Page 50 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE MONSTER

T he hallway feels too fucking quiet.

Every eye I pass ducks away. Doors creak closed. Even the ones who like to run their mouths are silent. They know what I did. They know why. And no one wants to be next.

I slow down at the corner, turn left, and come to a stop in front of Mark’s cell. It’s cracked open enough to peer through. I don’t step in.

I settle my shoulder to the frame, staring at the scratched-up number plate. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not the comforting type. I don’t do soft, gentle, “it’s going to be okay” bullshit. That’s not me.

But something in my gut won’t let me walk away.

I lift one hand and knock.

Inside, he doesn’t turn. He’s slumped on the floor with his back against the concrete wall, his knees bent and his arms draped over them as his eyes stay locked on nothing.

“Since when do you knock? Did getting a beatdown from a human punching bag actually put some manners in you?”

I squint at him. “Well, you know, sometimes even I need a change of pace. Keeps life interesting.”

I walk inside and lower myself onto the floor beside him, groaning a little as my shoulders scream. My knuckles rest against my thigh. Time passes with no clock to mark it, just the buzzing light overhead and the quiet hum of everything left unsaid.

“She lied, y’know.” The words barely move his lips. “He didn’t force her.”

I don’t need to ask who she is.

“She told me the guy hurt her. Said he held her down, came inside her while she screamed.”

His hand wavers on his thigh. “Turns out she just regretted sleeping with him and couldn’t admit it, so she called it rape. And I killed a man because of it.”

I rub my jaw, trying to process the weight pressing down on my chest. It’s not guilt or anger, it’s just fucking heavy.

“I didn’t even hesitate,” he breathes. “I didn’t wait for proof or ask any questions. I just saw his face, and I snapped.” He swallows. “I thought I was saving her. Thought I was the good guy.”

He lets out a laugh.

“She stopped visiting after the trial and couldn’t even look me in the eye at sentencing. The last words she ever said to me were, “I didn’t ask you to kill him.’”

Every muscle in my face tightens until it hurts to breathe. I want to say something, but there’s no magic line that fixes this.

Mark stops speaking. He just... stills. His whole body vibrates, as if something is tearing itself loose beneath his skin, and when it no longer makes sense to him why he did what he did, he turns on me.

“You’re doing the same thing.” The words are being choked out of him. “That girl, Faith. You’re forcing her. Just like Frank did.”

The words land like fists, but I don’t let them get to me. I just sit there with my fists resting loosely on my thighs.

“You want her afraid,” Mark snaps. “That’s the only way guys like you get off, right? You break something. You watch it bleed. That’s what gets your dick hard.”

Still, I don’t say a thing.

“You’re no better than Frank. You cornered her. You got in her head. You fucked her up and called it love.”

“You think I resemble Frank?” I crack my neck slow. “You think I held her down? Shoved my cock in while she cried?”

“Why not?” he throws back. “You’ve got the power. She’s scared. You’re violent. You already admitted you fucked her head up. So what makes you different?”

“She is scared, but not for the reasons you’re hoping.”

He scoffs. “Bullshit.”

I snap.

“I watch , Mark.”

I rise to my feet so fast the motion jangles through the room. My shoulders bunch as I pace once, twice, then crouch back down, closer this time.

“If there’d been even one second, just one fucking ripple in her eyes that looked like you,” I growl, jabbing a finger toward him, “if I saw that hollowed-out emptiness, that dead-behind-the-eyes look you’re walking around with? I’d have let her go.”

“But that’s not what I saw.”

Mark’s Adam’s apple jerks.

“All I saw was hunger,” I breathe. “Want. That twisted kind of need that’s too fucked to name.”

Mark shakes his head, but his eyes glass over with a desperate shine.

“She’s still scared,” he whispers.

“Of course she’s scared,” I snap. “That’s half the fucking point. You think pussy only gets wet when a girl’s wrapped in rose petals and given a diamond ring? You think fear and desire don’t live in the same goddamn bed?”

I move in closer, forcing him to breathe the words with me.

“You want me to be the villain so bad because you can’t live with what you did. You killed a man for her. Burned your whole life to ash. And she looked you in the face and said, ‘I didn’t ask for this.’”

I descend my head until my shadow covers him, blocking out the rest of the room.

“Now you see someone else go too far,” I keep going, “and you want to pin it all on them. But I’m not you. And Faith’s not her.”

He doesn’t try to fight it as his chest caves first. Then his face contorts as the first sob rips out of him.

I step back to give him space to fall apart without a witness breathing down his neck.

