Page 219 of Craving Venom
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 universalyou’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?”
