Dark Façade: The Evil Behind The Mask
Book Three Word Count: 23K (est)| Chapter 20-29
Synopsis: Maxine, an AA graphic designer who has no life, realizes that her best friend and coworker disappeared the day after telling Maxine she was going out on a hot date with a man she met on the Internet. Now it's up to Maxine to find out what happened to Lisa and who was this mysterious man, who emailed his picture to her friend that Maxine just can't stop thinking about.
As the saga continues, Maxine infiltrates The Masquerade, an underground secret society of wealthy men who believe money can buy everything, including treating women however they please. When her membership application is accepted, Maxine braces herself for a weekend where she will have to spend without any contact with the outside world. What Maxine never thought to encounter was the mysterious stranger was now … her master. Maxine breaks the rules determined to find Lisa. Yet she never expected punishment like this.
Vowing never to return to the “Society” Maxine tries to return to normal life, but longs for the taste and touch of Philippe, despite the evil that was done to her. Though she tries to deny her needs, Maxine struggles daily to concentrate on the most important project that could escalate her career, all the while STILL trying to find out what happened to Lisa. She prays Philippe isn’t involved in her friend’s disappearance.
With nowhere else to go, Maxine realizes she has to return to the “chamber” one… last… time…
ALREADY PUBLISHED
Book One: Dark Façade: Let The Party Begin
Book Two: When The Dark Comes
COMING SOON
Book Four: Dark Façade – Let The Party End
DARK FAÇADE © 2007 Sylvia M. Hubbard
Published by HubBooks Literary Services
Cover design by @PaytonLeaf
Photography Unknown frm iStockPhoto
All rights reserved.
Dark Façade III © 2013 digital Sylvia Hubbard
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
License Notes
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For information address:
Sylvia Hubbard
PO Box 43439, Detroit, MI 48243
Visit her website at:
http://SylviaHubbard.com
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was going to leave some words here begging you to open your mind like I did in book two, but at this point, if you have gotten this far with I know you’re here for the ride ahead.
Thank you in advance for supporting my literary endeavors.
Now sit back and enjoy … Dark Façade…
Your Author,
Sylvia Hubbard
CHAPTER 20
“Count to twenty and take the blindfold off,” an unfamiliar male voice ordered.
Maxine heard a door close and a heavy engine take off while she was counting, but she wasn’t sure where they had left her. Soon as she reached twenty, she snatched the blindfold off and looked frantically around. She was standing in the foyer of her apartment building. Her bag was at her feet.
Reaching inside the bag her fingers trembling from the shock of the nights events, Maxine found her keys to her home and the other items that were packed that she had been allowed to bring. Her gold key and mask were gone.
Her legs began to quiver and she fell to her knees to weep in relief as her mind began to recap what happened after Devon had left her with that ominous threat.
They had made her lie on that bed for what seemed like hours in the darkness and she had been afraid that more men would come in to rape her. She was a hot mess when a door finally opened and someone came in and put a blindfold on her extra tight.
As each cuff was released, her wounds were tended and she knew this person was not there to rape or hurt her. She wanted to ask who it was, but she didn’t, but for some reason she thought she smelled Philippe nearby.
She convinced herself she was delusional because of everything that had happened and cursed herself for imagining him because deep down inside she wanted to be with him so badly.
Philippe never even bothered to make an appearance to console her. Why should he?
Those women were right. The masters were only there to use their bodies as they saw fit. Philippe didn’t care about the emotional and mental scares this whole experience had caused. He was rich and powerful and a son of a bitch she swore she never wanted to lay eyes on again!
Maxine remembered crying even though as the person tended her wound was not hurting her, but she still cried.
“I want to go home,” she mumbled, feeling very ashamed and dirty. She hadn’t felt like that in so long and the last time she had felt like that she knew that her feelings had caused her to do horrible things to herself.
She was helped on with a thick robe and someone put shoes on her feet. Someone very large picked her up off of the metal bed and carried her somewhere. They were gentle with her even though she was highly tensed. She sobbed and felt like she couldn’t breathe. Whoever was holding her suddenly stopped walking. His grip tightened as if in a small way he was comforting her. After a moment, when she could control her crying the person started walking again.
His strides were longer as if he was in a hurry and then she was set on some carpet. They were outside only for a brief moment and then she heard doors closed and a heavy engine start. She had to be inside of a van by what she felt. She didn’t pull her blindfold off. She felt like she could have, but she didn’t. When the engine stopped, she waited for the doors to open and then she was carried yet again.
This was the same body that had carried her originally and she relaxed in the arms comforted by the knowledge this person wasn’t going to hurt her. She wanted to ask the person where was Philippe and where was she going, but she didn’t.
