Beneath a velvet mask

Name: Beneath a velvet mask
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Tamuz14

Romance | Ongoing

5.0

Comment(s)

View

Chapters

A sensual and suspenseful story, Beneath a Velvet Mask takes place in the gilded shadows of Paris, where political corruption and desire collide and nothing is as it seems. By day, Maison Rouge is a well-known charity foundation that serves as a facade for Europe's elite power brokers. It transforms into a shady palace of pleasure at night, ruled by velvet masks and whispered contracts. Isadora Vellore, elegant and elusive, wears many faces-socialite, benefactor, seductress, spy. Isadora is scarred by the mysterious death of her brother Lucien and forced to choose between duty and passion. Her lover, Damien Leclair, is a sharp-eyed agent with secrets of his own, tasked with monitoring her while hiding his heart. Dravoux, the icy and authoritative second-in-command at Maison Rouge, is by her side. He is loyal to the house but craves power. Mikhail Ardent, Isadora's godfather and the political puppet master who controls both governments and hearts, is lurking in the shadows. The masks begin to fall, however, when a rising courtesan named Valentina Morel discovers a secret ledger linking the pleasure house to covert arms deals and Sebastian Pyker, Damien's bitter rival, reappears with blood on his hands. Pursued by journalists like Aria Wolfe, haunted by the ghost of her brother Lucien, and torn between love and loyalty, Isadora must uncover the truth-before it destroys her. In a city where every rooftop is a battleground and every silk-draped room hides a secret, can love survive beneath the velvet mask? Masked elites dance among whispering courtesans at a lavish masquerade gala at Maison Rouge, complete with crystal-dripping chandeliers. Isadora Vellore oversees the event, her expression poised, but her mind racing-tonight marks the tenth anniversary of Lucien's presumed death. In a wolf mask, Damien Leclair appears. Their chemistry crackles as they share a cryptic dance. Unspoken tension simmers: they were lovers, and still are-secretly. In the shadows, Dravoux watches, marking names of guests tied to illicit finances. He subtly threatens Valentina Morel, warning her not to "climb too fast." Isadora gets a note in her glove that reads, "Lucien lives." By day, Maison Rouge operates as a charity advocating for displaced refugees, thanks to its spotless PR team-led covertly by Mikhail Ardent. The foundation's finances are questioned by independent journalist Aria Wolfe, but she encounters challenges at every turn. Damien meets with Sebastian Pyker, another government agent. Their rivalry is bitter-Sebastian accuses Damien of being "too involved" with Isadora. In a cold, sterile government HQ beneath the Ministry, Pyker presents a dossier: Maison Rouge is a hub for laundering arms money. While seducing a Czech diplomat, Valentina discovers a secret ledger. She is terrified by the names she sees, including Mikhail Ardent's. Aria watches Valentina pass the ledger to an unidentified individual as she follows her through the back alleys of Paris. Aria attempts to take pictures but is caught. Isadora and Damien meet on a private rooftop. He demands she stop interfering; she accuses him of spying on her. They kiss, forbidden, desperate, and hungry. He nearly tells her the truth about Lucien but stops. Back at Maison Rouge, Dravoux corners Valentina. He tells her in a chilling BDSM sequence that loyalty is the only safe word. Mikhail warns Isadora: "Control the narrative, or it will control you." A message arrives from a Balkan nation ravaged by war. A grainy picture of Lucien Vellore alive, chained, underground is attached. Isadora turns to Damien for help. They argue over trust. She learns he's been ordered to take her down if she crosses the line. Flashback: ten years ago, Lucien's "death" was a political cover-up involving a failed operation Mikhail authorized. It was explained to Isadora as a suicide. Aria infiltrates the government HQ via stolen credentials. She finds Lucien's early surveillance footage. A strategy emerges: seize Lucien, expose Mikhail, and, if necessary, burn Maison Rouge. Maison Rouge becomes a chessboard. Isadora seduces an arms dealer who funded Lucien's imprisonment. Valentina switches sides to help her. Under the estate, Pyker conducts a raid on a hidden BDSM chamber. He finds blood, chains, ledgers-and Dravoux, who escapes through a secret tunnel. Damien is caught between duty and love. He was supposed to arrest Isadora, but he turns on Pyker and accuses him of espionage. Aria broadcasts a secret stream exposing Maison Rouge's double life. The city erupts in scandal. Isadora prevents Mikhail from fleeing Paris at the airport. Under a blood-red sky, Isadora and Damien launch a rooftop rescue. As they retrieve Lucien from a guarded safehouse, explosions shake the skyline. Dravoux makes one last offer: if she joins him, she can lead a new empire of shadows. She declines. Lucien, weak but alive, exposes Mikhail's entire network before collapsing in Isadora's arm

