I closed the door behind me and tiptoed farther into the house. A scream ripped through the air.
Ari.
I sprinted to the living room and skidded to a halt. My heart stopped beating, then hammered in my chest in triple speed. Ari, lying on the floor, bleeding, with Ken — that fucking monster — slashing the boy’s back while trying to poke his cock between Ari’s ass cheeks.
My vision turned red at my beautiful boy under this disgusting creature. A hoarse cry tore from my lips.
“You son of a bitch! Get off him!”
Ken jerked back, whipping his head up. He scrambled up, his cock hanging out of his pants. It was the sight of that swollen member that was the last straw. How dare he think he was going to get away with this again?
“It wasn’t enough what you did to him before?” I raised the gun and squeezed the trigger. Boom! Boom! The impact of the bullets ripping through his chest drove him back. Blood oozed from the wounds, and his cold, hard eyes met mine, then turned glossy as he tumbled to the floor on his side.
Ari whimpered, stopping me from emptying the whole magazine into him. Instead, I turned on the safety and placed the gun on the floor as I kneeled by Ari, who lay facedown on the floor. His shirt was ripped and bloody from the cuts to his back. He covered his head with his hands, and blood seeped from the cuts on his arms. Blood was soaking into his beautiful curls.
“Ari.” I struggled to keep the tears at bay. The waistband of his pants and his lace underwear were down under his butt cheeks. I carefully pulled them up and back into place, hoping I’d arrived in time to prevent him from raping the boy.
But what he had done to Ari’s body was horrifying enough. How many times had he cut him?
“Baby.” I carefully rolled Ari over onto his side. Besides a hiss of pain, he didn’t make a sound. His front wasn’t bleeding as badly as his back and his arms.
I took in his face. Not the blood but his slack expression and the unresponsive eyes worried me the most. I gently turned him on his belly again.
“Ari, it’s Daddy. Please say something.”
Silence.
“Oh god, baby, please.”
I clamped my eyes tightly closed, then looked at the man who caused all this.
Oh. My. God.
Howard, Ari’s friend, sat slumped on the sofa, his shirt and the cushions soaked in the blood from the slit in his throat.
Oh god, what kind of monster did this?
The monster who lay dead for good this time. I’d made sure of it.
I fished out my phone and punched in 9-1-1. I leaned forward and kissed Ari’s temple. “Everything’s going to be okay."
“9-1-1, this is Charlie. How may I help you?”
The police arrived on the scene quickly, paramedics and the ambulance just a minute behind them. Someone pulled me away from Ari as the paramedics worked on him, trying to stop the bleeding from the most crucial sites. They spoke to him, asked him questions, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t even move.
“He’s in shock,” one of the paramedics said to the other, shining a penlight directly into Ari’s eyes. Then he turned to me. “Do you know if he’s on any medications?”
“He has Xanax in the medicine cabinets with his name on the bottle. He said it helped him to sleep and keep calm,” I stammered. I’d never seen him take them, though, so I hadn’t questioned him any further about it. Maybe I should have.
A cop pulled a white sheet over Howard’s body. The poor kid. He’d befriended Ari, who seemed to enjoy their friendship, and he hadn’t deserved to die like this.
“Detective Cooper,” the cop said. “You’re the one who phoned in about the incident?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“And it’s your firearm that was recovered from the scene?”
“Yes.”