Vile Boys (Spine Ridge University)

Two years ago

The shadow on the other end of the street near a building with a symbol of bones makes me pause in my tracks. Even though it’s dark outside, I can still make out the silhouettes of a man huddled over another. The shadowy figure wears a suit and a long coat, his face hidden. On his shoes a fiery emblem of horns.

Beneath him lies a body in a pool of blood.

I gasp and drop my bag on the ground, swiftly covering my hand so the man won’t hear me.

Why did Dad want to meet here after he was done with his flower delivery?

I knew it was a bad idea. This neighborhood is dangerous.

My eyes are glued to the shadow as he rips a knife out of the man’s body and tucks it into his pocket before he turns around and suddenly locks eyes with me.

Cold gray eyes peer straight into my soul, stealing my breath.

He swiftly runs off to a car in the distance and jumps in, racing off.

But all I can focus on is the dead body lying on the cold, harsh street in the middle of the night, bleeding out slowly.

I suck in a breath and pick up my bag, then step closer, and closer, and closer, until I can no longer stop my feet from running straight to him.

My own father.

“DAD!” I shriek, falling to his side to hold him up.

But the blood streams out of him, coating the pavement in crimson.

“No, no, no!” I shriek, tears welling up in my eyes. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please!”

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 saw you 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!”

“This is how it’s always been. Twisted, don’t you think?”

“You motherf—” I grip his shirt and pull him forward, sinking the blade into his flesh until more blood begins to roll.

“Where’s that smile gone, little rose? The one you so desperately carried on your face even when you wanted to tear out my heart with your bare hands?” he taunts. “Is it finally gone?”

“Smiling was the only way I could keep you from taking the last shred of dignity and hope I had left,” I retort.

“So that’s the reason …” He sighs and smiles almost like a forlorn lover, and it shakes me. “You were the only one who ever smiled at me after watching me kill.”

Why is he talking like he’s reminiscing?

“Now do it. Kill me.”

My face contorts. “Why are you so eager to die?”

No matter how much the blade pushes into his skin, the smug smile on his face refuses to fade.

“All of the pain I’ve endured, all of the sacrifices I’ve made … all of it was for nothing because I knew in the end you would still come for me,” he says.

I frown.

Sacrifices he made?

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I respond. “You’ve sacrificed nothing but other people for your own gain!”

“Do you want to kill me without regret? Then do it now,” Ares says, licking his bottom lip. “Look at me,” Ares says. “Look at the man you wish to kill.”

I push the knife farther into his Adam’s apple until he swallows. “You can’t do it, can you?”

My lips begin to quiver.

“This is what you fear,” he says.

My fear.

That’s what he wanted from the beginning.

The one thing I vowed not to give to him.

Ares

“Shut up,” she growls, desperate to block out my voice.

“You hate me so badly, yet you can’t help but wonder if there’s another choice.”

“Stop.” She forces herself to steady the weapon in her hands now that she’s finally so close to taking what she’s wanted all this time.

My life.

“Even if you so desperately want to kill me to get revenge, you can’t bring yourself to actually take my life and put an end to your suffering just like I haven’t been able to put an end to mine. Because I didn’t just take your sanity … I stole your fucking heart too, and there is nothing in this world I wouldn’t do to keep it, little rose. Whether you kill me now or years from now, it doesn’t change the fact that your soul already belongs to me.” My hand slowly curls around hers as it begins to shake. “And my soul has never been anything but yours.”

She pulls away, desperate to unlatch from whatever feelings have just grasped her heart.

Suddenly, she snatches the key card out of my pocket and backs away from all of us, still clutching the knife like it’s her only lifeline.

“Crystal …” Caleb mutters, holding out his hand, hoping she’ll take it.

“Don’t,” she says, shaking her head, her jaws clenched. “This, whatever we had … It’s over.”

She fishes her dress off the floor and swiftly puts it on before she marches out the door.

I take a deep breath.

In the end, she still couldn’t do it.

Crystal

“Darling, wait, please!” Blaine yells after me. “Don’t leave us.”

“Leave me alone,” I yell back as I storm toward the stairs.

“Crystal, don’t do this. We can talk this out,” Caleb calls out.

“It’s too late,” Ares says, his voice making me want to scream. “It was always too late. She made up her mind long ago.”

He’s right.

I did.

And if I could, I would thrust this knife into my own goddamn heart to stop it from getting in the way of killing my father’s murderer.

But that would mean the end of me too.

And he knows.

He always knew I would come for him, so he set me up to fall …

Because I quite literally fell for him.

I fell for my father’s murderer.

I open the front door and run out, slamming it shut behind me, determined never to return to the Tartarus House …

A hellhole of my own making.