Venom & Glory (Venom 3)

He can beg all he wants. It’s too fucking late. He works for her. He’s sold himself out. That’s why he’s here. He was celebrating. He thought he was never going to see me again.

He was fucking wrong.

The Jefe won’t fall that easily.

My gun goes off.

One quiet, seamless bullet through the brain. Two more through his chest. He falls backward, eyes stretched with horror, landing hard on the dirty floor, body slumping like the sack of worthless shit he is.

The bitch he had with him screams at the top of her lungs. Her scream doesn’t last for long. I shoot her in the head, too, for associating with a worthless fucker like him.

Her body falls forward, crashing onto the glass table, her face landing in the pile of coke.

One of my guards appears behind me, his gun out, ready to fire.

I turn, walking out of the room. My guards follow suit without a single word.

Everyone is too drunk or high to notice us. I bet they won’t even find the bodies until morning.

See, that’s the thing about places like this.

This is why they’ve never intrigued or enticed me.

A person can die right up under their noses, and they still dance and party and get drunk, completely unaware of their surroundings. A bomb could be getting placed in one of the stalls in the bathrooms. The bartender could be spiking the bottles, drugging the women and dragging them off to be shipped and sold, and not a fucking soul would notice.

Only the weak-minded need things like this to feel alive—parties, and drugs, and drink after drink after drink.

Anything could happen, because they aren’t paying any fucking attention or staying aware of their surroundings. Because they think this world is safe and that nothing will ever happen to them.

That was Morales’ problem. He thought he was invincible. He never took me seriously. He never paid any fucking attention to what I was actually saying, even when my threats were perfectly clear.

Even when he’s witnessed my wrath, he still betrayed me. He celebrated before he even found out if was I still alive.

He was weak, and being involved with the weak has never fucking suited me.

22

GIANNA

My heart is pounding, my lungs filled with the cold, night air as Clark and I jog through the woods, shoving branches and thick pines out of the way.

“Remind me why we couldn’t take one of the cars,” I huff, trying to catch up to him.

“Traceable,” he pants. “He has trackers on them, and the guards keep watch of them, just in case one is ever stolen or if we’re running a deal. An alarm goes off at our station when one is in use. It’ll wake them up, and the first person they’ll alert is my dad.”

“Of course.” I keep jogging by his side until a clearing opens up ahead. Streetlights filter through the thick pines, and Clark picks up his pace, trooping ahead.

We step onto asphalt, and he comes to a halt, looking to the left, where a black Subaru is parked on the side of the road. He pulls out a set of keys and unlocks it, yanking the door open and hopping into the driver’s seat.

I load myself into the passenger seat, the scent of stale cigarettes and expensive cologne closing me in.

“Let me guess?” I say, catching my breath. “Your getaway car?”

“Only way he can’t figure out where I am all the time.” He starts the car up and puts the transmission in gear, gripping the stick and pulling off with a loud purr from the exhaust.

“Why does he want to know where you are all the time?” I ask him. “Does he not trust you?”

He shrugs, switching lanes and changing gears again. “He has his reasons not to trust me.”

“And what are they?”

He side-eyes me briefly before focusing on the road, the streetlamps flashing on his face. “A year ago, I killed someone he thought he could trust.”

My eyebrows draw together. “Who?”

“His best friend.” He pauses for a second, most likely debating whether he should continue with the story. I’m glad he does. It helps distract me from the fact that I’m walking away from ultimate bliss and right back into the fire and chaos.

“His name was Louis,” Clark continues. “He was mine and Jen’s godfather. We thought we could trust him. He’d always told me that if I ever needed to get away, to come hang with him at his place. I always did. He never bothered me, and I never bothered him or got in his way. But one day while I was at his place, I eavesdropped. I’m nosy as fuck, and I don’t care to admit it. I want to know everything.” He shrugs like he’s trying to prove a point. “I heard him talking to someone on the phone, saying how he was going to bring Big Jack with him to some warehouse and that ‘it’ could happen there. I couldn’t figure out what the fuck ‘it’ was until I came home and heard my dad on the phone ordering some of our men to pack the trucks with guns that had just been shipped in.