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)
“Are we here to dance or to find someone?” I hiss.
“Both,” he muses, swirling me around so we’re face-to-face again. Every time I look at his sharp features followed by those beaming gray eyes, I nearly melt away in the heat.
My eyes widen when the man in the yellow bow tie glances at the party before heading into the hallway. “He’s there. Saw him enter.”
The guard follows him inside, and the hallway is left unattended.
“C’mon.” Ares grabs my hand and pulls me into the same hallway as that man.
We pass room after room with only curtains separating us from them … the people having sex behind each of them. The kind of sex that’s probably not allowed, with weapons and blood and pain, and I swear I could see someone beg with their eyes.
I swallow as Ares wraps his arm around my shoulders and tugs me along. “Focus on my voice. This way.”
We turn a corner where there are more curtains with couples behind them, but at the end of the hallway is a room with a door. In front, a guard stands waiting.
“Pretend you’re drunk,” he whispers.
I giggle at him and slap him on the chest as we approach the guard, my heels a perfect height to accidentally fall into him. “Sorry!”
“Private area. Move back,” the guard growls at me.
“Excuse us,” Ares mutters before pulling out a gun with a silencer and shooting him point-blank between the eyes.
Poof.
Just like that. Gone.
The man sinks to his knees, and Ares catches him before slowly dropping him to the floor and releasing him. He snatches the key card from his pocket while blood stains the floor. I stare in shock as Ares holds the key card over the lock and pushes open the door, pulling me inside before shutting it behind him.
A man sits in a circular booth, watching a woman behind a glass windowpane dance against a pole. He’s oblivious to the fact that we’ve entered the room, sipping his drink while rubbing himself.
Ares approaches him with the gun pointed at the back of his head and slowly pushes it into his skull.
Only then does the man stop drinking and rubbing himself, his hand still down his pants.
“Don’t move an inch. Don’t speak a word unless I tell you,” Ares says as he guides me forward until we’re both in front of the man instead of behind him.
“You …” the man mutters.
BANG!
Ares shoots the couch right beside his head.
“Last warning,” Ares growls. “Tell the woman to leave.”
The man slowly bends over to press a button on his table and talk into a tiny speaker. “Leave.”
The woman stops dancing and glances at the window in a frustrated way before exiting the room.
Ares glances at me. “Sit on the table.”
I swallow but still do what he says, sitting on the table with my legs crossed, as far away from the man as possible.
“Have you ever seen her?” he asks.
The man vigorously shakes his head. “Never.”
Ares sits down on the couch behind me, opposite the man, and I’m acutely aware of his presence as he places the gun on the table, his hands slowly finding their way to my waist as he grips me tight.
“Are you sure about that?”
The man gulps and glances at the gun.
“Who … who is he?” I mutter, glancing at Ares over my shoulder.
“Wayne Ferry. A man who works for the people who own this establishment,” Ares says, keeping his gaze fixated on the man. “The man who was directly responsible for your father’s death.”
All the oxygen instantly evaporates from my lungs.
Because I never told him about my father …
Or that he was murdered.
ARES
Her whole body begins to shake against the tips of my fingers, and I revel in the emotions building inside her, growing harder and harder as her fear begins to build.
Yes, little rose.
Fear. Me.
“Your father owned a flower shop, didn’t he?” I say, leaning forward so I can take a whiff of the fear she exudes. “Ferry is the man who denied the order because it wasn’t to his liking, who refused to pay him, who made him walk … only to be killed right in front of the very fucking doorstep of The Tomb.”
She gasps, and I watch the single tear running down her cheeks with peak interest like it’s a droplet of Ambrosía itself.
Fuck.
I never imagined the truth would be so intoxicating.
Or that I would get so hard at the thought of her finding out. Guess I really am as sadistic as she thinks.
“You’ve been searching, haven’t you?” I murmur as I drag her closer to me across the table until she’s seated right in front of me, legs on both sides of my hips. “For the one to blame.” I lean in to whisper into her ear. “To kill.”
Her eyes find the gun on the table as sweat drops run down her neck, and then they find mine.