Page 71 of Monsters Wear Crowns
You are cordially invited.
Both of you.
Attached was an address of what looked to be some kind of event. 10pm. No other explanation. Just a demand and a threat.
Rafe shifted behind me. “What is it?” His voice was sharper now, awake and alert. I turned the screen toward him. He stared at it for a long moment, his face going completely still. Then he sat up, the sheets falling around his waist as he reached for his own phone.
“No,” he said flatly. “You’re not going.”
My eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a trap, Adela.” He was already dialing a number. “You’re not walking into it.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Not against this.”
I slid out of bed and moved to the closet, my frustration mounting. “You keep saying that, but you forget who I am. I’ve been running my own empire since I was twenty-two. You think I don’t know how to handle threats?”
“Not these kinds of threats.”
I grabbed a fitted black dress and slipped it on, not bothering to look at him as I spoke. “You’re forgetting one thing, Rafe.” I pulled my gun from the locked drawer, sliding it into the holster on my thigh. “I come prepared.”
When I turned back to him, his eyes were burning, not with anger, but something darker. And then, to my absolute surprise, he grinned. “Mon amour,” he muttered, his voice rough with amusement. “You really are going to be the death of me, aren’t you?”
I arched a brow. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
He sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. “Fine. We go together. But you stay by my side. You don’t speak unless I say so. You don’t move unless I tell you to. Understood?”
I smiled sweetly. “Of course.”
But we both knew I was lying.
***
The drive to the event felt like something out of a nightmare. The blacked-out car moved smoothly through the streets, but the further we went, the more my stomach knotted. Rafe sat beside me, a storm of controlled violence. He hadn’t spoken since we left the mansion–just sat there, watching the city slip by with that stony, unreadable expression.
The address led us far out of Manhattan into a part of the city I rarely visited. When the car finally stopped, I stared out the window at the building ahead. It looked like an old warehouse–abandoned, decrepit–but the line of sleek, expensive cars parked outside told a different story.
“Stay close,” Rafe said quietly, and I didn’t argue this time.
Inside, the air was thick with smoke and the low hum of conversation. It was a crowd of wealth and corruption, all glitter and darkness. Men in tailored suits, women draped in silk and diamonds, but the tension was suffocating. It wasn’t a party. It was a battleground.
The room’s attention shifted the moment we walked in. Eyes followed Rafe and, by extension, me. I kept my head high and my face calm, but my pulse hammered in my throat. The atmosphere here was wrong. Heavy.
“Rafe,” a voice called out, smooth, amused, and ice-cold.
I turned, and my stomach dropped.
Nicolas Moreau.
He smiled like a predator, his tousled blonde hair styled perfectly and brown eyes oddly mesmerizing. I swallowed hard. He wore a nice pair of khaki pants and a white button-up shirt. He was…gorgeous. Surprisingly, he appeared in his thirties. I did know that he took over from his aunt and uncle after they were murdered by an arms dealer.
“Adela Sinclair,” he said, and my blood went cold. “What an honor.”
Rafe’s body shifted closer to mine, a silent warning. “Alright, Moreau. What do you want?”
“Oh, this isn’t about what I want.” Moreau’s eyes flicked to me, and his smile widened. “It’s about what she deserves.”
