Page 162 of Sweet Venom

Justmore.

Hockey used to be enough to calm this rage that’s been consuming me since I was young, but now it’s just a scratch on the surface of madness.

A drop of water after years of thirst.

And it’s fucking with my head, because I don’t know how to end it.

I considered killing Regis and even Julian. It’d do the world good if I wiped them both from the face of the earth, so they’d stop talking nonsense about my mother.

But then Lucia gave me a flash drive after being instructed by Regis.

My father wanted me to watch memories of what my mother did to me, and I chose to erase them from my head.

Ignore them.

The attempted drowning. The attempted suffocation. The attempted poisoning—that I didn’t even know about.

Regis documented the security footage in full detail, forcing me to see the empty look in Mom’s eyes when she did all of that to me.

He forced me to see him, and sometimes, Julian, come to the rescue every single time, because, according to Lucia, Regis always watched her or had someone watch on his behalf.

Apparently, he didn’t trust that Mom wouldn’t hurt me.

Fuck Regis. Fuck him and the letter.

For a while, I was in denial and convinced myself that he’d faked it.

Every single goddamn word in it.

That’s not a stretch.

It wouldn’t have been hard for him or Julian to have one of their close-knit bands of ‘experts’ fake my mother’s handwriting.

But the more I read it, the weaker my convictions got.

Unlike what I told Violet that day as we left that horror house.

“It’s not true. They’re both lying,” I said as we stopped by my bike.

She hugged me, her arms unsteady, her body trembling slightly against me, her breathing heavy on my chest.

And I couldn’t hug her back.

Because why the fuck would she feel sorry for me?

It was rage, I suppose. Not only at myself, but at her for whispering, “It’s okay if it hurts. I’m here for you.”

No one’s ever beentherefor me.

Not even the one person who I thought loved me unconditionally.

Definitely not Regis, despite his warped sense of grandiosity about saving me.

He still tortured me for Vencor, still was absent and had not one ounce of fatherly affection for me. My mother might have been mentally unwell, but she loved me and doted on me when she was herself.

Regis can say whatever the fuck he wants, but I’ve always been the spare to Julian’s genius—and a family like ours need spares.

So Violet saying those words while hugging me grated on my last nerve.