All Chapters of MASKED AND RUINED: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter One The card weighed nothing. Wren Ashby turned it over between two fingers for the hundredth time that week. Black cardstock, thick as a wedding invite, stamped with one gold number and a wax seal shaped like a crescent moon in a mask. No name. No address. No hint what it opened. It cost her three months, an expensive bottle of wine, and a favor she wasn't proud of to get it out of a source who worked catering for events he couldn't legally describe. The Undisclosed, he'd whispered, like the name alone could get him fired. You don't ask to go. You get asked. And you never talk about what happens inside. Wren smiled at him the way she smiled at every source who thought secrecy would scare her off. Perfect. Then I definitely need to see it myself. Now she stood on a dark street in the financial district at eleven at night, in a dress that cost more than her rent, a black lace mask covering everything from her hairline to her cheekbones, staring up at a building with n

Chapter ThreeWren didn't sleep.She sat on the edge of her bed at six in the morning with the ring balanced on her palm, turning it toward the gray light like a different angle might change what it said. It didn't. The letter stayed exactly where it was, small and deliberate, etched into gold that had never been near a jewelry store's clearance rack.V.Could be anything. A first name. A family name. Nothing. She told herself that three times before she stopped believing it.She thought about how he held himself in that room. Not a stranger playing a part. A man used to being the most controlled person in any space he walked into. She thought about the way he'd said, I've spent a long time not letting myself want anything the room notices, like wanting things was a discipline he'd trained out of himself. Powerful men did that. Powerful men with something to protect did that.Wren had spent a year cataloguing Alaric Voss's public life. The acquisitions. The silence. The colorless pers

Chapter FiveThe silence stretched long enough that Wren could hear the jasmine rustling, the hum of traffic six stories down, her own unsteady pulse in her ears. Nine, if that was even a name worth using anymore, stood at the railing with his phone loose in one hand, and for the first time since she'd met him, he looked less like a man in complete control and more like one who'd just watched something valuable slip through his fingers."It's not what you're thinking," he said finally."You don't know what I'm thinking." Wren stood, pulling the sheet tighter, suddenly aware of how exposed she was in every sense. "But I know what I heard. You said Ashby. Like a business problem. Like a line item.""It's a common enough name—""Don't." Sharper than she meant. Sharp enough that he stopped. "Don't sit there in a mask and lie to me about coincidence when you already know exactly who I am. You've known since the first night, haven't you? You knew my name before I ever gave it to you."He di

Chapter SevenThe photo was grainy, taken from across a street at night, unmistakable once Wren's eyes adjusted. Herself, in the black lace mask, stepping through the brass door of The Undisclosed. Timestamped. Geotagged. Already circulating on a financial gossip account with an alarmingly large following.Who's the mystery woman slipping into the city's most secretive members' club? Sources say a certain reclusive tech billionaire has been seen in the same building on the same nights. Details to come."Where did this come from?" Alaric's voice had gone flat, controlled in a way that felt different from his usual composure. A man bracing for impact, not managing a room."I don't know yet," Camille said. "It went up twenty minutes ago. Legal's already looking at takedown options, but Alaric, this account has ties to Grant Whitfield's outlet. If this is coming from inside their network""Jonah Pruitt," Wren said quietly. Both of them looked at her. "A freelancer who works with Whitfiel

Chapter NineThe article was worse than the headline promised. Wren read it twice in the back of a cab, Theo's folder clutched in her lap like it might slip away if she loosened her grip, and felt something in her chest go cold with every paragraph.Sourced to an unnamed "individual close to the company." It painted Alaric as calculating, vindictive, a man who allegedly told colleagues off the record that acquiring Ashby Communications wasn't enough, that he wanted the Ashby name broken beyond repair. No mention of the merger collapse fifteen years ago. No mention of the leak. No mention, unsurprisingly, of Camille Renard's name anywhere in the piece.It was, Wren realized, a story built to protect exactly one person by sacrificing two others."She's fast," Theo muttered, scrolling his own phone, grim. "Faster than I expected. She had this written and waiting. She just needed an excuse to publish.""The photograph," Wren said. "Of me leaving the club. That's the excuse.""Maybe. Or sh