Chapter 13
“ I ’m going back to work on Monday,” I say as we exit the SUV and walk to the doors of Augustus’ house. “I’m getting stir crazy, and since Larry is taking over the gym, he’s got way too much to juggle. By the way, were you ever going to tell me you bought the gym and kicked Tate to the curb?”
A smile curls on Ares’ lip as he opens the door for me. “I figured you’d find out on your own.”
“Your money is mostly annoying,” I say as we walk inside. I drop my voice, even though Augustus can probably hear me. “But thank you. It means a lot to me.”
“You’re welcome, Vengeance,” he says. And it never fails. Every time he uses the nickname, goosebumps wash over my skin. And I really, really like the look in his eyes when he uses it.
The house is quiet when we first walk in. No signs of life. “This should only take a minute,” Ares says as we walk up the stairs.
He’s here to pick up some paperwork. I don’t understand their world, so whatever that paperwork is, it’s meaningless to me. But it’s all part of getting Ares access to the records that might lead us to where Ophelia is.
The sound of a woman giggling pauses me on the stairs. Ares looks back at me, his eyes widening as he stops, listening for if we need to retreat and head back out.
“Ares,” Augustus calls out from the floor we haven’t quite reached. “Lana. Come on up.”
The look on Ares’ face tells me he’d really, really rather not. But holding my hand tighter, he continues up the stairs. A woman walks by, coming from the direction of Augustus’ office to the living room. She’s wearing a silky bathrobe, but it’s obvious there’s nothing else under it. All the important bits are covered, but barely.
“Don’t let us interrupt,” Ares says in annoyance as Augustus wanders out of his office. At least he is fully clothed. There isn’t even a hair out of place.
I don’t even want to know.
“I won’t,” Augustus says with a smirk. The woman takes a seat on the couch, and the chef walks out of the kitchen with a tray of food. She helps herself without a word. Thankfully, Augustus comes out with some documents in a folder, which he hands over to Ares. “Take care of this, and you can step up to the next level, son.”
What does that mean? What does that mean? I want to scream because it makes something in me jump to attention. It makes me hope.
“It’s already done,” Ares says, never once breaking his father’s gaze. “All I needed was this and the signatures.”
“It’s all signed,” Augustus says with a wicked grin. “Well done.”
I nearly jump out of my skin when movement from my left startles the shit out of me. Another woman wanders out of Augustus’ office. She has on some lacy panties. But nothing else.
“Allez-vous enfin nous rejoindre, Ares?” she says as she walks by us, eying my fake fiancé up and down with absolutely no shame. I don’t know any foreign languages, but that definitely sounded French to me.
“Bianca,” Ares says, his nostrils flaring in annoyance and disgust. “It’s been a few years.”
“Too many,” she says, the words heavily accented. Her eyes are fucking Ares already, but she wanders by, straight to the woman on the couch. She kisses the woman’s neck, her hands not hesitating as they lay claim.
“You’re welcome to j?—”
“Don’t you fucking dare proposition me again,” I cut Augustus off with a glare that could kill.
He simply grins.
Until Ares steps forward. There’s the quick switch of metal on metal, and I get a quick glimpse of a switchblade before Ares presses the tip into his father’s chest, right over his heart. He fists Augustus’ expensive shirt, keeping his father from being able to step back.
“You make another disgusting comment to my fiancée again, and I will make sure it’s the last words you ever utter,” Ares says. His tone is low and lethal. His eyes are so cold, surely it’s no longer the god of war he’s named after but the god of death. “You proposition her to join you in this house ever again, and I’ll make sure you never create another child, yet live to suffer the rest of your life without a dick. Do you understand me, Augustus? When it comes to my future wife, you’re on monk-level behavior. Got it? ”
“Careful, my son,” Augustus says, pride and vengeance warring on his face. “You’re starting to sound exactly like the man I’ve trained you to be.”
The sight of something red behind the two of them draws my attention. Behind the warring father and son, Bianca’s lips have latched onto the first woman’s neck. And from that point of connection, a trail of blood drips down her flesh. The woman sits there frozen.
Bianca makes a noise of greed, pulling harder. Her hand comes to the woman’s neck, and she smears that trail of blood over her skin.
