Page 26 of Monsters Carve Thrones (Crowned Monsters Duet #2)

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. They always 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.”

“Does he still deal in trafficking?” I asked, my heart pounding against my ribcage.

“No, man,” Stepan sputtered. “What I sent him was his last deal. He moved on to drugs and laundering after that. He still bought a couple from me, but didn’t sell them out.”

My jaw clenched so hard it nearly broke. “So you must know of his location.”

“No, Vaughan, I don’t–”

I drove the knife in again, this time higher. His scream turned to a gurgle. The blood soaked my shirt, warm and sticky.

Behind me, I could hear Nico mutter, “Jesus Christ.”

Kieran didn’t say anything. He never did when I got like this.

And Laura…her breathing was unsteady. I didn’t have to turn around to know she was shaking. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t feel sorry. Not when Adela was still in that bastard’s hands. Not when she was undoubtedly being abused and raped.

I grabbed the man by the collar and yanked his face toward mine, blood leaking from his lips. “Tell me one more time you don’t know anything. Lie to me again.”

“I don’t–”

I embedded the blade into his throat and twisted, silencing him for good. The body jerked, then stilled beneath me. My hands were soaked, chest heaving. The floor beneath me was slippery with blood.

No one spoke.

I stood slowly, panting, adrenaline humming like a second heartbeat in my ears. My shirt was ruined, my skin sticky and warm with red. I turned toward them, chest rising and falling.

Laura stared at me like she didn’t recognize the man in front of her. Her eyes were wide, mouth slightly open, hands trembling. Kieran kept his expression locked down, but his knuckles were white on his gun. And Nico…Nico looked away first.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, laughing softly. “Guess he didn’t know shit,” I muttered.

No one laughed with me. Fuck it. I was already dead inside anyway.

I changed in silence. The bastard had a closet full of expensive shit–designer button-downs, pressed linen, tailored jackets.

I grabbed a black tee, plain and soft, and yanked it over my head after wiping most of the blood from my skin with his silk bedsheets.

Fitting. Let him be buried in the mess he helped create.

No one spoke as we left. The stairwell echoed under our boots, and the city outside felt colder than it had ten minutes ago. Or maybe it was me. Perhaps I’d gone ice in the bones again.

The car ride back to the hotel was suffocating.

Kieran drove like he wanted to get us out of Poland in ten minutes flat.

Nico stared out the window, knuckles clenched around the handle above his head.

Laura sat beside me in the back, too close and too quiet, like she wasn’t sure if I’d come unglued again.

She didn’t understand. She couldn’t possibly understand what it felt like...knowing Adela was still with him.

Still his .

My teeth ground together as I stared straight ahead. Every bump in the road rattled through my joints, like my nerves had been wired with copper. I flexed my hands, still faintly stained with blood. Couldn’t quite get them clean.

Couldn’t get her out of my mind. I imagined her bruised. Imagined him putting his hands on her. Heard her crying out for me when I wasn’t there.

It hollowed me out.

I was drowning in this rage, grief, fucking despair…and all I could do was carve through it, corpse by corpse, until I reached her.

And when I did… when I finally had her back?

I’d burn it all.

Every fucking man who helped Waylon. Every arm that reached across the globe to shield him.

Every shipment, every trade route, every bullet.

I’d salt the ground until his empire turned to ash, until no one dared whisper his name again.

They could run. They could hide behind their money, their power, their fences of fire and steel.

But I was coming. I’d already died in the process of trying to save her.

What was left of me was just a blade. Just a beast in the dark.

When we pulled into the hotel garage, no one moved for a second. Kieran was the first to get out. Nico followed. Laura touched my arm lightly, almost afraid.

“Rafe,” she said softly. “Are you–”

“No.” I opened the door and got out. I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t sure I ever would be again.

***

The hotel bathroom was too clean with its white tile, polished chrome, and sterile lighting. I stared at my reflection and didn’t fucking recognize him.

Stepan’s shirt clung to my chest, sticky at the hem. I could still smell the bastard’s cologne–sweet, sickly, expensive. It was coating my skin like rot.

I needed it off. I needed it off.

I gripped the collar and yanked hard. The fabric ripped straight down the middle, seams tearing with a sharp, satisfying snap. My breath sawed out of me in short bursts. I barely noticed the door creak open behind me.

“Rafe?” Her voice was soft and careful, like she thought I might detonate.

I couldn’t answer. I kept staring at the torn shirt in my hands, fingers twitching.

It was like my body couldn’t decide what to do–kill or collapse.

I looked down at them. Blood still crusted beneath my nails.

His blood. A man I tore apart like he was nothing .

The worst part of it all was that he didn’t know where she was.

My knees buckled, and I caught myself on the counter, chest heaving.

Laura stepped fully into the room. I heard Kieran behind her. Nico, too. Neither said a word. They watched through the cracked door, silent as shadows, waiting.

For what? To restrain me? To clean up the mess I was becoming?

But then, Laura did the bravest fucking thing I’d ever seen. She shut the door.

And locked it.

My head snapped toward her, breath catching in my throat. “What are you doing?” I rasped.

“You’re losing it,” she whispered, taking a step closer. “You’re unraveling.”

“Of course, I’m fucking unraveling .” My voice broke. “She’s out there. She’s hurt, Laura. Do you understand that?”

Her face crumpled with sympathy, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t try to lie to me.

“I can’t breathe anymore,” I whispered, chest rising and falling like a wave crashing against the shore.

“I can’t fucking think. All I see is her, and him, and what he might be doing–” My voice cracked, and I curled my fingers into the edge of the counter, dragging my nails until they caught tile. “I wasn’t there.”

“You’re here now,” she said gently. “And you’re doing everything you can to get her back.”

I couldn’t look at her. I stared down at my hands again. Trembling. Bloodied. Useless.

A killer’s hands.

A husband’s hands.

I didn’t know which one I was anymore.

“I should’ve protected her,” I choked out. “I promised her...when she married me...I swore I’d never let anyone hurt her. I swore .”

“You didn’t fail her,” she whispered.

“She’s living in a nightmare because of me .”

“She’s able to fight because of you.”

I finally met her eyes. Blue. Fierce. Filled with something too tender for me to accept. She stepped closer, slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal. Her hands came up, and she placed them carefully on either side of my face.

I flinched at first. Then leaned in. Her touch was steady, warm, and real .

“You love her more than anything in this world,” she said. “And that’s what’s going to bring her home.”

My knees finally gave out. Laura caught me as I sank to the floor.

She knelt beside me, pulling my head into her shoulder.

My arms wrapped around her like I couldn’t stop myself.

Like I just needed someone, anyone, to hold the pieces together for a few more minutes.

I cried then, the hardest since they took her. And she didn’t say a goddamn word.

She just held me while my soul bled out.

Steam billowed around me as I shut off the water. I stood there for a moment, palms pressed against the cool tile, letting the silence wrap around me. Silence almost sounded...weird now. I had gotten used to screaming.