Page 4 of The Chameleon

Following the murder of his father and former head of the family, Mickey had spent the last few years making his crew a force to be reckoned with. He had a monopoly on the drug trade in the area, ran guns for local gangs, provided private services for high-powered clientele, and even ran legitimate businesses to launder his money.

Oh, and ever since Mickey had met his cute little twinky, the man had been rolling in cash from the gay strip club he co-owned with his husband, Seth.

Times were changing.

Gay men of power were popping up all over the criminal world.

Ares envied Mickey. There was a strong and powerful man who embraced his homosexuality and lived the life he wantedout in the open with the man he loved. Mickey’s crew seemed to have embraced their leader's sexuality, and his business had not suffered in the slightest.

Too bad Ares was not as strong. Even with all the power and fear that he had amassed over the years, he still struggled with admitting who he really was. He enjoyed power too much to chance coming out as gay. What if his crew lost all respect for him? What if people stopped fearing him?

Was he really ready to take that chance?

Over the past year, he’d struggled with that very question.

Times were changing.

His life was passing him by.

“Any last words?” Ares asked the group of men standing before him, some bloodied, some disoriented, some looking stunned and confused. None of them had been expecting the floor beneath them to cave in, only to find a group of heavily armed men holding assault rifles ready to execute them that very moment.

No. None of them had any idea. Which was also the whole point of the plan.

With stunned looks in their eyes, Seamus’s crew stared at their executioners.

Seamus spit at Ares. “You and your homo alliance can go fuck yourselves.”

“Hey, pretty boy, you may want to step out of the splash zone,” Ares warned, nodding for Cillian to step out of the firing squad’s kill area. The man might be cute, but he wasdumbas a doornail.

Ares locked eyes with Seamus, the man who planned on trying to blackmail him. What a fucking idiot. No one threatens Ares, thegod of fucking war, then gets to live to tell the tale.

The man simply glared at him.

Smug Irish asshole.

Ares lowered his hand, and his crew opened fire on the last of Seamus’s men.

Laying in a heap of bodies, Ares watched as the life drained from Seamus’s eyes, and he let out his very last breath.

This was the life they all signed up for. Only a lucky few ever made it to a ripe old age, and even fewer ever made it out of the game alive.

Once the last of the dying moans came to an eerie halt, Ares watched as Cillian pulled a ratty black journal from the back of his jeans. He flipped through the pages until he came to the section he was searching for. Without reading them, the green-eyed Irish hunk tore out the pages.

“Here. These were the entries on you,” Cillian noted as he passed Ares the damning pages.

The pages had been written in black ink, beginning with a summary profile of the individual—their name, address, net worth… shit like that—before going into the sins that they had supposedly committed.

Scanning through the pages, Ares smirked.

Dumb fuck.

Of all the things written on the pages, most were lies and stories that he had fabricated over the years to either misdirect his enemies or instill fear into others. There was only one fact that the asshole who wrote this journal got right.

Ares reached into his suit pocket and fished out the silver lighter he always carried with him. He flicked open the cap, igniting the flame.

The room stood silent as Ares set fire to the pages.

Eyes fixed on the words, he watched as the fire consumed the one true fact that his enemies would have killed to learn—the one true weakness that he kept so closely guarded.

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