All Chapters of Shattered Mask: Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
84 chapters
CHAPTER 61
Linda stepped into the space between her children, her presence like a physical weight. She looked at Bernard with a coldness that seemed to strip the very silk from his back."This is the last time I will allow you to interrupt me, Bernard," she whispered. "The very last time. You are currently a guest in this house by the grace of my patience. If you question the menu, the hours, or the sleep schedule one more time, you will find yourself on the other side of that gate with your resume and your science. Do you understand me?"Bernard opened his mouth to retort, but he saw Robert sitting at the end of the table. Robert was not looking at him. Robert was staring at the mahogany surface, his hands gripped so tight they were white. There was a vibration of silent, explosive rage coming off the former CEO, a man who was being broken and reshaped in real time. Bernard realised, in a rare flash of self-preservation, that if his mother didn't throw him out, Robert might actually snap and
CHAPTER 62
THE NEW WAITERS AND WAITRESSESBernard, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, finally looked up. "So we are working for free? We are doing a five-hundred-person gala just to pay back people who hate us?""We are working for our lives," Linda corrected. "We are working to prove we are still viable. If tomorrow goes perfectly, the second disbursement will be larger. But for now, we are at zero. We have the food, we have the fuel, and we have each other. That is the sum total of our net worth. " Linda fired at himRobert felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He realised then that Linda was playing a game of such high stakes that a single broken plate or a late delivery wouldn't just be an embarrassment; it would be a catastrophe."The workers were going to sue," Robert muttered, more to himself than the others. "You settled to avoid the audit.""Exactly," Linda said, her voice regaining its composure. "The Rothwell Tower is a fortress of information. If there is a single crack i
CHAPTER 63
TIME TO REST; THE WORK LAY AHEADThe room went silent. Even Bernard, the king of interruptions, remained quiet, his mouth half-open as he looked from his mother to the sink full of soaking pots. There was no argument left to be had. The math was absolute, and the reality was a wall they could not climb over.Robert looked away, his jaw working as he stared at the floor. He felt a soul-crushing weight settle over him. He was being stripped of his last defence, the anonymity of the backroom. He was being forced onto the stage of his own funeral."One hour," Linda said, her tone returning to a flat, businesslike cadence as she checked her watch. "The rest period is halfway over. Eat your rice. Drink your water. Because from 7:00 PM tonight until 3:00 AM tomorrow morning, you will not sit down. You will prep, you will pack, and you will prepare your uniforms. I want the shirts bleached and the shoes polished. If we are to be the help, we will be the most impeccable help that Rothwell
CHAPTER 64
A NEW BEGINNINGThey were angry, yes, but they were also trapped. Linda’s threat was not a bluff; they knew that if they didn't show up in the lobby in sixty minutes, the gates would be locked, and they would be facing the cold reality of the street with nothing but the clothes on their backs."She has turned this house into a labour camp," Bernard muttered between mouthfuls, his voice stripped of its earlier arrogance. "We are the slaves, and she’s the overseer. And those two guys in the corner? They are the witnesses to our execution. i"Eat your rice, Bernard," Robert said, not looking up. "We need the fuel. If we collapse during the shift, she will probably just sweep us into the trash with the vegetable scraps."As the final minutes of their "rest" ticked away, the side door opened. Two women in plain grey work uniforms walked in, the day labourers Linda had hired. They looked at the three fallen socialites sitting around a prep table with bowls of rice, and for a second, a f
CHAPTER 65
THE WAITING STAFFAt 8:00 AM, the city outside was roaring to life, but inside this windowless bunker of stainless steel and white tile, time felt like it had frozen.The Smith family, along with the two weary women Linda had hired to support their thinning ranks, stood in a jagged line amidst a fortress of thermal coolers and gleaming buffet pans. The air inside the service pantry of the Rothwell Tower was clinical, smelling of industrial-grade disinfectant and the faint, lingering scent of the seared proteins they had spent the last twelve hours perfecting. They were the invisible architecture of the day’s prestige, tucked away in the insides of the building where the CEOs and heirs would never have to see the sweat that went into their "New Beginning".They were broken. There was no other word for it.The night had been a descent into a specific kind of hell that none of them, aside from perhaps the two hired labourers, had ever navigated. From 7:00 PM until the early hours of t