My heart thuds hard in my chest. A faint ringing starts somewhere in the room, or my head. The breath catches in my throat.
And when I look back at Ares and Augustus, the knife is no longer at Augustus’ chest. Ares has the blade pressed to the side of his father’s throat. And a trickle of blood drips from it. “I’m nothing like you. I may be your protege, but I will never be like you.”
My eyes fix on the blood dripping down to his collar now. My vision starts to tunnel, and the room grows darker. The floor seems to shift beneath my feet, but I swear I won’t go down.
“If blood makes you squeamish, you are marrying into the wrong family, my dear.”
Augustus’ words barely register in my brain, but Ares’ head suddenly whips around, his gaze meeting mine.
And in a movement that’s too fast for me to see, he’s at my side. His hazel eyes fill my vision, and in them, I see panic rising .
“Get me out of here,” I try to say, but the words are so constricted in my throat, I’m not sure they make it out.
The room spins as I look back at the blood staining Augustus’ collar. He reaches up, touching the cut and the blood smears.
And my throat closes off. It’s no longer Augustus’ fancy home I’m seeing but the wreckage of an old, drab apartment. There’s blood. So much blood. Everywhere. On the floor. On the table. All over their clothes. Their bodies. It’s splattered on the walls.
My stomach rolls.
I’m faintly aware that my feet are moving, but when I trip over what I think are stairs, I’m swept off my feet.
Emmie’s hair glued to her face with blood. Red staining Mom’s chest. The blue rug under the table is no longer blue but purple now that it’s saturated with red.
“Lana,” a voice calls my name after the sharp sound of what might be a door closing. Something warm and firm caresses my face. “Lana.”
Screams. Someone was screaming. Me.
And then the cries of the neighbor. The flashing lights of the police cars. Questions. So many questions. My own sobs. And finally, the warm, familiar embrace of my father.
But there was so, so much blood.
“Lana,” a scared voice begs.
I blink, realizing that my cheeks are wet with tears. A warm hand once more wipes over my face, and I suck in a sharp breath.
Ares’ face comes into focus.
We’re in the middle of my bed, back in our apartment.
How the hell did we get here ?
“Lana,” Ares breathes out in relief. His hands tremble just slightly as he wipes his thumb over my cheek, his fingers splayed back into my hair. “Fuck. Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”
The tears well in my eyes again, but this time, they don’t break free. I’m so damn embarrassed. “I’m so sorry, Ares. We can’t… We can’t do this. You’re a fucking vampire, and I see a little blood and lose my shit.”
“Hey,” he says, grabbing my wrists as my hands rise to thread through my hair, my entire body shaking. “You have nothing to be sorry for, and it’s going to take more than a little trauma blackout to scare me away, Vengeance.”
I freeze at that. Because just like that, he’s seen it for exactly what it was. How the hell can he read it so well?
How is he not walking away in embarrassment?
“Do you want to talk about it?” he says softly. Those eyes study my face, and I’m astounded by the lack of judgment in his expression. There’s only concern.
Who the hell is Ares Hunt? Cause there’s no way he’s a real man. He’s the most complicated, perplexing male I’ve ever laid eyes on or had the privilege of touching.
I squeeze my eyes closed and try as hard as I can not to picture what landed me here. But it’s there, branded to the back of my eyelids.
“When I was fifteen, I’d been at school late,” I say, even without giving my lips permission to share the past. “I’d been sick a few days before, and I had to make up two different tests. I didn’t come home until a few hours after Emmie had already gone home. Mom, she worked in the office at the school, so she usually walked with us to and from. She and Emmie went ahead of me since I was going to be a while. ”
Ares takes my hands, which were lying in my lap. He smooths his thumb over the back of my hands, his tattoos standing in stark contrast to my own clear skin.
“When I came home…” my words shake as they fail. And it’s like I’m right there again. “The front door was ajar. I knew something wasn’t right.”
It was so damn cold that day. The wind had been blowing sideways, and the rain was starting to fall. My shoes were half soaked. The lobby floor had been slippery and dirty. But despite the heater running, the hallway had seemed cold when I stepped onto our floor. My ears started ringing before I stepped foot into our apartment, as if I already knew.
