CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE KING'S GUARD IS CRACKING
AVA MONROE'S POV
I didn't sleep. Not even for a moment.
The storm had passed sometime before dawn, leaving behind a
silence that felt almost sacred. But inside me, thunder still rolled.
I sat in the reading nook of the bedroom with my knees to my
chest, watching the sun rise behind Kingsley Manor's stone turrets.
The light kissed the ivy-covered walls, the marble balcony rail, the winding gardens where secrets had been buried long before I arrived.
Ethan's door never opened. Not once. I wasn't sure if that
made me feel better, or worse.
By nine a.m., Diane knocked.
"You have an appointment," she said. "Styling. Ethan's mother wants you at a charity gala tonight.
The Kingsley Cancer Initiative."
Of course she did. Nothing said family unity like a forced photo op.
I didn't protest. I simply nodded and let myself be taken.
The stylists arrived in droves, parading gowns and heels and
glittery things I didn't care about.
I let them do their magic, allowed the transformation to happen like I was sleepwalking through someone else's life.
By evening, I looked like every headline that had ever praised me: poised, elegant, untouchable.
But I felt like a hollow sculpture carved for a purpose I didn't understand.
Ethan met me at the front stairs. Tuxedo. Polished shoes. Cufflinks like daggers.
His eyes raked over me without expression.
"You clean up well," he said flatly.
"Must be nice to pretend everything's fine," I replied,
brushing past him.
He caught my wrist. "Don't make tonight a scene."
"Why not? It might be the most honest moment your family's
ever had."
His grip tightened. "Because this isn't about you. Or Lena. It's about my father.
This event funds the only thing keeping him alive."
My breath hitched.
It wasn't the anger in his voice that shocked me. It was the pain.
The drive to the gala was silent.
The ballroom was already glowing with chandeliers and laughter when we arrived.
Photographers swarmed the entrance, cameras flashing like
lightning bolts.
I smiled.
Ethan didn't.
Inside, socialites and business magnates mingled under golden ceilings.
Waiters floated by with trays of champagne. The music was
soft, tasteful, and meaningless.
Ethan's mother greeted me with air kisses and thin compliments. I smiled and nodded, pretending not to notice the ice in her eyes.
But what caught my attention wasn't her.
It was the man in the far corner of the room, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and the same steel-gray eyes as Ethan.
Ethan's father.
Walter Kingsley.
He was supposed to be in Switzerland. In treatment. Fighting
for his life.
But there he was, watching everything like a man taking inventory of a kingdom.
And he was watching me.
The moment our eyes met, he smiled.
Not kindly.
But like he knew something I didn't.
Ethan stiffened beside me. "Stay away from him."
"Why?" I whispered.
"Because Walter Kingsley doesn't speak unless he's playing a game.
And when he plays, people get hurt."
I didn't get the chance to ask more. Diane appeared to usher us toward the stage.
Speeches. Applause. Toasts to a noble cause. I said the lines
I was given. Ethan did the same. We played our parts flawlessly.
But my thoughts were with Walter.
What did he know?.
Why had he returned without warning?
And why was I suddenly the centerpiece in a play I didn't
remember auditioning for?.
When the event ended, Ethan and I walked back to the car in silence. He looked tense, his hands balled into fists.
"What's going on?" I asked.
He didn't answer until we were inside, the doors closed, the driver pulling away.
"He's back," Ethan finally said. "And that means everything is about to change."
I turned to him. "How?."
He looked at me, not cold, not cruel, but with a kind of
resignation I hadn't seen before.
"Because if my father's here," he said, "then the games haven't even begun yet."
And something about the way he said it, like a warning wrapped in weariness, told me that whatever we'd faced so far had only been the
prelude.
The real storm hadn't even touched down yet.