Ares cups her face. “I missed that wretched smile of yours, little rose.”
Her jaw nearly hits the floor, but then she does a double take, almost like she remembers the last time she saw him she wanted him dead.
“Don’t kill him just yet, darling.” My voice makes her look up at me, and I tear off my mask too. “We still need him to pay up so we can get you out of here.”
“What?” she mutters, shell-shocked.
Caleb takes off his mask too, chucking it to the ground before running his fingers through his blond hair. “Miss me, slut?”
Tears well up in her eyes, and a grin spreads on her cheeks. “You came for me.”
“Of course we did. Couldn’t let you rot away in a place like this, now could we?” I say, flicking my hair to the side. “I’m going to need to bathe with a million different soaps to get the stench of this disgusting place out of my skin.”
Ares offers his hand, and she makes a distrustful glance. “Trust me.”
And for some reason, despite all the things he’s done, she still takes his hand and lets him pull her up.
Caleb approaches, and it takes her a second to adjust to the situation before she jumps into his arms and hugs him tight. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t made it out yet,” he says, chuckling.
“What about me?” I pout from the corner. “Don’t I get a hug?”
She snorts and releases Caleb only to run into my strong arms instead, and I hug her as tightly as I can. She buries her face into my ample chest like I’m a teddy bear.
“I missed you too, darling,” I say, and I grab her hand and place a kiss on top again just like always. Her smile alone makes me want to ravage her here and now. Would it be so terrible? I mean, they gave us twenty minutes alone in this cell, might as well make use of it.
“Wait, where’s Lana?” she suddenly asks, turning around to look at both guys. “We have to save her.”
“The Phantom Society boys have her, don’t worry,” Caleb replies, throwing his knives in the air. “Helped them get her out myself. Thankless job.”
“Good, I was so worried about her when they split us up. I don’t even know why they took us.”
“I do,” Caleb replies. “The Phantoms have beef with the Bonesmen Brotherhood, and Lana was in the middle of it all.”
“Enough small talk,” Ares says, clearing his throat. “Tell the guards we want to take her outside for fresh air.”
“Yes, Sir,” Caleb says, and he turns around and marches off to get the guard. “We’re taking her outside.”
“Fine. Pay up first, and you can take her,” the guard growls.
“We require her phone too,” I say.
“Why?” the guard snaps.
I just slip him more money. “If you don’t ask questions, you get paid. Now bring the phone.”
The guard rolls his eyes and pulls it out of his own damn pocket. That slime was keeping it for himself all this time. I wonder if his supervisor even knew what he was trying to steal.
When he’s handed it over to me, I say, “Good boy.” He seethes with rage.
Ares grabs her hand and pulls her along with him. She cowers as we pass the guard, but Ares fishes a paper from his pocket and smashes it into his chest.
The guard eyeballs the paper and steadies himself so he doesn’t fall from sheer surprise that someone would lay down that amount of money for a girl like her.
“Let’s go,” Ares says, and we all follow him through the long hallway, past a bunch of doors, and up a set of stairs that lead to another door. Behind it, the auction room makes her pause and stare like a deer looking into the headlights.
“They’re not looking at you,” I whisper into her ear, and she nods. “Keep walking. The exit is right in front of you.”
The guards near the exit stop us, but the guard behind us holds up the paper Ares gave him, and they finally move out of our way.
Caleb grabs her shoulder and helps her push through the fear of passing them while Ares opens the door.
When we’re outside, Caleb and Ares release her, and I marvel at the way she gently strolls around the open road while looking up at the sky as raindrops pitter-patter down on her. It doesn’t seem to faze her. In fact, it almost seems as though the rain gives her life.
She spins around in the fresh air, sucking in lungfuls of oxygen like she was terrified she might never have the opportunity again. It even makes me blink away a few tears.
“Are you crying?” Caleb asks.
“It’s the rain,” I reply.
He pats me on the back with a snort. “Sure it is.”
But I can’t stop looking at her.
No wonder Ares calls her his little rose.
