“NO!” I scream, grabbing Blaine as he sinks to the floor.
Blood pours from an open wound in his chest, and he begins to gurgle.
“You motherf—” Caleb smashes his fist into Mr. Torres’s face and knocks him to the floor. Kai kicks the gun out of his hand and cracks the bones in his fingers underneath his boot. His screams are the only consolation I have as I wrap my arms around both Ares and Blaine, bleeding out in my lap.
“No, no, no,” I murmur at Blaine. “Please, stay with me.”
“GUARDS!” his father squeals. “GUARDS!”
“There are no more guards,” Kai growls at his father, gripping his collar. “We killed them all.”
Mr. Torres’s pupils dilate. “What? No, no, that can’t be true—”
Kai snatches the whip from his father’s hand and starts lashing out, striking him with the whip just as harshly as he did to Ares. “Does it hurt?! Do you think it hurt as much as you hurt Ares?” THWACK. THWACK. THWACK. “The pain doesn’t even come close to the years of suffering you put him through!” THWACK. THWACK. “You motherfucking piece of shit, how dare you hurt my fucking brother!” THWACK!
Kai is out of control, completely unhinged by rage as he whips his own father’s belly and face while he screams in terror from the blood rolling down his body and neck.
“Kai, please!” his father begs.
“Did you stop when he pleaded with you?” Kai responds, only to strike him even harder. “All these years, I thought you were talking with him, getting him to change his mind, to prepare him. And now I find out you’ve been torturing him all this time right under my very fucking nose?”
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
He doesn’t stop.
Not until Caleb grabs his wrist midair. “Enough.”
“He needs to fucking pay!” Kai grits.
“But do you really want to murder your own father?”
Ragged breaths come out of Kai’s mouth. “He deserves nothing less.”
“Kai …” His father groans.
Kai kicks him in the side. “Even now, you can’t even think of Ares instead. You motherfucker, you don’t deserve me.”
“Guys …” I mutter, looking up at both of them. “Please, help.”
I’m cradling two gravely injured men while blood seeps down my back, and I can’t hold on much longer.
Kai and Caleb come to us, and while Caleb rips off his own shirt and wraps it around Blaine’s bullet wound, Kai lifts his own brother off the floor and carries him on his back.
“Call for help,” Kai tells me.
When both boys are off me, I get up and bolt through the door, rushing through the hallway until I get to the others. “Guys! We need help!”
Felix, Alistair, Dylan, Penelope, Lana, Milo, and Nathan run back with me and gawk inside the office. “What happened? Did you save hi—Oh God,” Penelope mutters when she sees the pools of blood on the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” Dylan says when he peers inside. “What happened?”
“Kai’s father tortured Ares and shot Blaine. We need help carrying them out. No time to waste,” I say.
But the moment they run past me to assist Kai and Caleb, I’m the only one who looks at Mr. Torres. He’s reaching for the gun on the floor and aims it at Ares again.
So I snatch Lana’s gun from her belt, aim it at Torres, and shoot.
BANG!
One bullet and everyone’s attention is focused on the body flopping to the floor, the gun still firmly clutched in his stiff hand.
Everyone takes a glance at me, but I can’t take my eyes off the body of the man who murdered my father in cold blood. The burden of my vow to him … has finally been released.
Caleb approaches me and has to pry the weapon out of my hand before he hugs me tight. “It’s okay. You did good. It’s over now.”
I nod a few times and swallow away the tears. “I’m sorry. He was about to kill A—”
Kai interrupts me. “I know.” He places a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you.”
I’m shocked. Completely and utterly shocked.
But he just walks away like I didn’t just kill his father, supporting Ares together with Milo.
I turn around and look at Blaine who’s hanging onto Felix and Dylan for dear life. “Will they be okay?”
Caleb wraps his arm around my waist. “I won’t allow them to leave us behind. So yes.” He briefly smiles at me. “Let’s go.”
Caleb
We race back to school in our cars, ignoring red lights everywhere. Felix, Kai, Dylan, and Nathan help me carry Blaine and Ares haphazardly to the nurse’s office even though it’s already way past opening hours.
I’m already glad most students are in their dorms fast asleep, so they don’t have to witness us dragging in two bloodied people and have their screams fill the campus.
Right as we place both guys down on the bed, the nurse marches in.
“What is going on in here? I—”
She stops in her tracks the second she sees us all scrambling in her office, trying to find something to stop the bleeding.
“Dear God,” she mutters. “All of you?”
Dylan smashes his lips together for a quick smile. “Hi again.”
