The Mask Slips

The storm outside broke just before midnight. Rain thrashed the windows of Club Eden’s upper floors, streaking the glass like claw marks. Thunder rumbled overhead, a deep, constant growl that made the chandeliers tremble. Most of the guests had cleared out early, unwilling to risk soaked gowns and splintered heels. The floor staff had thinned. Dancers were gone, but Raven Knight was still here, still on the top floor. Still watching Jaxon Morreau.

She stood near the edge of the grand lounge balcony, a crystal glass in her hand, filled with something amber and warm she hadn’t tasted yet. The lights in the club below were down to a glow. Only a low hum of music remained.

Jaxon sat alone by the fireplace, fingers interlaced beneath his chin, staring into flames that didn't warm him.

She had seen him dominant, seen him cruel, even seen him unrelenting, possessive and tender, but this? This was new. This was stillness. A rare, aching stillness.

“Is this the part where you ask me if I’m okay?” he said, not looking at her.

Raven blinked, caught off guard.

“No,” she replied after a pause. “This is the part where I wait for you to tell me what you’ve been hiding.”

He smiled. Or tried to. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“I thought you’d go home tonight.”

“You didn’t tell me to.”

His gaze finally lifted to hers. “And you only obey when commanded?”

“I only disobey when it matters.”

Another long pause, then he stood. “Come with me.”

The elevator ride to the penthouse was silent. Not the silence of tension, but something older. Thicker. Like grief.

Raven studied him in the golden reflection of the mirrored walls. His hands were still. His jaw was tight. But it was his eyes that told her the truth, that he wasn’t angry, he was haunted.

The penthouse was bathed in shadows when they stepped inside. No music. No soft lighting. Just the storm crashing outside, and the slow rhythm of Jaxon’s breathing. He poured a glass of Scotch. Took one sip. Then another.

Raven didn’t speak.

He didn’t offer her a drink, he just walked to the far end of the room and stopped in front of a tall cabinet with a locked drawer.

She watched him pull out a key from his pocket. A click, the cabinewas unlocked and he pulled out a photo, carried it to her without ceremony and handed it over.

It was of a young woman with blonde hair and fierce blue eyes, her face lit up woth a radiant smile.

“She’s beautiful,” Raven said quietly.

“Was,” Jaxon corrected. “Sabine Ruelle. My fiancée.”

There was a pause as he poured another drink. “She fell from this building, from that very balcony.”

Raven turned toward the window instinctively. Thunder lit the sky just enough for her to glimpse the metal railing, still wet with rain.

“No witnesses,” he continued. “No camera footage. The city called it a suicide. The tabloids said it was an accident. Her father blamed me.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t know what to call it. For a long time, I just called it silence.”

He took a slow sip. “She had a laugh like broken glass, sharp, wild, unpredictable. I was obsessed with it. She didn’t submit easily. She never knelt without biting first. She fought me, challenged me, needed me and I thought... I thought I could own her.”

Raven’s pulse stuttered.

“And when she started to slip through my fingers,” he added, voice low, “I squeezed tighter.”

Raven felt that sentence like a knife across her chest.

“She wasn’t built for my world,” he said. “And I refused to let her leave it, then one night, after a fight, she went out onto that balcony.”

“And she jumped?”

“I don’t know.” His voice cracked. “That’s the truth.”

A bitter silence followed.

Raven traced her finger along the edge of the photograph.

“I saw the mark,” she whispered.

He looked up.

“The same one you gave me. She had it too.”

Jaxon didn’t flinch. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought branding her would bind her. That if I marked her, if I bled her, she’d belong to me in ways no contract could define.” He shook his head. “But a bruise isn’t love,and a collar isn’t forever.”

Raven stared at him. “And me?” she asked. “Is that what I am? Another possession? A second chance to get it right?”

Jaxon stepped toward her, slow, deliberate. “No,” he said. “You’re not a second chance. You’re the first choice I’ve made since her.”

That stopped her breath.

His hand rose,slowly, no command in it, and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t want to forget her,” he murmured. “But I don’t want to recreate her either.”

He searched her eyes. “I want you, Raven. Not as a substitute. Not as a shield. I want you.”

Raven’s chest tightened. This man could command her body with a word. Could reduce her to trembling with a look. But this? This quiet confession? It broke her more than any whip could.

“I need to ask you something,” she said after a moment.

He nodded.

“Did you kill her?”

Silence.

She didn’t blink.

He exhaled slowly. “No, but I let her fall.”

The room didn’t move. The air stilled.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was ragged. “She was screaming. Crying. I thought it was another tantrum. I didn’t run. I didn’t stop her. I waited. By the time I stepped outside… she was already gone.”

Raven reached for him then, without thinking

Not with lust. Not with need. With empathy. She pressed her hand to his chest, feeling the storm inside him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For telling me the truth.”

His arms wrapped around her. Not tightly. Not possessively. Just enough to say I’m still here.

They lay together on the velvet chaise in the far corner of the room, his head against her stomach, her fingers in his hair. The fireplace was down to glowing embers. The storm outside had softened to a drizzle.

Raven’s voice broke the silence. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Jaxon didn’t lift his head. “I am one.”

She smiled, bittersweet. “No. You’re flesh. You’re blood. You’re fire, Jaxon. You’re alive. You just forgot how to feel it.”

“And you?” he asked. “What are you?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’m the knife that carves the truth out of you.”

He laughed, quiet and real. “You know what scares me about you?” he said, sitting up slowly.

“What?”

“You see through me. Every layer. Every lie. You don’t kneel because I command it. You kneel because you choose to.”

She leaned in, lips brushing his. “And that terrifies you?”

He nodded. “Because it means you can leave.”

A beat so silence as he contemplated asking the next question.

“Will you?”

She thought about it. Thought about the photo. The mark. The dead woman with the fierce eyes.

Then she kissed him slowly, deeply and with certainty.

“I’ll stay,” she whispered, “as long as you keep showing me the man beneath the mask.”

He didn’t speak, just pulled her onto his lap and kissed her back with the kind of hunger that didn’t come from lust, but from fear. The fear of losing what he never expected to have.

Later, when they lay in the dark, Raven whispered, “Do you want me to be yours?”

He turned his head to her. “You already are.”

She traced the bite on her thigh, now fading. “Then mark me again, but not with pain or fear.”

“With what then?”

“Memory.”

And so he did, with his fingers, his mouth and his voice. Not fast or rough, but with reverence. As if this time, he needed her more than she needed him. And when she came, sobbing his name into the sheets, he followed, silent, trembling, human.

Not the Don. Not the Devil. But the man who finally let the mask fall.

In her journal that night, Raven wrote: The bruise is fading. The ghost is not. Tonight he let me touch the wound beneath his power and in that moment, I saw the real Jaxon Morreau. Not the criminal. Not the king. But the man who watched a woman fall, and never forgave himself.

He marked his with teeth. He marks me with trust. And trust is the hardest scar to wear.