“I walked inside, and they…” I squeeze my eyes closed. “Mom was on the floor in the dining room. Emmie was lying in the kitchen. They’d… they’d been stabbed.”
Ares curses under his breath, the look in his eyes softening.
“It was seven times for Mom,” I say as my voice cracks. “Three times for Emmie. I guess the guy who did it took a little mercy on a twelve-year-old. The police said she would have been gone within seconds. So, at least she didn’t suffer very long.”
The rage that fills me when I think about what they did to her, how they did make my mother suffer, makes me want to end the whole damn world. The evil that some can possess is enough to make you want to give up on humanity.
Ares brings a hand to the back of my neck, pulling me forward until his forehead touches mine. “I’m so sorry, Lana.”
I shake my head as a few of those tears finally force themselves free. They land on Ares’ hand. “Apparently, there was a drug dealer who lived in the apartment above ours. He had a wife. A kid. So, when some deal went bad, this guy went after them all. But he was off by one floor. And then he took off. I don’t even know if he realized he killed the wrong family. He fucking got away with it. The police never even had a suspect.”
Ares swears again, a slew of the darkest curses.
“The blood, Ares,” I say as my voice breaks. “There was so much of it. All over them. All over the apartment. Mom put up a fight. She didn’t go down easy. So, it was her blood, all over everything.”
I can see it so clearly. Smeared in the kitchen. Over the table. Splattered on the ceiling fan. The whole apartment was crimson.
“I guess I started screaming. And I don’t know how no one heard it when the intruder was taking Mom out, but I guess the screams of a teenage girl are more to worry about. A neighbor came looking. He must have been the one who called the police. I… I wasn’t particularly coherent. I… I don’t even remember how I got to the police station, but there I was, and the next thing I knew, Dad was walking into that sterile, cold room.”
Ares shakes his head, his eyes squeezed closed.
“I missed an entire month of school after that,” I say quietly. The utter panic, the terror that was raging through me, begins to ebb just a little bit. “But even after I went back, I wasn’t okay. I started talking to a therapist right away, but I was still processing. Honestly, I was pretty fucked up for at least two years. Guess I’m still not okay. That wasn’t a one time event, Ares. I can’t… I see blood, and I’m right back there.”
“You don’t have to be okay, Lana,” Ares says. He opens his eyes, staring into my own. We’re close. So damn close. Just two breaths apart. “The reality is that not a person on this planet is okay. We’re all bruised. We’re all broken. We’ve all got scars. You’re still Lana fucking Kincade.”
He catches me so off guard, a little laugh huffs over my lips. I bite my lower one and shake my head. “Ares, this doesn’t make any sense. You are what you are, and there is always going to be blood involved. I don’t want to embarrass you again like that. Or get us into a situation that compromises what we’re doing.”
Ares presses his thumb against my lips, effectively cutting off my words. “Not a chance, Vengeance,” he says, his eyes darkening as he shakes his head. “You couldn’t embarrass me if you tried. We’re in this together. Got it? Vengeance and Venom.”
I search his face, looking for evidence of lies. Of doubt. People can say whatever they want and not mean it. Words can be said to use people. To trick others. To manipulate.
But I can’t find any evidence of that in Ares’ eyes.
There are a lot of things I want to say right now. There are a lot of things I’m feeling right now.
I’m too exhausted, though.
“Okay,” I say simply.
And as if he can read my mind, Ares shifts in the bed, lying back against the pillows. And like it’s something he’s done a thousand times before, he gathers me into his arms, my head coming to rest on his chest. “Get some sleep, Vengeance,” he says softly. And I know I’m in trouble when he presses a kiss to the top of my head.
I search for words but can’t find any that make sense or won’t put us in a world of trouble. Ares could have berated me for embarrassing him today, for potentially compromising our mission. Instead, he’s reassured me. Instead, he’s curled up in the bed with me, holding me with strong arms that make me feel… safe.
Instead of overthinking it, I nuzzle into Ares’ side. My fingers cling to his perfect body. My head rises and falls in time on his chest to his breath. He brushes his fingertips over my arm, sending a wash of goosebumps over my skin.
“Sleep, Vengeance,” he says in little more than a whisper. “I’ve got you.”