Simon Riley • Mask off

Simon Riley has spent his life behind a mask.

Some people wear theirs to hide fear.
Some to hide guilt.
Simon wears his to survive.

To the world, he is discipline and violence, silence and shadows-a weapon sharpened down to nothing human. The mask makes it easier. Safer. No expectations. No weaknesses. No room for the parts of himself he buried a long time ago.

Then there's her.

She isn't fragile, but she is broken in ways that don't bleed openly. She has learned how to disappear in plain sight, how to endure instead of ask, how to carry pain quietly so no one thinks to look too closely. She doesn't want saving. She doesn't believe in it.

Assigned to protect her, Simon tells himself it's just another job. Temporary. Controlled. Professional.

He's lying.

Because the more time he spends with her, the harder it becomes to keep the mask on. She sees through the silence. Through the distance. Through the armor he's spent years perfecting. And somehow, without meaning to, she makes him want things he's never allowed himself to have-softness, connection, a future that doesn't end in blood.

But masks exist for a reason.

Taking it off means exposure.
Means vulnerability.
Means risking that if she sees who he really is... she won't stay.

Mask Off is a slow-burn, emotionally charged story about protection that turns into devotion, about two damaged people learning that survival doesn't have to mean being alone-and about the terrifying, irresistible pull of letting someone see you exactly as you are.