Page 82 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

THE BEAUTY

“ Y ou made coffee?”

Zane sits cross-legged in front of me on my bed like he didn’t just fuck me on the edge of a rooftop an hour ago. His jeans are back on, low on his hips, fly half undone. The tattoos curling over his torso are impossible to look away from.

His hands are steady as he offers me a mug, and I take it, my fingers brushing his in a minor contact, but it singes. Heat curls through me. My thighs tighten, and I cross my legs beneath his hoodie, trying to act casual, trying not to let it show.

Zane drinks, tasting coffee with every slow sip. One, then another. His eyes never leave mine.

“You do realize I can go to Sebastian,” I say, sipping. “Tell him everything you’ve told me tonight.”

Zane nods.

“Aren’t you going to threaten me not to?”

“I’ll let you make that decision.”

I snort. “Since when do you let anyone do anything?”

“You made it this far. You’ve earned the right to choose.”

“Before I make my decision.” I drink again. The heat burns my throat. “You said you were infiltrating the cult. To get Corrine out.”

“Yeah.”

“How?” I lick a drop of coffee from my lip. “Wouldn’t people recognize you? Especially if you’re attending the auction?”

“I’ll be in a mask,” he says. “One of theirs. I stole it off a Dominion enforcer a couple of hours ago.”

He lifts his hand and pulls something from beneath the bed frame. A black case. When he opens it, I see a bone-white mask with slitted eyes and jagged gold teeth. It doesn’t look human. It doesn’t look alive. But somehow… it breathes.

“Jesus,” I ruminate. “That’s what they wear?”

“Every inner-circle buyer wears one. Each mask is etched with a rune unique to their bloodline. This one is from John Bailey. He won’t be attending.”

“You killed him,” I say. It’s not a question.

Zane just takes another sip of coffee.

“You saved Nina then,” I say, but the words taste ashy in my mouth.

Saved.

That doesn’t feel like the right word.

“She’s safe.”

Safe. Not saved.

That tracks.

“How did you know John Bailey was her buyer?”

“I have my ways.”

“Define ‘ways.’”

“I’ve installed cameras. All over your college. Main hall. Dorm exits. Library elevators. Admin offices. Some of them are hidden in the walls. Most are piggybacking off existing security. Others are patched into fire alarm systems. I monitor all the feeds.”

“That’s illegal.”

His lips twitch. “So is selling girls.”

I can’t argue with that.

“How many?”

“Seventy-two. Within a ten-mile radius.”

I almost drop the mug.

“You’re insane.”

“I’m prepared.”

My breath gets stuck somewhere in my throat.

“There’s a pattern,” he continues. “Every girl who goes missing has a recruiter. It’s never a stranger.

It’s someone familiar. A classmate. A professor.

A TA. Someone they’re seen with constantly until they’re not.

When a girl goes missing, I follow her last seven days frame by frame.

Location. Time. Interaction. I line it up with three years of auction data.

Reassignments. Sales. Discipline reports.

That’s how I found her recruiter. He had Nina’s name encoded into a buyer’s log three days before she disappeared. ”

He lifts the mask from the case, turns it in his hands. The sharp gold teeth flash in the light.

“Each recruiter hands the girl off to someone they call Master.”

“If you can find the recruiters,” I say, “why not use them to lead you straight to the auction? Save the girls before they’re taken?”

“Recruiters never go to the auction. They don’t deserve it. They just deliver the offering. The buyer is the one who claims her. Who funds the Circle.”

I set my mug down.

“I’ll go with you.”

Zane stiffens.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not part of this.”

“You’re wrong.”

His jaw tics. “You’re not going.”

“You keep saying that,” I snap, “but why should I trust you? Why should I believe you’re not a recruiter?”

The words taste like betrayal, but I say them anyway.

“I’m not.”

“How do I know that? How do I know you’re not just grooming me like all the rest?”

“Because I killed the one who was.”

I go still.

“I was on the list?” I whisper. “They were coming for me?”

Zane doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t need to.

I cover my mouth with one hand, trying to swallow the sudden burn in my throat. The coffee’s gone sour in my stomach. My legs pull tighter under me.

I was on the list.

Someone had picked me.

Someone had almost delivered me.

My thoughts start moving too fast looping back over the last few months. The unease I felt for weeks but couldn’t name.

Trevor.

He’d show up on my floor and say he was looking for someone else. He’d stand by the vending machine outside my class, linger too long after study sessions he wasn’t even part of. I thought he liked me, but he wasn’t trying to get close because he cared.

