Page 123 of Sweet Venom

Everything else, however, is still wobbly and tentative. In a sense, it feels like the start of something new.

In the beginning, I approached Violet to torment and kill her, but now, I don’t possess any trace of those thoughts.

Not sure when they completely disappeared, but it happened long before she was in a coma.

There’s still anger, though. Or maybe it’s tension. Aggression.

A need to fucking punish her for choosing to go into a coma.

My phone lights up with a text from Preston, who’s been trolling this entire conversation, but I don’t get to read it, because the sound of the door unlocking echoes in the penthouse.

I click on the app on my phone, turning the entire place pitch-black. The only light comes from the town seeping through the large window.

My vision instantly adjusts to my surroundings, courtesy of countless hunts in dark forests.

Violet, however, panics.

I can see the contours of her body as she freezes, her limbs locking before she fumbles in her pocket for her phone.

“Shit,” she whispers, her voice trembling, her fingers unsteady.

She truly is afraid of the dark.

One more reason why this is the perfect setting for what I have planned.

“God.” She taps fast, her movements chaotic, her breathing shallow.

The door closes behind her, and she visibly jumps, dropping the phone. As it clatters on the floor, light glows from the screen, and Violet starts to lower herself to pick it up.

But I’m already moving.

As if walking on nonexistent ground, I’m completely drawn to the girl I should’ve stayed away from but couldn’t.

Not since the very first time I saw her.

Or the second.

Or the hundredth.

There’s something about Violet Winters that calls to a strange side of me. It might have to do with the disturbing memories that plagued my sleep after Julian said she chose to be his lab rat and risk death just to escape me.

Or distant memories of soft hands that turned brutal or tears that couldn’t be wiped away.

No matter how much I’ve tried to separate the two, Violet and my childhood memories seem to correlate.

A part of me is rebelling at that thought, writhing and falling and rolling and revolting at the very thought of those memories that I erased a long time ago.

The murmurs.

The screams.

The blood.

They’re getting louder and more vicious, screeching and ripping at the bandages with bloodied fingers.

But the moment I touch Violet, they fade into the background, their slimy forms retreating and vanishing from sight.

She goes still, even as I push her against the wall, twisting and securing both her wrists behind her back with one hand.