Page 70 of The Collector
Pierre Le Grange was a fucking creep. Why didn't he go sit down? Watch like the rest of the room? He was going to get himself killed.
He didn't just watch; he lingered there like a predator. His gaze wasn't just hungry, it was invasive, as if he wasn't admiring her but sizing her up like merchandise. The elegance she'd just poured into the room now felt brittle under his eyes, as though his attention were trying to scrape something sacred off her skin. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore his presence.
Mynx's body continued its choreography into the second song, every movement trained and timed, but beneath the surface,a chill threaded through her spine. She resisted the urge to look away from Pierre—not out of submission, but defiance. She would not shrink. Not when she'd just declared herself something untouchable, off-limits.
His stare clung. The unspoken disrespect to Raven and the subtle threat to her gave her the chills.
Maybe she'd been marked by more than one person's desire tonight.
As the third song started, gunfire rang out, sharp and rapid. Screams echoed around the room. People pushed and trampled others as they tried to make their way out of the doors to the hallway of the elevator banks. A wreckage of overturned furniture lay in their wake.
Mynx froze mid-turn, the music replaced by chaos, the heat of performance overtaken by the sting of panic. She gripped the pole at the center of the stage, heart thundering, eyes scanning the stampede below. Butterflies were crushed under heels as fear coursed through the room. Their velvet and gold meant nothing now as people ran from the possible threat.
Mynx's heart stalled, suspended in the chaos. She scanned the room, desperate, until Raven's eyes found hers, just for a moment. Just long enough to ask—Are you okay?—without words.
Then he turned away.
He rushed to his father, leaving her in the spotlight, exposed and alone.
The guards moved fast. The three visitors struggled against their restraints, voices raised in protest—but no one listened. Their words vanished beneath the thunder of footsteps, the stampede of bodies fleeing the room in panic. The air pulled with urgency, with danger, with something unraveling beneath the surface.
Raven looked back—just once more. His eyes didn't offer comfort or explanation. They burned with something darker. Anger. Maybe grief. Maybe something she couldn't name.
Her heart skipped—not from fear, but from the weight of what she saw in him. The fury. The fracture.
Raven's father lay slumped across the table, head bowed as if in prayer. But there was no breath. No twitch of life. That stillness didn't belong to sleep—it belonged to silence. Final. Unyielding.
The room pulsed with chaos—guards shouting, bodies moving—but Mynx couldn't speak. Couldn't move. She stood like a ghost caught in the spotlight, the echo of Raven's glance still ringing in her chest.
Two guards stepped in, their grip firm but not cruel, guiding her offstage. She didn't resist. But inside, something twisted.
Questions fired through her mind like flares in the dark.
What would Raven become now if his father was gone, and the Kings were his to command?
And what would that change about their relationship?
She knew one thing: the man she'd just given herself to wasn't the same man who now stood over his father's body.
And whatever came next, she would have to decide if she would be walking beside a king? Or surviving the wrath of one?
The hallways of the mansion buzzed with speculation when everyone arrived home tonight. Hector's death lit a match.
Whispers spread like wildfire through the mansion—filling every corridor, every shadowed alcove. Conversations turned sharp, speculative. Alliances shifted. Thinly veiled agendassurfaced, each one a quiet bid to break away from the Kings before they collapsed under Raven's fractured leadership.
The walls themselves seemed to listen, bracing for the unraveling.
It seemed no one was immune to the chaos whispered between the performers, servants, and associates. They all seemed to be grasping at straws, trying to make sure their future wouldn't be affected by his death. Mynx heard so many different versions of what people thought happened on the ride home, she felt nauseous. It was sickening how they scrambled to look out for themselves. Forgot their alliance with the Kings.
"How many of the performers told her that Raven was a good man? Someone who would look out for them—for her. Someone she could trust. Still, not one of them seemed to be concerned for him. Or had faith enough in him to keep their best interests at heart. Change has a way of showing the true colors in people. They were all scavengers —all looking out for their own best interest. So much for loyalty, for dedication."
Mynx didn't care about the details of how Hector's death transpired. Wasn't worried about being successful at climbing the social ladder of the California underworld, or if the hierarchy worked. And maybe that was what made her different from the rest of them. She paced her room. Stopping to look out the window. Her fingernails tapped lightly on the pane.
Only Raven consumed her thoughts.
"What was he feeling—? What was he doing—? Did he need her—? Was he ok—? "
These thoughts haunted her—circling like vultures, knotting her stomach as she waited for him.