He was trying to sell me.

I dig my nails harder into my thigh through the hoodie. Zane hasn’t moved. He’s just sitting there, waiting for me to catch up to what he already knows. What he’s probably known for months.

“Why me?”

I hear his heartbeat pounding too loud in the silence between us. As if the thought of me anywhere near them is too much for him to bear. As if just imagining it is tearing something loose inside him.

“D.O.M. targets girls who’ve been through something,” he says. “They look for trauma they can mold. Pain that hasn’t healed right. Grief. Abandonment. Sexual assault. Domestic abuse. Suicidal ideation.”

Every word sounds like it’s scraped through his throat.

“They analyze every public record. Every social media post, therapy intake form, academic file. They pull data like it’s currency. Build psychological profiles from the digital crumbs we all leave behind.”

His eyes lock onto mine.

“And then they find the one who looks like she might fall without needing a push.”

Jason’s death. My withdrawal must’ve been enough to make them think I was broken. That I’d be easy to take.

“You think I would’ve gone with Trevor?” I ask, wrapping my hands around my knees. “I would’ve never gone with him.”

“It wouldn’t have been your choice, baby.”

“You can’t force someone into a cult,” I argue.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “You just have to convince them they’re safer inside than they ever were outside.”

I want him to stop.

But I need him to keep going.

He does.

“They isolate you first. One friend stops replying. A TA gives you a failing grade so you feel helpless. Someone starts a rumor, and no one corrects it. You stop going out because you think everyone’s staring. You stop answering calls because no one really checks in anymore.”

He tilts my chin up, and his eyes are fire.

“That’s how it begins.”

I can’t breathe.

“Then they send someone in. Someone charming. Someone who listens. Someone who makes it feel like only he sees you. He feeds you hope, one compliment at a time. He fills the silence. Becomes the only voice that matters. And when you’re alone enough…

when you start believing he’s all you have left…

you’ll follow him anywhere. Even to hell. ”

I crawl across the bed slowly and reach for Zane. My palm presses flat to his chest, right over his heart. His skin is hot beneath my touch, and the way he tenses under my hand makes my pulse skip.

I don’t pull away.

“If I’m already on their list…” My thumb brushes along the curve of one tattoo sprawling over his ribs. I feel the tightness of the muscle underneath. The restraint. The grief, “then I deserve to know what happens behind that door.”

Zane grits his jaw.

“You don’t want to see that.”

“I think I already have.”

He looks at me and leans close, until our foreheads nearly touch.

“You step into that room,” he says, “and I can’t promise I’ll protect your soul.”

I smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes.

“I already gave that up when I let you touch me.”

He exhales once and he pulls me into his lap. His arms cage around me as if he doesn’t trust himself not to crush me, but he doesn’t look at me. Instead, he focuses on a single strand of my hair, twirling it between his fingers. His gaze stays fixed on that tiny thread of gold.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” My hand curls around the back of his neck. “Aren’t you supposed to be the big bad Nighthawk?”

His lips twitch, but the smile doesn’t come. He lets the strand fall and finally looks at me.

“Because I know what that room is, Faith,” he says, the words dragging from somewhere deep.

“I know what happens behind that door. And I’ve made peace with what I have to become to walk into it.

And if they so much as look at you wrong, I won’t be able to be “The Nighthawk”.

I won’t make it to the kill. I’ll blow the entire thing just to get you out.

You make me reckless. That’s why you can’t come.

Because I can’t protect you and do what I need to do.

And if I have to choose between saving you and ending them—I’ll choose you. Every fucking time.”

I hear what he’s saying, but it doesn’t land the way he thinks it will. Because all I hear, all I feel, is the depth of his fear. Not the fear of failing. Not the fear of dying. But fear of me—of what I do to him, what he sees in me that makes him weaker, more vulnerable, more human.

And that scares me more than anything.

Because for a second, it’s not about them. It’s not about the Circle or Corrine or whatever darkness lies behind that door.

It’s about us.

And it’s the first time I’ve realized there even is an “us.” Something tangled, toxic, unavoidable. But I can’t let it stop me. Because what I want, what I need to know, is bigger than either of us.

My hands shake as I reach up and pull his face into my palms.

“I need to come with you.” I press my forehead to his, and I say it. “Not because I’m brave. Not because I’m strong. But because if I don’t... I’ll never stop wondering if I let someone else take my place.”

“You’ll be with me at all times,” he says.

“I promise.”