Page 7 of Vicious and Volatile (Vengeance and Venom #2)

I could take a few days and process all the hell that’s happened in the past few days, the past few weeks. If I needed a minute, it would be totally justifiable. If I needed some time to curl up in a little ball in my bed and cry about all the wild things that have gone on, no one would blame me.

But fuck that.

I don’t have time. Ophelia has been someone’s blood bag for nearly two months. I can’t let her spend a few more days as a prisoner. She might not have an Ares, a powerful vampire who would do anything to save her, but she does have me. A best friend is nearly as good.

The day after Ares killed Augustus, he and I pour over the record. It’s sickening how many people there are in here. Augustus started taking people over ten years ago and selling them. It makes my stomach hurt, but I know it all the way down to my gut—some of these people won’t be alive anymore .

And the amount of money Augustus made off these people… He deserves to rot in hell for the rest of eternity.

It would be simple to figure out which entry could be Ophelia if Augustus had written the code in order. But he seems to have mixed them all up. There are entries from five years ago on the same page as entries from the beginning of this year. We have to go through every single page, line by line, and decode the dates.

By nightfall, we’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities. They were all taken on the same day—May seventeenth. Every one of the codes starts with the letter F, so we assume all of them are female.

The closest one is in Long Island.

Ares rents another car under a fake name. We drive out to Long Island. We pull up to a small house that isn’t nice. It’s in a rough neighborhood. Which surprises me. I’d assume someone who can afford to buy a human would live somewhere pretty damn nice. Guess not.

“Stay here, please, Vengeance,” Ares says as we park down the street two houses and across the road.

I want to argue. Ophelia is going to be terrified by any stranger coming to her rescue. I’d like to be the first person she sees. But I’ve witnessed enough death and gore in the last few days to last me a minute.

“Okay,” I agree quietly.

Ares climbs out of the car, still unarmed. He’s dressed in all black, every inch of him looking the avenging angel he is. He checks the street both directions as he crosses it, checking for witnesses. But it’s quiet here. He walks right up to the house. He tests the door, and when he finds it unlocked, he lets himself right in.

I sit back in my seat, biting at my thumbnail. Nerves are crawling through me at an unbelievable rate. We don’t know anything about the vampire who bought this person who could be Ophelia. They could be nothing to worry about, but what if they’re bigger than Ares? Older? More powerful? Hell, what if there’s more than one of them sharing this poor soul?

I think back to Ares’ fight with Augustus, when I had his back. I shot Augustus, allowing Ares to get the advantage. He’s in there right now, alone.

Ares has probably been in there for five minutes when I put my hand on the handle and am about to push it open, when the front door of that house opens again. My breath catches in my throat and I still.

Ares walks out of the house first. He looks as clean as when he walked in there. Right behind him is a young woman. She’s small, tiny almost. Her hair is blonde, her clothes ragged.

She’s not Ophelia.

But still, my heart just about explodes in relief as she cautiously looks up and down the street. She looks like she’s considering running, but doesn’t. She follows Ares across the road, straight to our car. Ares pulls open the back passenger door for her and she climbs in.

The smell of her is overwhelming the moment she gets in—as if she hasn’t showered in months. And as my stomach turns over, I realize that’s entirely possible.

“Hi,” I say as I turn in my seat. “I’m Diana.”

Ares and I already agreed we wouldn’t use our actual names. It wouldn’t do us any good in what is likely to be highly emotional situations.

“Kelsey,” she says, her voice shaking. She looks like she’s freezing in that thin little dress, despite the fact that it’s July. As Ares slips into the driver’s seat and starts the car, I turn the air on warm to try and calm her shivering.

“Are you hungry?” I ask, digging through the bag at my feet. I tried to come prepared for any situation. “Thirsty?”

“Thirsty,” she says with a nod.

I grab a bottle of water and hand it back to her. She twists the lid open and downs half of it in one go. Ares puts the car into drive, and we set down the road.

I want to ask details. I want to know what happened inside that house. Where is Kelsey’s buyer? What did Ares do? How are his hands so clean?

But Kelsey has likely been through enough trauma. It won’t help anything if I ask the details in front of her.

“I know what you’ve just been through isn’t okay, Kelsey,” Ares says as he keeps his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “And trust me when I say I feel like the biggest asshole in the world when I say all of this. But considering the details, and considering they’ve been taken care of and there is no farther justice that can be dealt, I hope you understand that it would be best for you if you didn’t go to the police with what’s happened.”

Everything in me sinks at his words. It isn’t fair. Us asking her to keep this quiet isn’t okay. She deserves to tell her story. Victims who are silenced is one of the worst forms of justice—none.

But Ares is right.

Kelsey is quiet for a long moment. She takes another long draw from her water bottle. I feel nervous with every passing second that she doesn’t say anything, waiting for her to tell Ares off, or open the window and scream, or… anything. She’d be justified in it all.

“I don’t have anyone to tell anyway,” she finally says, her voice small, quiet. “And who would ever believe me?”

The same words were spoken when Ares and I freed the people at the warehouse just two weeks ago. And ultimately, I think this is what the victims’ silence will come down to. Who would ever believe them?

