Page 34 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE MONSTER

I t’s been twenty-four hours.

One thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. Eighty-six thousand, four hundred fucking seconds since I last saw her, since her defiant eyes burned into me through that screen, since I heard the sharp catch of her breath, since I watched her thighs press together as her body betrayed her.

Every atom in my body is still seeking her out, thrumming with the aftermath of the best orgasm I’ve ever had, and it wasn’t because of my hand or the shitty prison chair beneath me, or even the thrill of risking getting caught. It was because of her. Every pulse of pleasure belonged to her.

Faith Collins is so fucking na?ve to the power she has over me.

She doesn’t realize it yet.

She doesn’t understand that she’s a sickness I don’t want to recover from. That no matter how much space she tries to put between us, no matter how many times she tells herself she hates me, she’s already mine.

I roll my shoulders, trying to shake her off. The restless energy still hums beneath my skin, and I need to put it somewhere before it consumes me whole.

I head for Mark’s cell.

“Mark,” I say, stepping into the doorway. “Practice. Now.”

Mark doesn’t move.

“Did you suddenly go deaf, or are you just trying to annoy me?”

Nothing.

No response.

I narrow my eyes, pushing the door open. The second I step inside, I see him standing rigid in the middle of the room, glaring at me.

“I said—”

I don’t get the words out before his fist connects with my jaw. The impact snaps my head to the side, fire bursting through my skull.

My instincts kick in.

Before he can step back, I latch onto his throat, slamming him into the nearest wall. His head cracks against the concrete.

“What,” I murmur, “made you so fucking stupid that you thought that was a good idea?”

“Z-Zane—” He chokes.

I tighten my hold. Not enough to cut off his air completely just enough to make him feel it, to let him drown in the helplessness, to remind him exactly who he’s dealing with.

“Keep talking,” I spit out. “Or don’t. I don’t really give a fuck.”

“H-He said—” he stutters, coughing. “He said you…you turned on Terry.”

Mark recoils but keeps talking. The words tear out of him in a rush, desperate to escape before I shove them down his throat again.

“Frank. H-He said you l-let him die.”

For a long second, I just stare at him, watching the way his pupils blow wide, the way his body trembles under my touch and then I let go. Mark nearly collapses, his hands flying to his throat as he gasps for air.

I turn on my heel.

“D-Did you?”

“I did what I had to,” I say smoothly. “To survive .”

Mark doesn’t say anything. I don’t give him the chance to.

I step out of the cell, leaving him with those words, with that single truth that he can twist in his head however he fucking wants.

Because the reality?

Survival has never been clean.

Terry’s cell is empty. Not in the literal sense, his shit is still here, the mattress still has the dents from where he used to sleep, the faint scent of cigarettes clings to the air. But it feels empty.

Like the prison itself has swallowed him whole.

No one’s been allowed in here since it happened. Since we both got caught, and I let him take the fall alone.

I run my fingers along the far wall, the one closest to the ground. This is the weak spot. The walls were reinforced over the years, but the foundation beneath? The one connected to the basement? That’s still the same. Still compromised.

And Terry?

Terry was the only one I trusted with this information.

I close my eyes and let the memory flood back.

I pull a folded sheet of paper from my waistband and spread it out on the small metal table in the center of the room.

It’s covered in symbols. Markings that make sense to no one but me.

“The fuck am I looking at?”

“Our way out,” I murmur, tapping my fingers against the paper.

“You do realize I only have three years left, right?”

I arch a brow. “And?”

“And that’s not life. Three years, and I walk out of here. No running. No chasing. No looking over my shoulder for the rest of my goddamn life.”

“That’s a long fucking time to hope you don’t get shanked in the showers.”

Terry’s scowl deepens. “I can handle myself.”

“Sure,” I say easily, tracing my finger along the lines of the map. “And what about when Frank decides he’s still not over what you did? What about when the guards get bored and throw you into a fight you can’t win?”

Terry takes a deep breath.

He knows I’m right.

I keep going.

“What about when you finally get out?” I lift my head. “You think they’re just going to let you live your life? You think they’re not going to watch you? Follow you? Wait for you to fuck up?”

His silence is loud.

“What happens when you do fuck up?” My smirk sharpens. “Because let’s be honest, Terry, you will.”

His jaw flexes. “You’re a manipulative piece of shit.”