Thriller Suspense Modern Betrayal Secret relationship Sexual slave Scheming Attractive

Chapter 5 Whispers beneath crimson walls

06-10 21:48

Chapter 1 Rooftop promise and velvet

Chapter 1

Rooftop Promises and Velvet

Shadows The first time Isadora Vellore saw Damien Leclair, he was bleeding-just a little-from his left eyebrow, a silk mask askew on his face, and a Glock tucked into the back of his tuxedo trousers like it belonged there. It was midnight inside Maison Rouge, the infamous estate wrapped in velvet, decadence, and secrets. Paris was sleeping outside. Inside, danger whispered through candlelight and whispered moans.

Isadora was leaning on the balustrade of the second-floor gallery, champagne flute forgotten in her hand, watching the masked guests sway between opium-laced kisses and cruel delight. Her black dress clung to her like a second skin, her heels taller than sin, and her heart heavy with the burden of double lives-foundation heiress by day, mistress of secrets by night.

She didn't want to find anyone. Not until Damien dragged a man by the collar as he stumbled through the crimson-draped archway below. A second later, he let go, turned, and looked up-and their eyes locked.

His were ice grey, sharp as broken glass, but when they met hers, they softened like dawn cracking through storm clouds. The room spun slower. Intriguingly, she tilted her head and touched the silk choker at her neck with her fingers. She descended like a black swan. He straightened. No words were exchanged as she approached. He didn't even bother to explain the blood. That impressed her. "Trouble?" She inquired, turning her attention to the unconscious man at his feet. "Only if you consider truth an inconvenience," he replied, voice deep, low, the kind that wraps around your bones.

She smiled and extended her hand. "Always." "Isadora."

He took it, kissed it without breaking her gaze. "Damien Leclair. I believe I've been looking for you."

That was how it started-not with flowers or sweet lies, but with sweat, shadows, and stolen glances.

They met again a week later on the rooftop of an aging cathedral overlooking the Seine. Paris glittered like a thousand lies told by candlelight. Overhead, a drone hovered. She had followed a courier from the Ministry of Culture, tracking a forged Rembrandt that led her to Damien-again.

This time, he wasn't bleeding. He was smiling.

"Following me, Isadora?" he said, perched on the edge of the stone gargoyle.

"I like "investigating."" "I thought you were a philanthropist."

"I thought you were dead."

He stood, walked toward her. Their silhouettes touched before their bodies did.

"Are you not a part of this world?" he asked, touching her cheek with the back of his gloved hand. "The velvet lies, the silk cages. The masks."

She didn't flinch. "So are you."

"I kill for the government. Your charity tempts them. We're the same sin in different robes."

She took his hand, pressed it to her chest. "Then undress me."

Their first time wasn't sweet. It was thunder and ache and silence wrapped in urgency. Beneath the chandeliers of Maison Rouge's hidden chamber, far from prying eyes and polished alibis, they found truth in touch.

Damien pulled her close like a man drowning. She gave him a kiss like she was on fire. Clothes were ripped, bitten, discarded. Her nails made crescent-shaped cuts in his back. He bruised her hips with longing. They said each other's names like confessions-Isadora like prayer, Damien like surrender.

"You feel like vengeance," he whispered into her throat.

"You feel like coming home," she gasped.

Afterward, they lay together on velvet sheets, the sound of a whip cracking somewhere below them, but here-here was stillness.

He brushed her hair back from her damp face. "Why me?"

Broken and naked, she looked at him. "Because you don't blink when you see me." Damien leaned in, resting his forehead against hers. "I was never afraid of fire."

In the weeks that followed, they met in shadows. She saw him smile as he opened the pocket of a traitor at an underground BDSM club lit by red lanterns. She gave him encrypted flash drives that were hidden in designer perfume bottles in the sterile silence of the intelligence headquarters. On the backstreets of Montmartre, they chased ghosts, dodging bullets and past sins.

They also remained in constant contact with one another. In the rooftop garden above Maison Rouge, under the soft hum of security drones and a moon fat with secrets, Isadora once told him, "We are both knives. But together-we are the sheath."

He kissed her then, slow, reverent. "Then let me stay inside you. Forever."

She allowed him to. Because Isadora Vellore and Damien Leclair discovered love not in purity but in the openness of sin in a city where power was masked by pleasure and where corruption and couture danced together. Beneath the velvet opulence of Maison Rouge, power danced not in broad daylight but in whispers, glances, and the shimmer of silk-cloaked secrets. Isadora Vellore, the enigmatic protégée of one of the nation's most feared strategists and its most coveted pawn, was at the center of its glitz and glamour. Groomed with elegance and sharpened by silence, Isadora wore her beauty like a weapon-an echo of her past, a mask for her future.