Alistair waves awkwardly, and Milo just coyly smiles at her. Meanwhile, Penelope and Lana stand in the corner with their arms folded, while Felix and Nathan just don’t give a fuck and simply shrug.
“Are you going to help us or not?” Kai grits.
“Well, what’s going on?” The nurse steps in and places her phone down on the table. “I got another warning that someone was in my office, but I didn’t think you guys had the balls to come in again after last time. Who got shot up now?”
Nathan points at the bloodied bodies on the beds.
“Please,” I mutter as I grab Ares’s hand. “We need your help.”
Crystal’s hovering over his face, checking his temperature. “He’s heating up.”
Blaine coughs and groans. “Don’t worry about me, darlings. I feel fine.”
“He’s been shot,” Crystal says before she unwraps the shirt around his wounds to show her. “Please, you have to help us.”
The nurse’s eyes widen, and she swiftly grabs her toolkit from her cabinet, puts on gloves, and sits on a stool near Blaine. “Move, girl.”
She shoves Crystal aside and rubs some alcohol into his skin. “This is going to hurt.”
“Fuck,” Blaine growls when she shoots him up with drugs.
“You people are getting on my nerve,” the nurse says. “This is the third time now you’re just dumping bodies in my office.”
“We’re still alive,” Blaine replies, grinding his teeth through the pain as she digs into his wounds.
“Stay still, boy,” she says. “I need to stop the bleed and suture it.”
She injects something into him and goes to work on the wound left from the knife, but the blood keeps pouring out of his chest every time he takes in a breath.
“There, I’ve sutured this one. But you’re going to need to go to the hospital for this,” she says, pointing at the bullet hole.
“Oh God,” Milo mutters, chewing his nails. “Is he going to be okay?”
“That all depends on how fast you can get there,” she says.
“What about Ares?” Crystal asks.
The nurse rolls her little stool to his side and says, “Where?”
Kai and Nathan help roll him over, and she gags when she sees the lashes on his back and all the blood seeping into the bed.
“Oh God indeed …” she says.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Alistair mutters from the corner.
“Hand me my phone, boy,” she yells at Dylan, who throws it at her.
It’s impressive she manages to catch it at her age. She swiftly pulls off her gloves and dials a number. “Rivera, it’s Daisy Lewis.”
“Daisy?” Dylan makes a face and grins, but a simple, stern look from Nurse Daisy shuts him up.
“I need you to call in a code at the clinic. Students brought in two injured, one with a bullet wound and a stab wound that I sutured up quickly, one in the peritoneum, one in the pectoralis major muscle. Another patient with major lashes and ruptured skin, possibly through the dermis and subcutaneous. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, got it.”
She hangs up the phone and turns to us. “Ambulance is on the way.”
“What? No,” Felix grits, stepping in. “We all agreed, no hospitals. If we go there, they’ll fucking report us to the police, and then we’re done for.”
“My father’s going to kill me,” Alistair mutters, staring off into the distance.
“Relax, no one’s involving the police,” Penelope says. “As long as everyone keeps their mouths shut.”
“That’s going to be tough,” Milo mutters, tapping his fingers together.
“They need help, guys. We can’t just sit around and do nothing,” Crystal says.
“I’m with her,” I say. “I’m not going to let them die. If that means going to the hospital and risking jail time, then so be it.”
Dylan sighs, but then his eyes widen the moment he sees who steps through the door.
“No one here is going to jail.”
Mr. Rivera, the dean of Spine Ridge University, has us all standing.
“Dad?” Lana mutters. “What are you doing here—” Her eyes skitter around the room. “It’s not what it looks like.”
Rivera raises a brow. “Two injured students and my kids all covered in blood?”
“It wasn’t a fight between us, I swear,” Penelope says.
“Felix,” his father looks sternly at him. “Tell me the truth.”
Felix folds his arms. “We went to the Torres Casino to save Ares, who was being tortured by his father. We shot up maybe a hundred guards to get to him. Torres is dead.”
Their father groans in frustration and rubs his eyes, taking a pause. “And the guests?”
“They ran,” Milo fills in. “We didn’t kill any innocent people if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“We wore masks,” I reply.
“Can we hurry up, please?” Crystal asks. “There’s no time for any of this. They’re dying.”
“What if the doctors there tell the cops?” Kai asks.
Mr. Rivera clears his throat. “They won’t because the specialist working there is on the goddamn board.”
“Oh …” Dylan mutters. “Well, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
Suddenly, two people knock on the door. “Who called for an ambulance?”
Mr. Rivera steps aside. “You’re just in time.”