She truly looks like a flower spreading its leaves under the pouring rain to catch all the droplets. And all we ever did was tear off her petals one by one.
Ares
She stands in the rain with her arms opened wide, gorging on the freedom of the outside world.
And I think, out of us three watching her, I’m the only one who truly understands.
I take in a breath and revel in her beauty under the pouring rain, letting her soak it all in for a moment longer. Then I walk up to her and place a hand on her shoulder, whispering into her ear, “I will kill them all for you. All you have to do is say yes, and I will be your vessel for slaughter.”
Her body freezes under my touch.
“But when I’m done … you will be mine.”
She takes a short breath, still gazing into nothingness as she says, “Yes.”
Such a simple word for such a significant choice.
Even now, after everything I’ve done, she’d still let me be her justice.
I smile against her ear. “That’s my girl.”
Crystal
He wants to risk his life by going back in there and kill them … for me?
Even though I longed so much for him to die, the prospect of it actually happening makes it hard to continue breathing.
His, forever more, if he survives. My father’s slayer, a tool for revenge.
And I just said yes.
When I turn around, he throws off his jacket to reveal a godly amount of guns and knives all tucked away neatly, and the second he pulls them out, Caleb’s eyes begin to twinkle.
“Fuck, I’m so goddamn ready to split them open,” Caleb grits, and he pulls out his pocket knives. “Let’s go butcher some animals.”
The guard watching us does a double take, but Blaine pulls his katana out of his umbrella and, with one fell swoop, cuts the head off his body.
My eyes widen at the sight of the blood spraying around.
They run inside and screams erupt from the auction room.
BANG!
BANG!
Shots are fired left and right, and I peer in through the door opening to see what they’re doing, too curious to back away. Caleb and Blaine are killing guards that pour in from all sides, thrusting their weapons into their abdomens like they’ve done it a million times before, while Ares guts the men bidding on me one by one, slicing them open from their abdomens to their necks.
Suddenly, one of the guards comes out of a room near the exit, blocking my only way out. I make a fist and punch him in the face, but it doesn’t seem to faze him.
His eyes look murderous. “You bitch!”
Shit, I don’t have anything to defend myself.
I run into the main chamber where bullets ricochet against the walls.
The guard grabs my arm, and I shriek. “You’re not going anywhere, bitch!”
Ares’s gaze fixates on me, the rage on his face nothing I’ve ever seen before as he aims and shoots.
BANG!
The guard who grabbed me drops to the floor, blood pouring from his forehead.
Ares rushes over to me, despite the fact that the auctiongoers are bolting all over the area. He pulls out one of his guns and pushes it into my hand. “Use it. You know how, little rose.”
I gulp and nod, and he softly pecks me on the forehead before he walks off like it was nothing … even though I can still feel the kiss searing into my skin.
One. Two. Three. One after the other is put down with a knife to the throat or a shot in the head like he’s crushing ants under his boots. All while Caleb and Blaine are counting which one of them killed more guards.
“Fifteen!” Blaine yells.
“Liar, I threw that knife at him!” Caleb says. “Fourteen.”
Blaine cuts through a guard coming up behind Caleb and says, “Fifteen now, darling. Better catch up.”
“You motherf—” Caleb growls and he chucks his knife at one of the men at the auction attempting to flee through the exit. “Happy now?”
From the corner of my eye, I spot three guards together with the woman who sold me sneak off into a hidden door behind a cabinet, along with several of the people I was in a cell with, all forced to walk with a gun aimed at their backs.
Oh God. I have to save them.
“The others! We have to save them!” I shriek, trying to get the boys’ attention.
But they’re far too busy murdering the men who have tried to keep us chained.
I rush to the cabinet, desperate to take the life she wanted to take from me, but when I open the hidden door, she’s gone.
There’s a secondary exit from the building at the end of a long hallway.
A secret route.
And the woman along with all the girls are nowhere to be seen.
Fuck.
I’m too late.
“You little shit—” A guard comes up behind me, and I turn around and shoot. The bullet enters his stomach and goes out the other end, and I step back as he groans and nearly falls on top of me.