He slumps forward as his elbows drop to his knees.

His whole body caves in, too weak to hold itself together.

“I don’t know who I am anymore. I was supposed to go to UCLA.”

He drags his palms over his face, trying to tear it off. “My name was already printed on half the season posters before the semester even started.”

He laughs, but it’s not a laugh. It’s broken glass under pressure.

“I was supposed to sign my letter of intent to UCLA. Mom even made cupcakes with footballs on ‘em. She printed out the scholarship letter and framed it.”

His head thumps back against the wall.

“The day I got arrested she stood up in court and told the judge…” He sucks in a breath sharp enough to slice open his throat. “She said, ‘If the sentence comes back with death, I won’t object. I won’t cry. I won’t even visit his grave.’”

I grind my teeth in silent fury.

“She meant it, too.” His voice fractures. “She called me ‘a stranger who wore her son’s skin.’ Said she didn’t know where she went wrong and if she could go back, she’d take me out before I turned into a murderer.”

His fingers dig into his scalp as his nails rake through his hair, dragging skin with them. His lip splits trying to hold it together but he wipes it roughly, smearing tears and blood into one mess.

“And you know what? She was right.” His red eyes snap up. “I was a murderer. I killed that guy as if he meant nothing. I saw him on the sidewalk and I didn’t even think.”

His hands curl into fists in his lap.

“And for what?” His throat convulses. “For a lie.”

He tips his head back and stares at the ceiling. He’s probably hoping it will cave in and crush him. “I’d give anything to be the version of me she baked those cupcakes for.”

He sniffles, wiping his face on his sleeve.

“She used to call me her miracle,” he mutters. “Said I was the reason she didn’t give up on life. That I was the only thing she ever did right.”

He looks at me, and there’s nothing left in those eyes.

“And now I’m the one thing she wants erased.”

I don’t feed him some bullshit line about how she’ll come around or how he’s still her son. I’m not that guy.

“I had scouts watching me since I was fifteen. The paper called me ‘unstoppable.’ Local news did a whole spread. Highlight reel, interviews, slow-mo tackles, the works. People used to chant my fucking name.”

His lip trembles. Just barely.

“You know what the guards chant now?” His head turns. “Bitchboy. Cocksucker. One of ‘em calls me ‘Training Hole.’ They say I’m just prep for the new meat.”

He laughs again, but it turns into a cough halfway through.

“You know how hard it is to go from being a golden boy to a living cumrag? Every time someone stares too long, every time a tray is dropped outside my cell at night instead of handed to me like a person, it drills it in deeper. That I’m not worth the breath it takes to insult me.”

Silence again. Except this time it’s not peaceful. It’s clogged with everything he’s choking on. Rage. Shame. Grief so big it barely fits inside his ribs.

I don’t touch him.

But I kneel.

Right there on the dirty floor beside him.

Because that’s where he is now. And someone needs to stay with him in it, even if it’s just a guy with blood on his hands and a heart made of rust.

“Do you think…” He doesn’t finish.

I wait.

“Do you think people like us can ever matter again?”

I don’t answer.

What the fuck am I supposed to say? Yeah, buddy. You’ll bounce back. Just shake off the trauma, clean the blood off your soul, and go back to catching footballs.

No.

He knows the answer.

“We won’t,” he croaks. “Wouldn’t we.”

His head drops forward as his fingers curl into the floor, fighting a decision. When he looks up, he’s no longer the same.

“Kill me.”

I drag in a slow breath, holding it as the seconds stretch between us.

His nails dig into his own knees now. “Fucking kill me, Zane.”

Still, I don’t move.

“You’ve got it in you. I’ve seen it. Do it to me.”

I stand tall while he stays wrecked on the floor.

“No.”

“Why the fuck not? What good am I? What am I now? A hole for the next guy to fuck? I piss blood. I can’t sleep unless I’m against a wall. I’ll cry when I eat because I’ll remember choking on cock instead of food!”

He slams his palm against the floor, over and over again, each time harder, until his skin splits open.

“I am begging you,” he screams, a sound so raw it barely sounds human. “Please. Please. Please. Why won’t you fucking do it?”

“Because you want it too much and I don’t hand out gifts.”

He slumps in defeat with his head tilted back as if he’s talking to the ceiling instead.

“Fine,” he surrenders. “Then I’ll go to the guards and tell them that you sneak out of here.”

I wave my arms wide. “Go for it, princess. Write it in blood. ‘Zane breaks out to see the woman of his dreams.’ See how far that gets you.”