Page 63 of Monsters Carve Thrones

He finally looked at me then, and there was no judgment in his eyes. “Sometimes… horrific things bring people together.”

I paused, narrowing my eyes a little. His tone was quiet. I pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack on the counter and strode toward the balcony door. “Not me,” I muttered. “Adelahas my heart. My fucking soul. There won’t be another woman for me. Not in this life.”

He didn’t argue. Just nodded again, but his eyes drifted back toward the bedroom.

“Go wake her,” I said, opening the balcony door with a soft click. “We need to move soon. We’re visiting Stepan today–one of Waylon’s former suppliers. Might know where he’s keeping her.”

“Got it,” he said, and turned.

I stepped outside. The morning air was cool, the sun barely above the skyline. The city smelled like car exhaust and burnt coffee. I lit my cigarette, dragging the smoke deep into my lungs. It burned in that comforting way–sharp enough to make me feel alive again.

Beside me, through the cracked bedroom window, I could hear Nico’s low and calm voice as he woke her. “Laura. Time to get up.”

A beat of silence.

Then her voice, soft and raspy, laced with sleep. “Okay… I’m up.”

I let out a breath through my nose, a quiet smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. There was something in the way he spoke to her. And something in the way she answered. Like a thread had formed between them in the middle of all this chaos.

I ground the cigarette out against the railing and turned back toward the room.

Chapter 12

Stepan lived in a penthouse in Old Praga. It looked normal enough from the outside, but I knew he was a man who dealt poison behind false smiles and triple-locked doors.

We blew through the entrance.

My pulse was fucking electric. Oxy humming through my blood like molten syrup, dulling the aches, sharpening the rage. I’d popped two before we left the car–one for the pain, the other for the madness. Now, they were both taking hold.

Nico shoved the door open, and Kieran led the charge, gun raised. I followed right behind, my blade already in hand. Stepan tried to run, but it was no use against me.

I tackled him to the floor before he made it to the hallway. We crashed into a glass table, shards exploding around us. He screamed like a goddamn child, clawing at my arm as I pinned him. For being a man in his fifties, he put up a fight.

“Don’t–don’t kill me, please–!”

“Why not?” I growled, my face inches from his. “I know you’re a man who enjoys violence, Stepan.”

His blue eyes widened. “R-Rafe?”

“That’s right, you fuck,” I hissed, lifting and slamming him back into the floor, his blonde hair still perfectly in place from all of the gel in it.

“Shit, okay, okay–”

“Tell me where Waylon’s point of operation is.Now.”

“I, I don’t know–”

Wrong answer.

I slammed the hilt of my knife into his mouth. Teeth cracked. Blood sprayed. He coughed and whimpered, red bubbling from his lips.

“Rafe,” Laura barked behind me. “He might not actually–”

I laughed. It was a loud and reckless sound that reverberated through the quiet room. I laughed like I’d lost my mind. Because I had. “He knows. Theyalways fucking know.” I raised the knife and drove it into his thigh. He screamed, the sound bouncing off the walls.

“Talk!” I snarled. “Where. Is. He?”

“I–I swear to God, I…I just supplied him with girls last year. I don’t know anything else.”