Page 28 of Wrangled By the Minotaur
The bell above the door chimes as we enter, and Sage looks up from her desk with barely concealed curiosity. She’s seen Raphael from a distance before, but up close, in the small office space, his presence is overwhelming. Her professional composure slips for just a moment before she recovers.
“Sage, this is Raphael Tauros,” I say, proud of how steady my voice sounds. “Raphael, my best friend Sage Lambert.”
“Ms. Lambert.” Raphael extends his hand with old-fashioned courtesy. “Thank you for agreeing to this interview.”
“Mr. Tauros.” Sage shakes his hand, and I can see her sizing him up with journalistic precision. “Please, have a seat. Though I apologize if our furniture isn’t quite designed for someone of your stature.”
“I’ll manage,” he says with a slight smile, settling carefully into the chair across from her desk. Even sitting, he dwarfs the space around him.
As Sage arranges her notes and tests her recording equipment, I catch movement outside the window. Eleanor from the antique shop is walking by unusually slowly, her head turned toward our direction. Across the street, I spot Diego from the coffee shop talking animatedly with someone I don’t recognize, both of them glancing toward the newspaper office.
Word is already spreading. By tonight, everyone in Sunnybrook will know that Frankie Baker walked into the Gazette office with not just any minotaur, butthatminotaur.
“Ready?” Sage asks, finger poised over the record button.
I look at Raphael, seeing the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands rest carefully on his knees. This is his chance to tell his truth, to show the town who he really is beneath the rumors and speculation.
“Ready,” he says, and I hear the quiet determination in his voice.
As Sage begins with her first question, I settle back in my chair, prepared to watch the man I’m falling for fight for the reputation we both need to protect.
Chapter 9
The Minotaur's Confession
Raphael
I’m folded into a chairthat’s clearly not designed for someone of my size, my knees nearly touching my chest despite my best efforts to arrange myself with some dignity. The Sunnybrook Gazette office is cramped but lived-in, with stacks of newspapers creating precarious towers on every available surface and the lingering scent of coffee and printer ink. Framed front pages from the newspaper’s history cover the walls, interspersed with local business advertisements and a corkboard dense with what I assume are story leads and contact information.
Sage Lambert sits across from me, and I’m struck by how young she seems. She’s probably close to Frankie’s age, her dark hair swept up in a casual twist that frames her sharp features, and intelligent green eyes that miss nothing. She’s smaller than I expected, but there’s a confidence in how she moves, how she arranges her recording equipment and notes, that tells me she’s serious about her work.
The way she looks at me is assessing but not unkind, and I remind myself that she wouldn’t be Frankie’s best friend if she were anything less than trustworthy.
Still, my nerves are stretched taut. Through the large front window, I can see people slowing their pace as they walk by, some stopping entirely to peer inside.
My tail twitches with nervous energy behind the chair, and I have to consciously keep my hooves flat on the hardwood floor. Everything about this feels exposed, vulnerable in a way I haven’t experienced since those first days after the Great Unveiling when I was still figuring out how to exist in a world that suddenly knew what I was.
But Frankie’s presence beside me is an anchor. She’s positioned herself where I can easily catch her eye, and there’s something fierce and protective in her posture that steadies the worst of my anxiety.
If she believes this is the right choice, if she’s willing to risk her own reputation to help me tell my story, then I can do this.
Sage presses record and settles back in her chair. “So let’s start at the beginning. Five years ago, during the Great Unveiling, most monsters were struggling to integrate into human society. But you seemed to thrive almost immediately. Tell me about those early days.”
The question takes me back to that chaotic period when the world discovered that monsters had been living among them all along. I remember the fear, the uncertainty, the way some of my kind went into hiding while others tried desperately to prove they weren’t threats.
“The chaos worked in my favor,” I admit, feeling some of the tension in my shoulders ease as we begin on familiar ground. “While other monsters were trying to blend in, to make themselves seem less threatening, I did the opposite.”
“You leaned into the intimidation factor,” Sage observes, her pen moving across her notepad with quick, efficient strokes.
“Exactly. Corporate America was in upheaval. Suddenly a portion of their workforce turned out to be monsters, contracts were being challenged, entire business relationships were being reevaluated…” I feel my instincts engaging, the pride I still carry for that period of my life when everything I touched turned to gold. “But while others tried to prove their fitness for society, I positioned myself as the angry bull who gets deals done. If you needed someone to walk into a boardroom and make problems disappear, you called me.”
I watch Sage’s expression shift from polite professionalism to genuine interest, and I realize this isn’t what she expected to hear. Most people assume my success was somehow accidental, or that I was simply lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
“That’s brilliant,” she says, looking up from her notes. “You cornered a market that didn’t exist before the Unveiling.”
“I did. And it was incredibly lucrative.” My tail gives a small twitch behind me, an unconscious display of satisfaction that I don’t bother to suppress. “Within months, I had more clients than I could handle. Within a year, I was charging fees that would make most lawyers weep.”
“What kind of problems were you solving?”