Her godfather, Mikharl Ardent, played chess with men's lives from shadowed balconies of the Palais d'Or. A political puppet master with the temperament of a scholar and the ruthlessness of an old-world tyrant, he had raised Isadora not as a daughter, but as a masterpiece. Her role was never meant to be personal. Yet somewhere between the gilded cages of Maison Rouge and the teeth of war, Isadora began to think for herself.

Damien Leclair, by contrast, was the storm to her still waters. A senior agent in the state's clandestine security network, he operated with surgical precision and a moral compass that bent only when broken. He was drawn to Isadora, even though he had no faith in her or a full understanding of her. Their alliance was forged not by choice, but by a mission that neither could control: to dismantle a ring of political seduction masquerading beneath Maison Rouge's crimson drapes.

At Damien's side, and often behind him like an ominous shadow, stood Sebastian Ryker, a fellow agent with a talent for sabotage and a grudge that burned slow and deep. Damien and Sebastian had once been partners. Now, their rivalry was the stuff of whispered legend in intelligence corridors. Where Damien pursued with logic, Sebastian pursued with blood. Where Damien sought truth, Sebastian only sought advantage. And Isadora, ever the mystery, was a battlefield neither man could fully claim.

Commanding Maison Rouge with ruthless grace was Céline Dravoux, its second-in-command and a former mistress of kings. Céline's loyalty was less to the nation than to the balance of power-and perhaps to Isadora, whom she viewed with a blend of maternal indulgence and pragmatic suspicion. Céline knew the game well: women were weapons, and the world paid best for obedience wrapped in charm.

Among the rising stars in Maison Rouge was Valentina Morel, a courtesan whose allure threatened even Isadora's reign. Young, hungry, and dangerously intelligent, Valentina understood that seduction was not just an art-it was currency. She danced her way into the confidences of ministers, smugglers, and the dying, but her true ambitions lay further north-in the seat of government, or perhaps on the grave of those who stood in her path.

Meanwhile, outside the palace walls, Ana Wolfe, an intrepid journalist with a nose for buried truths, stitched together fragments of scandal. Ana had previously been silenced for exposing a false affair. She was now unrelenting, unafraid, and far too close to the Vellore legacy as she operated from the margins. Ana believed Isadora knew more than she let on. She was right.

And then there was the name no one dared speak too loudly: Lucien Vellore. Presumed dead in the riots of Vallon three years ago, Isadora's elder brother was once a rising military officer with dreams of reform. He had been mourned, archived, and forgotten when he disappeared. But recent tremors suggested he might be alive-and working against everything Mikharl Ardent had built.

Isadora felt his shadow in every mirror, in every coded letter left unsigned. She had buried a brother. But perhaps she had only buried the idea of him. Now, as storm clouds gathered over the Republic's fragile peace, she had to ask herself: If Lucien returned, would he still be a brother-or a rival?

In this game of secrets and seduction, there were no innocents. only members. And the rules were always changing.

The air inside Maison Rouge pulsed with masked mystery, candlelight, and champagne. Amid the swirl of velvet and secrets, Isa stood like flame incarnate-commanding, untouchable, draped in red silk. Her eyes locked with a masked guest near the staircase, a man who moved with the calm precision of someone used to danger. Damien. Unbeknownst to her, he was no mere guest but an undercover agent sent to infiltrate the club and uncover ties to a long-dormant criminal network. But Isa, with her sultry confidence and cryptic smile, unraveled his composure with a glance.

Their connection was instant. Electric. She circled him like a predator, pressing past his defenses. They collided in the opulent parlor's shadows, first with words and then with mouths, testing boundaries that neither of them could define. She whispered wicked riddles; he answered with silence and touch. For one brief hour, Damien forgot the mission. He gave in.

Later that night, as the gala waned and laughter faded, Isa returned to her private dressing room. Her skin still burned from his touch. However, when she saw the red envelope beneath her mirror, she felt the chill. Inside: a single sentence, demanding the client list of Maison Rouge, or else. The signature wasn't a name-but a crescent carved through a star. etched into the ashes of their previous existence is the very thing her mother used to be afraid of. Suddenly, everything Isa had built-her sanctuary of secrets, seduction, and silence-was under siege. And someone from the past wanted her destroyed.

Damien, meanwhile, uncovered a classified file linking Isa to a shadow pol