Ruin (Rhodes #1) by Rina Kent

                             “I haven’t finished.” I cut Crow off. “We’ll continue making Hades believe you’re dead. We will even send a few of our men to watch over your nurse. Once Hades and The Pit are news, and you’re no longer in danger, you can go back to her.”

                             Tristan gives me a knowing look. I shrug. True we never discussed this, but it’s the only way to make Crow talk.

                             Hope springs in the latter’s eyes before he shakes his head. “I can’t betray Team Zero.”

                             “You won’t have to,” Tristan says. “If things go according to my plan, they’ll soon join you. There’s no need to fight with them if we share the goal of taking Hades down.”

                             Crow remains silent, a tremor taking over his limbs. It’s only after what seems like forever that he sighs. “The three of you were pawns in a greater game. The purpose of the operation wasn’t only to take and mould you into professional killers. Hades holds a great grudge against your fathers and toyed with you to extract revenge.”

                             “What’s Hades real identity?” Dylan’s eye twitches.

                             Crow shakes his head. “I barely met him in my career. I have no fucking clue about his real identity. For me and Team Zero, he’s just Hades. Hell’s keeper. He’s posh, though. So he’s likely someone from your noble circle. If you follow the lines, you will get to him. But I assume your fathers did a lot of bad to follow, didn’t they?”

                             “Shut up.” The grey in Dylan’s eyes clouds the grey. “Who are you to judge our parents. You may not call the shots, but you trained us. You played a part in turning us into the pathetic beings we are. Never fully a monster. Never entirely a human.”

                             “At least you didn’t have to do it under the influence of the fucking drugs.” Crow grits out. “Stop acting like a pathetic little bitch, Dylan. You would never erase the lives you’ve taken, so how about stopping being sorry for yourself and use that energy to hunt Hades?”

                             I whistle. “Tell him, Crow.”

                             Dylan glares at me, and I glare back.

                             “And you, Aaron.” Crow coughs, and more blood splatters on the white tiles. “You’re drifting from the real world and losing touch with reality. So you better find something to hold onto before it’s fucking too late.”

                             I think I already have.



                             . . . . .



                             After Crow is strapped and sent to our private clinic, Dylan, Tristan, and I remain in the bloodied room.

                             Dylan places the gun back in his waistband but doesn’t move. He escaped killing his seventeenth victim. I learnt his because he keeps reciting them like they’re a sacred prayer.

                             He’s way behind me in numbers. Though I stopped counting a long time ago. What’s the point in living in a useless and completely destructive moral cycle like Dylan?

                             Who deserve to be killed will be killed.

                             Or like Ghost, our other trainer, used to say ‘Either kill or die.’

                             There’s no in between for people like us. Tristan and Dylan are only fooling themselves by thinking they can be normal after so much abnormal.