Maxine kept quiet the whole time. The voice finally said something, but only to make her count.
Getting up off the floor, she ran up the steps to her apartment and locked the door as if that would keep them out.
Immediately, Maxine tore off the dress robe that the person in the dark had put on her and then ran to the bathroom to take a hot scorching bath. She didn’t care that she scrubbed almost a layer of skin off. Maxine had emotional grim that she just didn’t feel she could get it all off.
Visions of Mr. Gallagher over her repeated in her head. Sweat dripping off his body and her whimpering in a pillow so they wouldn’t wake Mrs. Gallagher. Tears swathed her cheeks rapidly. There was no pain, but there an internal ache. That’s how she had felt when Devon had been in her.
Of course, she wouldn’t be driven in the arms of just letting men use her like she did when she was a teenager. She remembered she would just lie there and let them do what they wanted as long as they didn’t enter her.
No kissing. Never that. She had kept her lips sacred. It was the only part of her body where she had a choice that they touched.
After a lot of therapy, Gerald had been her first kiss
. He was a sloppy kisser, not like Philippe.
Maxine immediately stopped her thoughts. What the hell was wrong with her? The man had watched her rape and had done absolutely nothing about it!
Standing in the mirror after her bath, she wiped the mirror from all the steam and stared at herself. The beautiful necklace caught her eye and she gripped it to snatch it off her neck, but she couldn’t. For some reason, she couldn’t muster the strength to yank it off.
For some reason, all she could think about was Philippe’s voice saying, “Obedience is a must.”
Maxine cried because as much as she wanted to hate Philippe, she found herself still craving his touch and proximity. She ran the water in the sink to try to wash her face, but every time she wiped her face, more tears would just come.
When she couldn’t cry anymore and the water in the sink had started to grow cold, she turned off the faucet and lean on the sink. Feeling a little weak physically from her emotional turmoil, she sat down on the edge of the bathtub and just stared into nowhere.
She wasn’t sure what to really feel at that moment.
Not really aware of how long she had sat there, her butt started to protest the hard surface and she trudged into the front room with just a towel around her body. She spotted the pouch where all her things were in still at the door where she must have subconsciously dropped when she entered her apartment. Turning the bag upside down, she let all the items fall to the floor and she fell on her knees to see if all her items had really been given back to her.
Everything seemed fine, except she saw some things in her wallet had been turned around. Her instinct was to turn them back the way they were supposed to be, but then she noticed there was a distinct weight to the wallet.
Opening the wallet where she kept her money, she gasped. Ten crisp hundred dollar bills.
She dropped the wallet to the floor looking at the wallet as it were an apparition. Leaning back, her hand brushed up against something else… her cell phone.
It was still relatively fully charged since it had been on complete silence all weekend. Now in her hands, she turned it on. No one had called and no one had texted her.
Her other hand went to the necklace firmly clasped around her neck. The chain didn’t break, even when she tried her best to pull it off.
Call the police, her conscious told her. You have proof you were there. Show them the necklace.
Standing slowly so she wouldn’t get dizzy, she stared down at the keypad looking at the nine and the one repeatedly as if her mind could do the dialing. Her hands begin to tremble so much, the phone dropped to the floor.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there just staring at the phone on the floor.
* * ***
Three cups of green tea finally relaxed her and instead of going back into the front where the phone laid on the floor, she trudged to her room. As she sat on the bed, dry sobs came to her and she laid down curling into a ball clutching the chain.
Pulling the pillow around her body, she tried to ignore the fact that she wished Philippe was there to give her that blanketed security.
‘Maybe he was being punished to watch?’ her conscious tried to reason.
‘Maybe you’re as stupid as you were when you were a teenager,’ she lashed out at herself.
Sleeping was more work than she thought. Often at night, she awoke out of her dreams thinking about the moments she had shared in that chamber and waking up hating Philippe for making her feel that way.
In the middle of the night, she fixed herself another green tea to calm her nerves and felt the weekend had been surreal.
Yet, waking up in the morning yet again from the dreams of those pleasurable moments with Philippe and once again hating him, she crawled out of bed for another cup of green tea. The only real indication that she had been at some strange sex club was the chain still around her neck. This time she gave a yank with all her might and was not able to get the chain off. She couldn’t even cut it off.
Going into the living room, she saw her items still on the floor. Getting her work bag and purse, she put the necessary items she needed, including the wallet full of money and the last thing she picked up was the cell phone.
Looking at the screen she again thought about calling the cops. Standing up, with the phone, she looked away slightly at the mirror and saw the chain around her neck. The agreement she made for secrecy with Carla and just the whole society as a whole crossed her mind.