With bloodied hands, he pulls out a gun and aims at me, but before he can shoot, I hold the gun over his head and finish him off. Blood sprays everywhere, but I don’t give a shit anymore as I stand on top of the corpse of the man who has kept me a prisoner in a cold, harsh cell.
His death is on my hands, and my God … does it feel good.
Ares was right; death does become me.
Even if I can’t save the others, at least I can make these fuckers pay for putting their hands on us.
I turn around and head out with the gun still firmly in my hand, but the second I step out of the room, I come face-to-face with Ares. “There you are. I wondered if you’d run off.”
His eyes briefly swipe over my gun, the barrel directed at him, before he turns around and blocks my body with his.
BANG!
A bullet hits the wall right behind me.
Ares tries to shoot, but his gun’s gone empty, so he tucks it away and pulls out a knife instead. He chucks it right at the man who shot us, without a single inch of fear in his eyes. And it makes me wonder if he’s ever felt what it’s like to be afraid at all?
Despite the fact that I could easily cripple him for life or take him out for good with this gun in my hands … he’s still standing with his back turned against me.
As if it doesn’t bother him that I could end it all.
Or maybe he doesn’t care if I did.
Trust me.
I hear his voice in my head again, whispering to me, begging me to follow.
And when I look up, there he is, glancing at me over his shoulder before aiming to shoot at a man fleeing for his life.
He takes life like it means nothing, yet he’s keeping mine safe like it’s sacred to him.
And for some reason I can feel the little bits of hatred slowly unfurl from around my heart.
Suddenly, he spins on his heels and pulls me down. “Duck.”
He shields me with his body, hands firmly planted against the wall.
A knife is thrown right at us, and I blink once only to hear Ares groan as it pierces his back.
“Ares!” I shriek, unable to keep the terror at bay.
He peers down at me, the pain clearly visible in his eyes, but it still doesn’t make him break. Grinding his teeth, he tears the knife from his own back and throws it right back at his attacker, hitting him in the heart. An instant death sentence.
“Hey! That was my kill!” Caleb yells.
“Then fucking kill him before he kills me, goddammit,” Ares growls back.
“Twenty-five!” Blaine yells as he pulls his katana out of the guard’s body. “Who’s next? Don’t all beg at the same time, please.”
Caleb chucks his knife at the last guy’s head and plucks it out, licking up the blood. “Delicious. Twenty-five.”
“It’s safe now,” Ares tells me. “Let’s go.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me away from the wall, but I pause to look at all the dead bodies littering the floor. It’s insane the amount of people they managed to kill in such a short amount of time. There’s a river of blood in front of me. Chilling.
Ares grabs the check off the guard he just murdered, blood staining the paper as he holds it up. Five million dollars. All for me.
He pulls out a lighter and sets the paper ablaze, throwing it back onto the corpse.
“No amount of money is worth a single drop of her blood,” he murmurs at the guard before he looks my way, making me blush again.
My blood invaluable?
He tasted it on his tongue, licked my wounds like I was a delectable dessert. All while calling me his Ambrosía …
He tucks the lighter back into his pocket, grabs my hand again, and pulls me along with him, but I can’t stop looking at the wound in his back, wondering why it doesn’t seem to bother him.
We make our way back to the exit, and Blaine wipes his katana on the last guard lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway. “You look a little pale. You guys were so much fun, but we have to run now. Toodles, darlings.”
I chuckle a little from his comments, then follow Ares back outside, and we run through the rain to his car. He sits down behind the wheel, while Caleb sits down in the passenger’s seat, and Blaine in the back with me. But all of them are looking at me.
“Are you okay?”
I nod a few times. “I’m not injured.”
Ares narrows his eyes. “Did any of them touch you?”
I shake my head, a blush creeping onto my cheeks because he’d even think to ask about my well-being.
“Good. He puts the car into reverse and slams the gas pedal. “I would’ve hated myself for ending their lives without cutting off their dicks and balls first.”
