Death At Your Door

PROLOGUE

Monica Blanchard squinted her little eyes as she looked around the courtyard, shock and a little fear running through her body as she could feel it in the air.

Just the little way the clouds would darken when she was near.

The smell of Coco Chanel perfume whisking through the air, climbing its way up to Monica's open nostrils.

She couldn't help but sigh in contentment as the air thickened around her, heavy and perfumed, like the onset of something inevitable.

Slowly, their heads started to turn. They couldn't help but stare, some in adoration and others in loathing, as the self-proclaimed queen herself strutted across the campus courtyard in the late of the evening, and as always, she was dressed to impress.

She never arrived any other way. It was as though the world itself adjusted its lighting whenever she stepped into a space, dimming everything else to let her shine a little brighter.

Her golden olive skin set a nice contrast against the air around her as she gracefully walked.

She was beautiful and unique in her own little gorgeous way, and many people would get caught in her soft Eurocentric features and beautiful personality.

She moved with the ease of someone who had never once questioned whether she deserved to be in the room.

Because she had never needed to. The room had always rearranged itself around her.

Monica was undecided about her feelings, that was, and as the queen neared the spot where she was sitting, her heart couldn't help but soar, but her eyes looked on with something close to hate.

She couldn't describe it. Her heart was brimming with love for the queen, a strange swelling tenderness she could never quite name or contain, but her body couldn't help but recline whenever she was in her vicinity.

Her system was constantly at war when it came to her, had been since the very beginning, since the very first time she had looked up and seen her walking and understood, that this woman would change her life.

The clicking of heels became louder as she came closer.

Her frilly but elegant indicolite blue dress flowed softly as the wind picked up.

Her curly brown hair had a mind of its own as it gently wrapped itself around the base of her neck.

Albeit Monica couldn't see her eyes due to them being blocked by her Chanel sunglasses, she couldn't imagine them being anything less than captivating.

She had imagined them countless times, in fact.

Had tried to picture the exact shade, the exact quality of attention they would carry when directed at her.

Monica continued to watch her, her eyes moving from the queen's bare long legs to the very top of her head.

She was so captivated, or more accurately entranced, by her beauty that she just couldn't look away.

And that had seemed to catch the young girl's attention as she turned her head in Monica's direction.

Monica's breath hitched in her throat as she had caught not only the queen's attention but her whole group's.

The disciples who followed her now had their attention fixed on Monica, and the only thing she could do was smile.

If things couldn't have gotten any worse, the queen began walking in her direction, parting from her group who were looking at her in shock, for she never parted from them, not for anyone.

The young girl took off her sunglasses and stared directly into Monica's eyes.

Before Monica even had time to realize what was happening, she was right in front of her, her right arm outstretched, a simple smile on her face.

A smile that managed to be warm and cold at the same time.

A smile that promised everything and committed to nothing.

"Hi, I'm Tao."

That had been the start of their not-so-friendship. Monica did everything for Tao and Tao opened doors for Monica, and together, the both of them had become the most powerful and respected students among the body of The Lancaster and Fell University, Foxhall campus.

They were united and even more so closed off, and only the luckiest got to taste the notoriety of their friendship that shook the hierarchy within and outside of their school.

Only a few really knew how they did it: an heiress and a nobody who had gotten the Lancasters and Fells to bend to their every wish.

People theorised. People speculated. Neither of them ever confirmed or denied anything, which was, in its own way, a strategy as deliberate as everything else Tao did.

?

They were in the study of the third Montgomery house in Northern Liverpool as it was the summer before their sophomore year, and Tao had charmed Monica's strict Korean parents into allowing their barely eighteen-year-old child to spend her summer in the United Kingdom.

Monica had watched the whole performance with a mixture of awe and discomfort.

Tao had been warm, perfectly respectful and utterly convincing, and Monica's parents had agreed before they fully understood what they were agreeing to.

That was the thing about Tao. You agreed first and thought later.

Monica was less than happy to be in Tao's presence right now. The girl was her friend, but she just couldn't help but hate her and the life she lived.

Tao had promised her everything, the world for that matter, and that was the only reason she had stayed.

But she was well aware that she had the option to leave at any time, as Tao had made that extremely clear, laying out the terms of their arrangement with the same brisk efficiency she applied to everything else.

Monica had thought she was being handled. She was probably right.

"Look, I have a plan, you just have to trust me," a very much frustrated Tao said to an impatient Monica.

They were going over Tao's plan.

Monica had soon come to learn everything about Tao and her family.

They were master manipulators, the prime jewels of their society, and how they got to that level was a different story entirely, one told in whispers at galas and in footnotes of financial journalism that most people didn't read carefully enough.

But she knew that they would do any and everything in their power to stay exactly where they were.

Tao's plan consisted of crushing the Lancaster and Fell empire. They weren't anywhere near as powerful as the Montgomerys, but they were competition nonetheless, and Tao simply couldn't have that.

She had explained it to Monica with quiet conviction as she had already decided on the outcome. Long story short, Tao had done successfully what she had set out to do, with Monica's help of course, and their story had only gotten lengthier from thereon.

They were ruthless together, and no one wanted to cross either of their paths on any day, no matter the time.

Monica had become someone everyone feared but someone she had grown to love being.

Tao, true to her promise, had opened every door imaginable to Monica, and Monica hadn't tasted that much power in all of her life.

So she used it to every advantage she could.

She wore it like a second skin. She let it change her.

She told herself these changes were good ones.

?

Tao had dragged Monica along to an event being held at some swanky museum in Budapest that her parents had ordered her to attend, and knowing how much she hated those types of events, she had brought Monica along as both shield and company.

"Hi, Rockefeller isn't it?" The Asian beauty smiled, her hand outstretched toward the young man who had been watching them both from across the room.

"Yes, and you are?" The youngest Rockefeller smiled back at the young lady, graciously taking her hand into his.

"Blanchard. Monica Blanchard."

The young man raised his brow. "I haven't heard of you before. Do you happen to be here with someone?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. I'm the plus one of Tao—" She started but hadn't gotten the opportunity to finish.

"Lee Montgomery. Yes, I'm familiar." He smiled. "You must be special to her. She never takes plus ones."

Most conversations went like that as everyone was curious about the young lady whom Tao-Lee Montgomery had slowly started slipping into their circle. That had boosted Monica's allure and status more than she could have ever imagined.

Monica had deals flying past her left and right, so much so that she had to get herself an assistant and a manager just to keep up with the volume of it all.

Soon enough, Monica had amassed a monthly salary in the six digits.

This was just by accepting jobs that were offered to her due to the Montgomery name being attached to hers. She was on billboards, magazine covers, talk shows and more, simply by being an associate of the infamous Tao-Lee Montgomery, and she was living the life everyone dreamt of.

She had everything she had ever wanted and then some. She told herself she was grateful. Some nights she actually believed it.

?

Monica laughed loudly, her giggles bouncing off the four corners of the fifth Montgomery house in Vienna, Austria. It was the winter break of her Junior year of University and she had instantly accepted Tao's invite to spend Christmas with her family.

Despite the many negative perceptions of aristocratic families, the Montgomerys, Tao's immediate family in specific, were nothing but darlings.

They truly loved and cared for each other, and because Monica was important to Tao, she was important to them as well. It was a warmth Monica had not grown up with, a warmth she found herself craving even as she sat inside it, knowing it had been extended to her on borrowed terms.

"I would have never thought," Monica said, her joyous laughter coming to an end.

"Oh, I know, I barely believed it too," Taron-Lee Montgomery replied, grinning.