Page 212 of Vile Boys

His eyes have already turned into themselves, lifeless, his body limp in my arms. I pull my hands back only to see blood caking my skin, and I shiver and shake in place as the tears begin to tumble.

My eyes rise to the streets where the killer just disappeared in a car.

A murderer who doesn’t know what’s coming for him.

My hands ball into fists.

I will never, ever fucking stop until I find him …

And slice his throat.

Present

“I sawyou pull this knife from his body.” My lip twitches with anger as I seethe. “You’re a coldhearted murderer.”

“How?” Blaine mutters, completely caught off guard.

But I’ve been planning this for so long that it feels like I can finally lift the veil on my own ruse.

“I searched day and night for my father’s murderer, scouring the internet for a connection between that Bones symbol and a man with piercing gray eyes,” I grit, lost in my own memories. “Finally, I found a picture online of that gray-eyed monster with that horn emblem on his boots.”

I push the knife farther into Ares’s neck, and a droplet of blood rolls down his skin.

“And then I discovered you were going to the same university I was enrolled in. It was fate beckoning me.”

“You planned all of this?” Caleb asks, shivering in place.

And even though it hurts to hear the shock in his voice, I refuse to let it get to me.

I knew it would cost me my soul, heart, and body to avenge my father.

“I promised my father I wouldn’t rest until I’d done what I came here to do,” I say, watching the blood roll down his neck.

God, I feel so fucking powerful watching the one man who’s the cause of all my misery bleed out slowly just like my father did.

When Blaine flinches, Ares warns him, “Don’t intervene.”

“I made a vow,” Blaine responds.

“Crystal …” Caleb growls. “Don’t. Don’t do it.”

“He deserves it,” I grit.

Caleb’s voice cracks. “Even if he does, what does that make you?”

“I already am a killer thanks to him,” I say, staring Ares in the eyes.

“I wanted you to feel what it was like to take a life before I gave you mine,” he replies, suddenly grasping the handle only to push it farther into his skin. “So go on … take it. Take my life. It belonged to you the second you saw me there on that street, huddled over your father’s dead body.”

So he admits it.

My teeth clench together as the blade etches into his skin deeper and deeper.

I can barely form words. “Why? Why did he have to die?”

A vicious smile makes his lips tip upward. “Because that’s the price that needs to be paid to be part of the Torres family. One single death in exchange for a vast empire. All of us have killed …”

I wince in disgust. “My father’s life was taken just so you could inherit the family company? He was innocent!”

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