CHAPTER 66
THE CONTROL OF THE BOSSThe air at the summit of the Rothwell Tower was different from the air in the rest of the city. Up here, eighty storeys above the dust and the struggle of the pavement, the atmosphere was pressurised, silent, and smelled faintly of ozone and expensive cologne. It was the air of absolute autonomy.Jack sat behind a desk carved from a single slab of obsidian, his silhouette framed by a floor-to-ceiling window that offered a god-like view of the metropolis. To the world below, he had been a ghost, a driver, a man who occupied the negative space of the Smith mansion. But today, the transformation was complete.He was wearing a bespoke, midnight-blue tuxedo suit that caught the light with a subtle, predatory sheen. His shirt was a crisp, blinding white, the collar sharp enough to cut. He had a new haircut, a clean, military-tapered style that highlighted the newfound hardness in his jawline and the clarity in his eyes. He no longer looked like a man who waited f
CHAPTER 67
ORDER FROM THE APEXBelow him, in the conference room, the most powerful men and women in the country were waiting to meet the mystery heir. They were expecting a Rothwell, someone polished, someone elite, someone born into the purple. They were not expecting the man who used to open their car doors.And in the cafeteria, the Smiths were waiting. They were waiting for a New Beginning, praying for a paycheque, clutching their silver trays like shields. They didn't know that the Heir was the man they had kicked while he was down. They didn't know that the hand that would feed them was the hand they had refused to shake."Let's go, Harnes," Jack said, heading for the private elevator that led straight to the executive suites. "It is time to show the world how the hierarchy has shifted."As the elevator doors closed with a silent, expensive hiss, Jack was still grinning. The meeting was an hour away. The gala was two hours away. But for the Smiths, the nightmare they had been living
CHAPTER 68
CORPORATE SURVIVORSBernard sat in a corner, his typical bravado replaced by a catatonic stare. The Executive Leads he had boasted about yesterday felt like a fever dream now. He was beginning to realise that the towers he wanted to supervise were currently using him to move heavy trays of salmon. The wealth ladder he wanted to climb had been replaced by a service ladder, and he was on the very bottom rung.Linda, however, stood in the centre of the room, her eyes bright with a desperate, manic hope that the others couldn't fathom. She didn't see the mockery; she saw the proximity."Stop it. All of you!" Linda snapped, her voice low but fierce. "Look on the bright side. For the last seventy-two hours, we have been nothing but names on a debt ledger. We have been invisible. But today, we are in the same room as the Heir. We are the ones providing the nourishment for the most important day of their career."She paced the small space, her mind whirring. "The Heir will be there. T
CHAPTER 69
THE ECHO OF THE FALLEN CEOThe movement from the sterile, windowless pantry to the Main Cafeteria was a journey through the abrupt contrast of the Rothwell empire. Escorted by two silent security guards whose earpieces hummed with encrypted chatter, the Smiths moved their thermal units and silver chafing dishes through the wide, polished corridors. The cafeteria was a misleading term; it was a cathedral of glass and steel, designed to feed a thousand employees in a setting that would make most five-star restaurants look like fast-food joints.As they entered the space, the scale of the task hit them. The room was vast, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the skyline. To their left, long buffet lines waited to be dressed; to the right, a series of live-action cooking stations stood ready for the chefs."Stations. Now," Linda hissed, her voice a whip-crack that mobilised the group. "Robert, move the beef to the carving island. Leslie, start the arrangement of the cold appetiser
CHAPTER 70
THE ABANDONED GROUPThe Smiths moved with a synchronisation born of terror, their hands performing tasks that their minds still refused to accept. The vast glass-and-steel hall felt like a gilded cage. While they were trapped among the buffet pans and heat lamps, the true pulse of the building… the meeting of the titans… was thrumming through the ceiling directly above them.Every few minutes, the building seemed to vibrate with a low-frequency hum, the collective movement of security or perhaps the settling of the massive HVAC systems designed to keep the world’s most powerful people at a perfect 22°C. For Robert, each vibration was a reminder of the seat he no longer occupied. He was a floor below his own life, separated from his destiny by a slab of reinforced concrete and a catering apron.The status quo of their isolation was broken when the heavy service doors hissed open. The Secretary to the Chief of Staff marched in, followed by four individuals who moved with a distinct,