“I’m sorry,” Ares says, and his tone says the truth of it. “It shouldn’t be this way. I wish it wasn’t. But it’s over now. The man who is responsible for all of this is dead. He can’t do this to anyone else.”

“Good,” Kelsey says, and I’m relieved how sure her tone is. How angry it is. She’s still got some spark. The vampire who bought her didn’t bleed all of the fight out of her.

“Where do you want us to take you?” I ask, anxious to help her move on with her life.

“What month is it?” she asks, a look of dread on her face.

“July,” I answer her, knowing this isn’t going to be great.

She swears. “I’m sure they’ve evicted me by now,” she says. She looks out the window and wipes at an angry tear. “My place is notorious for kicking people out quick. Two months without paying? There’s no way they haven’t dumped my stuff already.”

“You live in New York?” Ares asks, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

She nods.

Ares pulls his phone from his pocket and hands it to me. “Can you get James on the phone?”

I nod and go to Ares contacts. It only takes me a moment to find the name James St. Claire. I hit call and put it on speaker, extending it to Ares.

“Hello,” James answers, his tone relaxed .

“Hey, can you get the keys for the property on sixth and meet me there in an hour?” Ares asks without any conversational fluff.

“Sure, see you in an hour,” James says without question, and they end the conversation.

It’s an awkward ride back into the city. We don’t know this woman, but we do know the worst experience of her life. What are you supposed to say in a situation like this, where the woman was kept prisoner and fed on for two months?

I’m relieved when we drive through the heart of the city. It’s one in the morning when Ares pulls over at the curb. There, on the sidewalk, is James.

“Thanks for bringing these down,” Ares says as he walks up, taking the keys James offers.

“Everything good?” James asks. He’s eying Kelsey as she climbs out of the backseat, looking underfed, overly tired, and unwashed.

“Some shit to get sorted,” Ares says vaguely. “How many empty units we got in this building besides this one?” he raises the keys in his hand.

“Only one other,” James reports. “But two of them will have move-outs at the end of the month, so those ones will open up.”

“Don’t make any new contracts for them,” Ares says as he walks up to the stairs. “I might need them.”

“You got it,” James says, still eying the three of us. He’s dying to ask questions, but he knows better than to dig into his boss’s personal business, even if they’re both vampires.

Ares opens the door, ushering me and Kelsey inside. I hear him call goodbye to James, and the door shuts. “Third floor,” Ares instructs, nodding his head to the stairs. Kelsey looks confused as she follows after me, but I’ve already put it together.

Valiant.

One of the reasons I fell in love with Ares Hunt.

We walk down to the door that reads 3C, and Ares unlocks it. He steps inside, squinting against the light as he flicks the switch on.

It’s a modest apartment. It’s furnished simply but comfortably. It’s clean.

“You can stay here until you can get your life reclaimed,” Ares says as he looks around. I wonder if he’s ever actually stepped foot in the place. I’d guess not. Ares has a whole team that manages things for him. “I own the place. No one will be bothering you here.”

The look in Kelsey’s eyes is suspicious at first, and I don’t blame her. Who rescues you and then offers you a free place to live while you get back on your feet? But as she studies Ares, sees that he’s serious, the look in her eyes brightens. “Really?”

Ares nods. “Don’t plan to stay forever. There are others out there just like you, and they’re going to need help, too. So, keep that in mind. But yeah, stay here while you look for a job and find you a new place to live.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. From it, he pulls what has to be nearly two grand in cash. He sets it down on the table. “To get the essentials.”

She still looks warily at him. I don’t blame her. How is Ares Hunt real? How is he mine?

“Thank you,” she says, her voice breathy as she steps forward, wrapping her arms around him. I see tears pooling in her eyes. I see relief washing over her. “It’s good to know not all bloodsuckers are bastards. ”

“Some of us are just trying to balance out the bad done by the others,” Ares says. He awkwardly pats her back before he steps back. He puts the keys in her hand. “Good luck, Kelsey.”

And that’s it. It feels like there should be so much more. Something massive and huge happened tonight. A nightmare ended, and a rebuild commenced. But this is her life, not ours.

“You’ve got this,” I say with a reassuring smile. She waves goodbye, and we both step back out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind us.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” I say as I slip my hand into his. “What you just did for that woman…”

Ares offers me a small smile, one that doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s kind of sad. “It’s just karma, Vengeance. It’s going to take a whole lot more to outweigh what Augustus did.”

“Ares, what Augustus did is not your responsibility,” I say as I reach up and brush his hair off his forehead. I stare into those hazel eyes, and I see guilt there. I see the weight on his shoulders. “You didn’t make your father do this huge, disgusting thing. Don’t you feel like you have to pay some kind of penance for it.”

Ares catches my hand and brings it to his lips, kissing my palm. I kind of love how he doesn’t just do the traditional kiss on the knuckles. There’s something more intimate about the palm. “I’m sorry it wasn’t Ophelia tonight.”

I walk down the hall, pulling him along with me as we head for the stairs. “We’re going to find her,” I say, reassurance both for him and myself. “We’re one step closer than we were yesterday.”