Page 237 of Vile Boys

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.

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