Yet, she should tell because she was violated by Devon, without her permission…
Or had she given him her permission by stepping into that dark place? Had she given the society her acquiesce to use her body as they saw fit?
If she were like Carla and Anna, she would just have accepted this life. Accepted the rape and never told anyone.
Maybe Anna was right; Maxine wasn’t like them. She had other means to pay for her life, whereas they didn’t.
If Maxine told, their lives would be over. Their way of life; their means.
Putting the phone in her purse, she went back in her bedroom to find her clothes.
She found a blouse she could button all the way up and not look like a crazy nun, with a blue blazer and dress pants to match. There was still some darkness to her cheek, so she decided to wear her hair down to bring a shadow over her face, along with a sprinkling of makeup to throw people off.
When she opened her apartment door and paused. For some reason she looked down at the ground thinking maybe there would be a black box at her feet. Stepping outside, she realized at that point she had driven to the secret location in her car, but had been dropped off last night.
Instead of calling a cab, she decided to just catch the bus to work.
Yet walking outside, her car was parked in front of her apartment as if she had driven it home. Her keys were in her bag and she paused for a moment after she started it up. Usually there was this strange whir in the engine she had never gotten a mechanic to look at and the radio had been broken a long time ago.
So why was there no whir to the engine anymore, a brand new CD/HD Radio installed and someone had detailed the inside her car so cleaned she could eat off the floor. Had they gotten the keys to her car?
Getting out of the car, she went to the back of the car. Her usual dented rusted bumper had been replaced by a new one and… were those brand new tires on her car?
Getting back in the car she noticed a sticker was on the top left hand corner of her window with the name of an auto shop.
She started on her way to the office, but pulled to the side of the road and took out her phone. She Googled the name of the auto shop and saw it wasn’t too far from her job. Red’s Auto & Detail.
She could understand towing the car home, but she couldn’t understand someone fixing and cleaning the car.
The auto shop was located in an old industrial part of Detroit and just as she pulled in front of the business, a shiny red tow truck was pulling up as well and a black lean built guy with red hair jumped out.
He immediately saw he and a weird smirk was on his lips as if he knew her.
Getting out her car, she approached him. “Hi.”
He looked at her car and then back at her. “Problem ma’am?”
“Do you know me?”
“Nah, I know your car, though. Was up all night with that bitch. That’s why I asked if you had a problem?”
She looked back at her car and then at him. He still had that weird smirk on his lips as if he had done something salacious. Maxine was starting to feel uncomfortable all of a sudden.
It was rare for African American’s to have red hair and he had these ominous dark eyes as if he were hiding a secret… a very filthy secret.
“Who told you to fix my car?”
“Philippe. Called me in the middle of the night and asked if I’d tow the bitch to my shop. Said you needed it back before seven and he paid me for my time.”
Feeling very angry now, she asked, “How much did you
charge him?” She took out her checkbook ready to write down any amount he said and be damn all her savings.
He looked her up and down. “That ain’t none of your business.”
“It’s my car and I don’t want that son of bitch to pay for anything. I’ll pay you whatever it cost and you can give him his money back.”
“Nope,” he said casually.
She couldn’t believe he had refused her offer and she decided she maybe needed to get personal. Outstretching her hand, she said, “I’m Maxine. And you are?”
He looked down at her hand as if she were handing him something foreign. Making no attempt to touch her in anyway, he said, “I’m Red. This here’s my business and I fixed your car if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”
“I thank you for your work on my car, Red,” she said crinkling her nose at the ‘nickname’ he gave her. “But I insist you let me pay for the repairs.”
“That’d be insulting Philippe and I’m not about to insult the man that’s gonna make me rich. This wasn’t about money.” He folded his arms over his chest clearly indicating there was nothing she could say to him to make him change his mind. “Now is there a problem with the car, ma’am?”
There was just something frightening about this man and she didn’t want to try to convince him that Philippe was a monster! Putting her checkbook away, she said, “No, there’s no problem with the car. You seemed to have fixed everything.”
“Then you have yourself a good day and be grateful you got a friend like Philippe, cause I don’t come cheap.” He winked as if that was supposed to put her at ease.
She turned around and stomped angrily to her car, but then curiosity got to her and she stomped back to Red who hadn’t moved from his stance.
“How is that son of a bitch going to make you rich?” She deliberately spoke as if that was going to be impossible.
Red only smirked even more and pointed to a large building next to his shop. “He bought me that. I’m expanding. He gave me the money I need and with my customer base along with the expansion, I’m gonna be able to make some good money.”
Dark Facade (Book Three) (Dark Facade Series) Page 1