Page 68 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

THE MONSTER

M y hand slams onto the metal table just to keep from fucking up the entire row of monitors in front of me.

My cock still aches from the way her pussy strangled me. My lungs drag in air like I hadn’t breathed properly since she walked out. There’s come drying on my skin, a bruise blooming on my shoulder where she bit down.

I don’t believe in gods. Never have. There’s nothing divine in this world but pain, and maybe the high that comes right after. But today? Today I worshipped.

That cunt was holy. And I fucked it like a sinner begging for mercy I knew I’d never deserve.

“Damn,” someone whistles behind me. “Can’t believe you just wasted a very good escape plan for a fuck.”

“Fuck, that was a good one. Why didn’t you use that to get me out?” another voice follows, somewhere behind me.

I tune them out because I will rip someone’s jaw off if they keep distracting me.

What I wouldn’t give to feel her again. Just once more.

I’d tear this place down brick by brick with my teeth.

I’d sell every secret in my blood to sink back inside her.

I’ll build another fire. Blow a fucking wall open if I have to.

I’ll bend the world until she folds for me again.

I left my soul inside her. I left my fucking mind in her and now I’m walking around like a rabid animal missing a piece of itself.

And I will have her again.

My head goes underwater. Just like that. One second I’m on fire and the next I’m drowning. Liquid pours down my scalp and I stumble back from the table with a snarl.

“What the fuck, Terry?” My fists slam into his jaw as I drag my sleeve over my face.

Terry’s standing there with a half-empty jug, not even pretending to be sorry. “Snap the fuck out of it, man.”

I bare my teeth. “You pour water on me again, I’ll drown you in it.”

“Then stop acting like a dick drunk on pussy. You just lit up a Class-3 emergency for a girl. You’re supposed to be controlled.” He motions to the rows of fried circuits on the monitor, still sparking from the fire diversion. “Not soft.”

I spit water onto the ground and glare at him through soaked lashes. “You think I’m soft?”

“You’re not acting like a guy who plans five moves ahead anymore. You’re acting like a guy who’ll blow up the board just to see if she’s still watching.”

He’s not wrong.

And I don’t give a fuck.

“I mean, for real,” he scoffs, kicking a chair out of the way as he circles back toward the monitors. “She must’ve sucked your cock real good to make you risk that much tech. Did she let you titfuck her too? Or was the little princess too precious for that?”

The words hit harder than they should. Not because they surprise me. But because they’re about her.

“If you say one more fucking word about her,” I snarl, “I’ll put you six feet under and this time, I’ll make sure you stay.”

“Jesus, calm down. Didn’t know you were in love.”

He glances past me.

“ Mark , back me up here?”

Mark lifts both hands, leaning against the cabinet near the corner with his eyebrows raised in the universal you’re on your own , idiot gesture.

“If you’re smart,” he says coolly, “you’ll leave the girl out of it. Stay the fuck away from that line.”

Terry scoffs. “Yeah, I’m not taking advice from some baby-faced bastard who’s been out of prison for what—an hour? Two, tops?”

Mark gestures toward himself. “Speaking of… how the fuck did you pull this off?”

Terry and I trade a glance and walk to the couch across from the monitor wall.

Terry kicks his boots up onto the coffee table and cracks his knuckles. “Alright, since golden boy here’s alive and breathing again,” he nods toward Mark “you wanna tell him how the fuck we pulled off the best fake death prison has ever seen?”

“Yeah, please. Enlighten me. One minute I’m jerking off in a cell, and the next I’m waking up in an estate with a higher net worth than the GDP of at least a hundred countries.”

“I’ll let the artist explain. Go on, Zane. Show him how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

I keep my stare pinned to the wall of monitors. “It started in the infirmary. I’ve had a guy in Medical Records for years. He flagged the requisition order two days before it was processed. The in-house supply was short, so they had to pull a backup vial of IV sedative from the secure stockroom.”

“Backup... for Frank?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m guessing you just happened to get your hands on that shipment.”

I grin. “I intercepted it. Two syringes. Just enough to knock someone out without triggering the vitals to crash completely. I slipped the first dose while you were jerking off.”

“You motherfucker,” Mark mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. “You drugged me mid-stroke?”

“Mid-groan,” Terry corrects.

I ignore him and continue.

“That sedative takes a minimum of four hours to eat through the body. Four hours to lower your blood pressure, slow your heart, dim your reflexes just enough to make you a convincing corpse.”

