Page 137 of Monsters Carve Thrones

Rafe’s smile turned feral. “Welcome to your reckoning, gentlemen.” And with that, all hell was about to break loose.

The first yell came from the left. Someone had drawn a gun, a man in a gray suit near the edge of the room.Too slow.

Laura dropped him with a bullet to the throat before he could blink. She was good at that. I watched as she and Nico appeared near two of the exits. Blood sprayed across the marble floor, splattering his neighbor. Terror erupted among them, suits toppling chairs, fumbling for guns, crashing into one another like pathetic dominoes.

Kieran lit them up from the balcony above. “Overwatch engaged,” his voice crackled in my earpiece.

I didn’t blink. I raised my Glock and fired three shots into the chest of a man who once told Waylon to keep me muzzled during meetings. He gurgled and dropped, blood seeping into the expensive rug beneath him.

“Five down,” Nico’s voice came through the comms, all business. “Exit squads are in place.”

Rafe roared into the crowd like a storm god, a knife in one hand and a silenced pistol in the other. He moved with surgical wrath, dropping one man to the next.

Someone moved at the corner of my eye, and I whirled to see a man running away. I lunged, slamming the butt of my gun into the back of his head. He dropped with a loudthud, twitching. I fired once into his skull for good measure.

They had nowhere to go.

Smoke hissed through the vents. A slow mist at first. Then thicker. Nico had timed the ignition systems perfectly–enough oxygen to finish the job, but just enough pressure to keep them panicked.

“Squads in position,” Kieran reported.

I watched one of the men claw at the back door.

Laura spun him around and shot him point-blank in the face. “Like flies in a fucking jar,” she laughed. I knew she was having the time of her life, as she struggled a lot with what happened to me. She wanted nothing more than to kill the assholes who looked the other way while I was being hurt.

I spotted one of the bastards who laughed after Waylon “punished me.”

I didn’t shoot him.

Iranat him.

He turned just in time to catch the weight of my fury. I tackled him to the floor, straddled his chest, and brought the butt of my gun down again and again until his nose shattered. Until blood soaked my sleeves. Until I saw nothing but red and heard nothing but my own breath–fast, hard, andalive.

Strong hands pulled me off.

Rafe.

He turned me into his chest for a second. Just a second. Enough to say:I’ve got you, little doe.Then he let me go with a wicked smirk because there were still more to kill.

Nico was laughing somewhere over the screams. Kieran was cursing in Serbian, always a good sign. Laura tossed me another clip as I stepped over a dying man, his gold cufflinks smeared with blood.

“Eight minutes,” Rafe called. “Fire will reach this floor in eight.”

That’s when I saw the last one standing.

Tomas Parvy.

The fucker who enjoyed my slavery with Varga. He stood at the far wall, trembling, gun at his side. His blazer was torn, and he was coated in sweat.

“You,” I said, stepping over a body, blood dripping from my boots. I raised the gun and pointed it right at him. “I can’t wait to watch the life leave your fucking eyes.”

He dropped to his knees, hands up. “Please, Adela. You don’t have to–”

I shot him in the mouth. “Ido.”

And with that, it was done.

Rafe fired one last shot into the ceiling. “We’re clear,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Time to go.”