Page 3 of Lovely Venom

Alone.

Now there’s no one left to mop up after. No emergency to handle. Just an eerie quiet that holds both great and terrible memories. I need to walk away from here. This part of my life is over.

I press my hand to the doorframe. With one last breath, I taste Mom’s lavender detergent, lemon furniture polish, and the ghost of the last cigarette she smoked.

Then I walk out and don’t look back, because that’s what strong girls do.

CHAPTER ONE

Raina – Present Day – June

“One more fuck up, and you’re off the task force!”

My boss’s threat after another botched op to take down Havok, a Colombian drug dealer, rings in my ears along with the buzzing of today’s gunfire. Before I can torture myself about it some more, I come up short in the hallway to my apartment and see my neighbor Ruby waiting for me.

The nineteen-year-old stripper, who lives with her abusive alcoholic father, is the closest thing I have to a best friend.

“Hey,” I say to her. “Everything all right?”

“Dad’s friends are in there again.” Ruby uncomfortably holds her middle.

Anger roils through me, remembering the tears in her eyes when she told me how her father’s disgusting buddies came on to her. Maybe I can focus on hating that guy for a while and not worry about my spiraling DEA career.

I glance at Ruby’s face full of makeup and a skimpy dress. “What time are you working tonight?”

“Seven,” she says.

“Hang with me until then.” I unlock my door. “Ramen or mac and cheese?”

“Nothing, I’m not hungry,” she says and wanders freely into my apartment. She’s here so often that it feels odd when she’s not around.

“Have you seen my vape?” she asks, rummaging through one of my kitchen drawers.

I point to the one with old batteries, takeout menus, and loose coins. “I think I put it in that one.”

Ineed a drink. Ruby doesn’t touch alcohol, so I pour myself two shots of my favorite whiskey and down them standing over the sink. The burn in my throat calms me.

Ruby wades through the messy drawer and pitches her back ramrod straight. “Youneveropened your mom’s letter?”

I freeze.

That damn letter...

“No.” I turn to face her, holding an empty glass against my chest.

Ruby runs her fingers along my mother’s handwriting, unable to hide the pain of her mom leaving when she was ten. Without even a goodbye, the woman left her daughter with a mean drunk who beats her from time to time.

“You’re not even a little curious?” she asks above a whisper.

“It won’t change anything.” I turn to stare out the window that faces Downtown Manhattan and breathe in the warm June evening until a waft of cigarette smoke has me turning away and wanting to vomit. “There’s nothing in there except heartbreak. I don’t need her confessions. I want to remember my mother the way she lives in my head. I want to love her and not be angry at something she couldn’t tell me to my face.”

“Makes sense.” Ruby holds it up to the ceiling light.

Mom was a flawed, fragile human. But she loved me the best way she knew how. I don’t need another version of her haunting me. She was a woman shaped by secrets instead of strength. Any time I asked things like, who my father was or about her life back in Montenegro, she shuddered and brushed it off.

I tug the letter free from Ruby’s slender fingers and pop it into a nearby desk drawer without a second glance. It shuts with a quiet click. Some truths don’t deserve tooutlive the person who kept them.

“Can you come to my club tonight?” Ruby’s question breaks me from my thoughts. “They’re giving me my first solo.”