Mark huffs out a sound that’s half disbelief, half grudging respect. “So I wasn’t passed out. I was dying slow.”

“Not dying,” I correct, locking eyes with him. “Just giving up enough life to sell it.”

“We had eyes on your room the whole time. I scrubbed the footage once you went under. Cut a loop of you asleep, synced to the hall traffic. No one noticed the change,” Terry joins the conversation.

“When I walked back into your cell,” I continue, “you were out cold. Just like I wanted you to be.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the table as I remember Mark’s body.

“Your body was loose. Your eyes were rolled back. You were perfectly dead weight. We had twenty-three minutes before the next guard on shift passed by your hall. That was all I needed. I lifted you off the bed, tied your arms up above the vent with torn bedsheets. Then looped a transparent monofilament line from your ankle to the leg of the chair.”

Mark squints. “What for?”

“So your neck wouldn’t actually snap,” I snap. “If the guards saw a twist in your vertebrae, the whole thing would’ve fallen apart. I needed you breathing but limp.”

I drag a hand down my face, trying to scrub the memory out of my skin before looking back at him.

“Luke was already waiting in the medical corridor. He showed up five minutes after you were ‘discovered.’ We’d already burned your chart into the system. Everything said asphyxiation.”

“They didn’t check?” Mark still looks stunned.

“They did,” Terry interjects. “But not too hard. No one wants the paperwork on a dead inmate. They zipped you up and moved on.”

“Okay, fine, but what about the coroner? The actual coroner on file. You don’t just fake a death and not have them poke around. How the fuck did you convince him?”

I smirk.

Because that’s where the real beauty of the plan lies.

“We didn’t have to convince him,” I say. “We replaced him.”

Mark freezes. “You what?”

“Luke swapped his clearance with a new ID badge and a new signature. All backed by hospital credentials Luke slid into the system. His name never touched the screen. But the one that did?” I pause. “It matched a doctor in the coroners’ list with actual clearance and a record of being a lazy fuck.”

“But how did you get the access?” Mark presses. “You can’t just forge a coroner’s login. The software flags anything outside verified medical networks.”

“It didn’t flag shit because Luke didn’t have to forge it,” I explain. “The coroner on file was the college roommate of Sean Callahan’s best friend.”

Mark stares blankly for a second. Then he blinks.

“Sean Callahan…? The Sean Callahan?”

“President of the Veridian Medical Board. The guy who signs the health budgets for half the fucking prison system.”

“Holy shit. You had him in on this?”

“No.” I let the silence hang for a beat too long before replying.

“Luke hates his father. Just like I hate mine. The difference is… Luke plays smarter. Luke’s family’s tight with the coroner’s wife.

She owed a favor. And Luke doesn’t forget debts.

He called it in last year. Kept it in his pocket until now. ”

“So the guy who pronounced me dead…”

“Never showed up,” I finish. “His wife, who was also his assistant, signed in for him. Gave us a time window. Luke slipped in with gloves, mask, credentials, and walked out with your body zipped, tagged, and filed under ‘external mortuary processing.’ He even logged a heat malfunction in the drawer freezer to justify pulling you out early. Filed the maintenance ticket, backdated the work order. By the time anyone checks, it’ll look like an overworked tech forgot to update the logs. ”

“Luke had the truck bring you to the prison,” Terry says under his breath. “For burial... but it was all part of the switch.”

“Then I dug you three feet under,” I say flatly. “I made sure your casket had an oxygen supply, small, hidden, but enough to keep you breathing after the adrenaline kicked in. We embedded a micro-canister beneath the false panel lining the lid. Timed it with your vitals coming back.”

Mark swallows hard. “That’s why I could breathe. I remember… the air smelled like rubber and dust.”

“Because it was filtered through the padding,” I confirm.

“Why not just keep me in the truck?”

“Because the truck was only supposed to get us as far as the perimeter.” I flick a glance to the monitor wall. “After that, we needed a cover for a body being offloaded. Easier to log a corpse transfer than explain why a half-conscious man was getting shuffled out of a fire zone.”

He stares at me like I’ve grown horns. “You thought of that?”

“I don’t build plans with room for failure,” I smirk. “Only exits.”

Terry elbows Mark. “You looked beautiful. Pale. Peaceful. Like a virginal little corpse bride.”

Mark ignores him, eyes still locked on me. “So you… what? Just waited by the grave like a fucking crypt keeper?”