Page 283 of Vile Boys

Torres backtracks into the hallway and runs back into his office, shutting it tightly.

Caleb’s grunt draws my attention. A bullet grazes his cheek, and the rage he exudes is nothing short of magnificent.

“Motherfucker!” He throws a knife at the guy’s bulge, who cries in pain when it hits him, collapsing on the spot. Caleb marches at him and stabs him through the cheek. “How does it feel, asshole?”

“Fuck, he’s wild,” Alistair mutters to me.

“Yup,” I reply. “That’s why Ares keeps him around.”

Alistair snorts and aims over my shoulder. “Duck.”

BANG!

A guard goes down right behind me.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t mention it,” he replies.

“We’re almost there!” Felix yells before he stabs the last two guards in the belly, and Nathan shoots them in the head.

“Felix, Alistair, Dylan, Penelope, Milo, Nathan, Lana,” Kai says, “guard the hallway. Don’t let anyone through.”

“What about you?” Lana asks.

“I’m going in with them,” Kai says, looking at Caleb, me, and Crystal. “I want to see the truth for myself.”

Penelope and Lana nod. “Good luck,” Penelope says.

We pass beyond the hallway while they stay behind and block the way out.

Everyone tears off their masks and throws them onto the floor, as they’re useless now that we’re here.

“Ready?” Crystal asks.

Caleb doesn’t wait and kicks in the door. “TORRES! GET YOUR FUCKING HA—”

We all stand in the door opening, shocked by the pool of blood underneath the carved-up body lying on the floor. Ares.

Crystal

Is he…?

I cover my mouth as I gasp for air, tears forming in my eyes at the sight of the wretched amount of lashes to Ares’s skin. It’s far beyond anything he’s had before. His back is covered in gashes and fresh blood, his body collapsed on the floor out of sheer exhaustion in a puddle of his own blood.

Oh God.

“What the f—This is what you’ve been doing to him?” Kai screams at his own father. “You told me you were talking to him!”

A guard standing beside the door points an automatic rifle at us. “Don’t. Move.”

A man in a gray striped suit and a freshly shaved face along with a wavy, gelled-back coup of hair stands close to Ares. Mr. Torres. “You’re too late.”

Ares lets out a muffled groan and his head tilts, his eyes barely opening to look at us.

But I can still see the hurt on his face, the absolute destruction of his will to live.

His gray eyes reach inside mine, clawing out my soul the moment his fingers scrape down on the floor and begin to claw their way to me in desperation, leaving bloodied streaks on the floor.

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