Page 42 of Lovely Venom

When my eyes register the silhouette of a dark figure standing a few feet away, fear claws its way up my throat.

A hollow sound echoes inside my chest as I raise the gun in my hand, shaking so violently I can hardly hold it steady. I can’t get any words out, and before I can even think about squeezing the trigger, he lunges forward and disarms me.

“Jesus Christ.”

The words are a sharp exhalation from a familiar voice, but my body can’t seem to accept the threat is over. I’m still trembling as I try to drag in a breath, and I stumble back, seeking some kind of stability to latch onto.

“Hey.” Cristian reaches out and pulls me close, cradling my head against his chest. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

An involuntary sob spills free as he offers me refuge in his arms.

“Fuck, Chantel. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Tears streak down my face, humiliating me even more than I already was. Usually, I’d run as fast and far as I could in a situation like this, but I’m so physically drained from the events of today that I can’t seem to move at all.

“You’re safe now,” Cristian assures me, his voice roughening at the edges.

Those words settle deep inside me, and I don’t know why, but I believe him. Because at least for this moment, as long as he’s here, nobody else can hurt me.

As I process that, my breathing gradually slows and my tears dry up. Neither of us moves, even when his comfort is long past the point of necessity.

It doesn’t make sense because I don’t let people hold me like this. But nothing about it feels forced. What scares me more is the realization that I don’t want to let go, and that’s what makes me pull away. Then for the second time tonight, he carries me to bed.

When he tucks me in, his gaze lingers on my swollen eyes, and he wipes away the last of my tears with a gentleness that makes my chest ache.

“I’m not going anywhere tonight,” he promises. “I’ll be just down the hall, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I want to ask him why he’s even still here, or more importantly, tell him to stop being nice to me. I don’t want this false sense of security. But ultimately, my exhaustion wins.

Before I can say anything at all, my eyes drift shut, and everything goes dark.

8

CRISTIAN

Six.

That’s how many times she checked each lock and window. As I lay on the sofa that’s entirely too small, thinking over the sequence of events I witnessed tonight, things start to fall into place.

Chantel is well practiced at hiding her real emotions, and for the most part, she tends to fool the people around her. But I haven’t missed the way she clocks the exits in every room, or how she positions herself to keep an eye on them. She’s hyper-vigilant—always scanning the people around her, noting every shift, and flinching at loud voices or unexpected touches.

She needs control of her space, and she creates rules to prevent anyone from getting too close. When she thinks nobody is paying attention, her thoughts tend to drift, and the darkness returns to her eyes.

On the surface, she’s composed and confident. But beneath that veneer, there are hairline fractures, and in rare moments, her vulnerability escapes.

Tonight, it bled out.

I’ve seen these types of rituals before in my cousin Luca when he’d come to visit over the summers. He’d lost half of his family in a home invasion carried out by a rival, and he was never quite the same.

The way he explained it was that his brain was always scanning for threats so he could try to prevent them. It didn’t matter how illogical it looked to everyone else. For him, his rituals were about survival.

I don’t know exactly what Chantel’s been through, but piecing everything together, it isn’t difficult to guess. Someone shattered her trust so deeply, she never feels safe. The kind of terror I saw in her eyes tonight doesn’t come from a scratch. It comes from being gravely wounded.

As a matter of principle, my brothers and I make it our business to know who our sister spends time with, friends included. In our world, you can never be too careful. So when Chantel came into Mariella’s life, we did what we always do and ran a background check on her.

In our family, Romeo handles cybersecurity, intelligence, and surveillance. He’s somewhat of a hermit and a genius, and he knows how to unearth what the average search might miss.

When he pulled up Chantel’s background, there was technically nothing wrong with it. But it was too clean for him to believe it was anything other than a professionally curated identity. Most people have digital breadcrumbs from their pasts. Forgotten emails, old photos, dormant accounts. She had none of those.