Page 143 of Monsters Wear Crowns
“Moreau’s not going to stop,” I added. “He wants us to fall apart so he can sweep in and take everything. And I gave him exactly what he needed. He’s hoping you’ll finish what your father started.” The words landed like a stab wound to the gut.
Rafe froze.
For a long moment, the room was utterly silent. Then his voice came, low and ragged. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me.” I took a step closer, my hands shaking, but I didn’t stop. “Moreau wants you to kill me. Just like your father killed my mother. I bet that’s what this is. If you lost your shit andkilled me, you’d be destroyed. And he’d finish you off.”
He didn’t move. And when he finally spoke, his voice was a broken whisper. “I’m not my father.”
“Aren’t you?” I shot back. “Because right now, you’re looking at me like you’re trying to decide if I deserve to live.”
That did it.
The storm broke.
Rafe moved fast, and suddenly, his hands were on me, shoving me back against the nearest wall. I gasped, but there was no fear this time. Not when I saw how his face twisted. Not with rage, but pain. “Don’t,” he snarled. “Don’t youevercompare me to him.” He turned from me and suddenly exploded, grabbing the nearest monitor and smashing it against the wall. The screen cracked in his fists, sparks spitting out as glass shattered.
He didn’t stop.
Another monitor. Then another. His men tried to intervene, but one look from him sent them scattering like ghosts.
I stepped forward carefully. “Rafe…”
He turned back to me, chest heaving, blood running down his hand from the broken screen. But his eyes–his eyes weren’t just angry now.
They weredevastated.
“Tell me it meant nothing,” he said. “Lie to me if you have to. Because if it meantanything,I swear to God, Adela…”
I reached for him without thinking. “What? You’ll be abig manand rape me again?”
He looked down at me, jaw clenched, blood dripping from his palm onto the marble floor. “I don’t trust you,” he said quietly. “Not right now.”
I nodded, swallowing the burn in my throat. “I don’t trust you, either.”
He hesitated, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “But if I lose you,” he said quietly. “I’ll burn the whole fucking world down.”
I swallowed hard, my throat tight. For a long moment, hejust stared at me, and then the fight bled out of him all at once. His forehead dropped to mine, his body still shuddering with the effort of holding himself together. But the words were still there between us, sharp, ugly, and bleeding.
Just like your father killed my mother.
And in a rare moment, I saw real fear in Rafe Vaughan’s eyes. But before either of us could speak, the estate shook with another explosion. And this time, the walls cracked.
The house groaned around us, dust falling from the ceiling as the force of the blast rattled the estate again. For one terrifying second, I thought the whole place would come down on top of us. Rafe snapped back into focus first. He wrenched away from me, barking orders to his men as they scrambled to regain control. I stayed where I was, my back pressed against the wall, trying to catch my breath.
But my eyes never left him.
He was a man on the edge–pacing, furious, his voice clipped and savage as he issued commands. But there was something else underneath it. That fear I’d seen just moments before hadn’t gone away. And I knew whatever was happening right now, it wasn’t just Moreau’s attack that had him so close to breaking.It was me.
“Get them to the east perimeter,” Rafe said, his voice like a whip. “I want every entrance locked down and find out how the hell they got this close without anyone noticing.”
***
The silence after the gunfire was deafening. The house still stood, but the walls felt different–like they were holding their breath. The air smelled of smoke and blood, and though Moreau’s men had finally retreated, the damage was done.
I stood in the middle of the destroyed security room, arms wrapped around myself, listening to the distant sound of Rafe’s men clearing the grounds. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding since thefirst explosion. But it wasn’t the attack that had me shaking.It was him.
Rafe stood by the window, his back to me, speaking in low, clipped tones into his phone. I watched the tension ripple through his shoulders–his voice was calm and controlled, but his body told a different story.
