Page 46 of Lovely Venom

I let him swim in that misery until he finally manages to string together a sentence.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he slurs through broken teeth.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.” I narrow my gaze at him, wondering why the fuck I didn’t finish what I started last night.

“This is my girlfriend’s house, in case you forgot.” He tries to barge past me, but I block his entrance.

“Not anymore.”

“Fuck you,” he spits. “This is between me and Chantel, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re dead to me.”

“You want to talk to her?” I shrug. “I’m the only thing standing in your way.”

He sizes me up, knowing he couldn’t take me on his best day. Then, like the coward he is, he starts calling for her over my shoulder.

“Chantel, we need to talk. You know I was drunk last night. Just give me a chance to explain.”

Chantel doesn’t answer him, but Mariella does.

“Is that Marco?”

“The one and only.”

“Oh good.” She joins me at the door, edging her way in beside me. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you.”

“What?” He scowls at her.

She punches him in the solar plexus, and he staggers back, choking on air before she hits him with a palm strike to the nose.

He goes down, blood spewing out of him like a fountain, but she isn’t finished. She presses her heel into his neck, pinning him there as she leans down to make sure he hears her.

“If you don’t leave her alone, I will cut off your balls and feed them to you. Then I’ll take every one of your vital organs and give them to people who actually deserve to breathe.”

Rafe squeezes his way in, popping his head out the door to witness the spectacle.

“Jesus, Ari,” he mutters. “You fucked him up.”

“Did you expect anything less?” Mariella smirks. “My brothers taught me well.”

Marco wheezes, trying to say something, but the words don’t fully form. Satisfied that she’s gotten her point across, Mariella breezes back to the kitchen while I watch Marco writhe in pain.

“You have thirty seconds to get off her porch,” I tell him. “And if you ever come near her again, I’ll make what Mariella just did feel like a fucking picnic.”

I close the door on him, and when I turn around, Chantel’s gaze catches mine.

We linger in that moment for far too long before she forces herself to look away. But I didn’t miss what I saw there.

For all her claims of independence, there’s still a part of her that needed that. And if the concern in her eyes is any indication, she liked it far more than she wants to admit.

9

CHANTEL

“I always knew he was an asshole,” Abella says. “But I didn’t think he was actually dangerous.”

“That makes two of us,” I mutter.

She leans back in her chair, picking off another piece of cornetti as she processes everything I just told her. The three of us have been holed up in the kitchen for the last half hour since she arrived, and I shared the condensed version of what happened last night.