Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 184867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 924(@200wpm)___ 739(@250wpm)___ 616(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 184867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 924(@200wpm)___ 739(@250wpm)___ 616(@300wpm)
He nods as I step inside the room, where Ares is still partially hunched over in a seat, his fingers in his coal-black hair caked in blood, like he’s overthinking his sins.
I swallow away the lump in my throat and step closer to the devil himself, desperate to know whether all I ever believed was the truth … or a lie.
“I wanted to thank—”
“Don’t.” He interjects. “Don’t thank me for doing what’s right. I know you still hate me because I made you hate me.”
He stands, clearly in pain, but still turns to face me, and I’m not prepared for how my heart feels severed in two.
“You asked me why I was so eager to die …” he says, slowly unbuttoning his bloodied shirt, making me gulp as the letters begin to appear underneath. “Why your father was killed …” It’s hard to take my eyes off him as he’s never taken off his shirt before, and the abs beneath it are a sight to behold. “But all this time, you’ve been asking the wrong man.”
He turns around as his shirt slowly drops to the floor, and my jaw drops at the sight of all the scars on his muscular back, more than I could ever imagine, one slice after the other, searing red marks engraved into his skin. Some newer than others, almost as if they were welts chiseled into his skin mere days ago.
And in the top left corner, the wound caused by the knife that impaled him when he protected me from harm.
His thick, muscular arm lifts over his head, and his fingertips graze across the wound.
“Go ahead … feel it.”
I shudder as I step toward him and touch his back, the scars clearly as old as years yet as fresh as can be, as though it’s been done to him again and again.
They’re coarse, rough on all edges, like the careless strikes of a whip.
My eyes widen.
After we killed Ferry, Ares was dragged back into the Tartarus House with blood seeping through his shirt.
Did someone hurt him because of what we did?
“This. This is what your father’s death cost me.”
Oh God.
His sacrifice.
My lip trembles. “This … this was done to you because you killed my father?”
Slowly, he turns to grab my hand, his piercing gray eyes haunting my very soul. “No. I was punished because I refused.”
Ares
Two years ago
“Please. Don’t do this. I have a wife. A daughter,” the man begs.
My eyes travel across my victim’s face and down his chest, where a little patch is sutured onto his jacket with the name “Murphy’s Flowers.” But it’s the man’s pleading green eyes that make me drop the knife onto the ground.
“No.”
I get up and walk away from the man who was supposed to be my victim, knowing full well what it will cost me.
My God-given right as firstborn son, the vast empire of the Torres family, all the companies my father has under his belt … and his undying devotion.
All of it gone with one simple word.
But I have made my choice now. There’s no going back from here.
“Ares,” my father grits. “Come. Here.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I say, glancing at him over my shoulder. “I said no.”
Kai makes a tsk sound. “Ares, c’mon. It’s not that hard.”
“Just because you have no shame who you kill doesn’t mean I don’t.”
“If you don’t do this,” my father warns, pausing midsentence, “If you won’t kill for me … That’s it. That’s the end of it. Of everything.”
I know what’s at stake here.
But I’ve already made my decision, and I’m sticking to it.
“Jesus, Ares. It’s just one kill,” Kai scoffs.
I refuse to become the monster he wants me to be, and if this is what it takes to be the man I want to be, then so be it.
“The killing of an innocent man. I don’t murder innocent people.”
“Fine. You want to betray your family? Have the moral high ground? Then stay there.”
My father snatches the knife off the ground, and my eyes widen.
I rush toward the man. “Wait! No—”
Too late.
My father jams it straight into the man’s heart, and I stop halfway there.
Fuck. I didn’t think he’d actually do it.
The man howls in pain … and then nothing.
“This is what happens when you don’t do your duty to your family.” My father marches at me and grips my shirt. “You just lost everything. My trust. My love. My fucking company. All of it.”
The look in his eyes is murderous as he shoves me away.
“Kai. Get in the fucking car. We’re going.”
Kai throws me a worried glance, but I brush it off as I waltz toward the man and hover over him, watching the light slowly dim in his eyes. I push my index finger against his neck and feel. No pulse.
Fuck.
I should’ve let him run when I had the chance. Maybe then he could’ve escaped this fate.