“And you’re stalling,” I counter. “Because you know I’m right.”

Terry lets out a slow breath, running a hand through his hair. He doesn’t say no.

Which means I already fucking won.

I tap the blueprint again. “So, are you in?”

Silence.

I grin. “Good choice.”

“Alright. How are we doing this?”

I drag my finger over a cluster of symbols near the middle. “This is us. Right here.” I press down. “This is your cell, the current floor plan and this—” I trace a jagged line downward, leading to another set of markings. “—is where we need to be.”

“That looks like a pile of shit, Zane.”

I chuckle. “To you, maybe.”

“How the fuck did you even get this?”

“I didn’t.”

His brows furrow. “Then?”

“I remembered it. My grandfather built this place. He had the blueprints in his study, and I used to look through them. Didn’t know what the fuck I was looking at back when I was seven, but I do now.”

“You remembered the exact layout of a prison?”

“You do remember who you’re talking to, right?”

“Right. Photographic memory.”

Terry shakes his head and tips his chin toward the blueprints. “Alright, genius. Walk me through this.”

“This prison was built in phases. The original structure was small, just the main block and the east wing. The rest came later, including this section.” I press my hand flat against the wall, feeling the difference in temperature.

“This wall was never part of the original blueprint. It was added on top of an existing section, meaning the foundation underneath isn’t as thick as the rest of the building. ”

Terry watches me carefully. “So?”

“So.” I knock my knuckles against it again, “it’s hollow.” I glance back at him. “If we break through it, we don’t just land on dirt, we land in the basement.”

“There’s a basement?”

“There was.” I tap another marking on the blueprint, watching his gaze follow my finger .

“My grandfather built this place with underground storage, maintenance corridors, and access tunnels. But once the west wing was added, they abandoned the basement, sealed off the tunnels, and stopped using it.” I smirk.

“Which means most of the guards don’t even know it exists. ”

“Even if we get down there, how the fuck do we get out?”

I grin, dragging my finger across the sheet to a cluster of symbols that form a jagged pattern. “That’s the fun part.”

Terry crosses his arms. “And you think we can just crawl through them?”

“Not just crawl. We’ll have to break through a few barriers, maneuver through collapsed sections, and find the right tunnel.”

“And then?”

“And then,” I say, dragging the anticipation out, “we use the potholes.”

“What the fuck do potholes have to do with this?”

I tap on a series of tiny x markings along the perimeter of the blueprint.

“Potholes are caused by water erosion. The way this prison was built, there are multiple weak points in the yard. The ground above the old tunnels isn’t stable, if we find the right spot, we can dig our way up and surface outside the walls. ”

Terry lets out a slow breath, his hand finally reaching out, dragging a single finger across the paper. He follows the lines, the symbols, tracing our potential path to freedom.

“This tunnel.” He taps a faded red triangle etched into the blueprint. “It curves.”

“Part of the rerouting they did. But here—” I tap at an angular marking. “—is where the old system connects to the new. There’s a drainage outlet nearby, buried under years of dirt and shit, but it feeds into a service hole right outside the fence.”

“And if we can’t dig through in time?”

“We will.” I roll the blueprint halfway shut. “Because I know exactly where to dig. I know exactly how much time we have before the next guard rotation. I know exactly how far we need to crawl.”

Terry is silent.

“Fuck.” He sighs. “Fuck it.”

I grin, folding up the sheet all the way through and tucking it away.

“That’s the spirit.”

Now all we have to do is dig.

I focus my gaze to the far corner of the cell, where the metal plates still sit, stacked neatly against the wall. The same plates we used to dig.

They look so innocent now. Just scraps of bent metal with their edges worn from the work we put them through. No one would ever look at them twice. No one would think that those pieces of nothing were responsible for getting us deeper into this prison than we ever should’ve gone.

It was perfect.

Every step of it, every calculation, every moment we spent carving our way into the guts of this place was perfectly executed.

If only it weren’t for one small mistake.

If only it weren’t for the one thing I didn’t account for.

I step into my cell, and it is doing nothing to shake the lingering static in my veins. So, I check my computer and just like that everything else disappears.

Yeah, I did, but I came with Trevor’s name on my lips. He’s more of a gentleman than you can ever be.

Liar.

I know she didn’t come with anybody else on her mind but me. She’s testing me, and she’s going to pay for it.