Page 153 of A Smile Full of Lies
I could’ve been anyone. Just a stranger in our house. Just a masked man waiting to strike. But I wasn’t. And I knew the second she felt the shift.
She didn’t understand it. Not yet. But her breath hitched.
When she finally turned — slow, cautious, bracing for whatever came next — her gaze swept the room, landed on me, and stayed. Recognition flared in her wide, startled eyes.
I watched the panic bloom. The confusion. The slow, spiraling terror of realizing something had gone very, very wrong.
Her mind scrambled for answers. Her lips parted. Her hand rose; half-defensive, half-reaching.
Me? I tilted my head, just like I did in my MaskTok thirst trap videos. Just like always.
She knew me. Notme, but him. Nox Obscura.
“I told you we had unfinished business, sweetheart. I told you we’d see each other again. I meant it.”
The mask. The movements. The distorted voice thanks to the modulator adhered to the inside of the mask. It hit her wrong. Twisted everything.
She didn’t understand why, but her bones did.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The silence stretched long and taut between us. And I let it.
I let her take it all in — the gloves, the posture, the faint glow of the mask catching in the curve of her pupils.
I raised my hand. Curled my fingers. Slow. Deliberate. A MaskTok performance tailored just for her.
The illusion fractured. Her breath caught. Her body screamed at her to run, and I smiled behind the mask, watching her unravel in real time.
Finally, finally, she was exactly where she was supposed to be. Right in front of me. Seconds away from the fall.
Let our little game finally begin, my sweet little prey.
Chapter
Thirty-Six
ROS
No one answeredwhen I called out for Knox.
The second I stepped deeper into the house, I felt it. A shift in the air. The kind of instinctual, bone-deep awareness that sent a jolt of primal fear straight through my veins.
I definitely wasn’t alone in here.
The house was dark, save for the faint silver glow of the streetlamp bleeding through the curtains. Shadows stretched long and jagged across the floorboards. The silence pressed in on my ears, deafening in its intensity.
And then I heard it. A faint whisper of movement.
My pulse slammed into my ribs. A sharp, painful jolt of adrenaline shot down my spine. Every nerve in my body went rigid, locking me in place.
The sound had been subtle — the barest shift of weight against the floor — but it was there. And I wasn’t imagining it.
My breath hitched. Slowly, I turned my head, scanning the darkness, heart pounding so hard it echoed in my skull.
And then I saw him. Sitting in the chair across the room. Waiting. Neon purple cut through the darkness, glowing softly.
The goddamn mask.
The mask I’d seen in those thirst trap videos on social media. The mask that Nox Obscura wore the night he chased me through Knox’s family’s mansion.
