Page 29 of The Vipers and Their Venom

I’m also conscious that we’re still standing in the dean’s office, and I have papers in my bag. Someone else could find us, and not be as generous as at least trying to make a deal with me. I also need time to try to re-lock the door. It’s not quite as easy as picking it in the first place and can cause damage. I need to be focused to do that, and he’s not helping.

“Tomorrow night, then,” I say.

A smile touches his perfect mouth, and he tips his head to one side. “I’ll look forward to it.”

17

ZANE

My hand smooths over the wood, away from my body, before I flick my wrist and bring it back toward me once more. The tool I am wielding is turning the wood into a beautiful, rounded object. When I work with the wood this way, it's the only thing that soothes me. My mind finally calms, and I zone out as I get lost in the flow of the work.

There are birds singing outside, heralding the coming evening. Tonight, we will be having ourselves a little visitor. My skin tingles with anticipation at the thought.

I stop working the wood and lean forward to blow off the dust. I sit back and take the time to look at the planes and curves of the object I'm working on. This is going to be a coffee table. It won't have legs, but instead will be one continuous smooth piece of wood that curves at each side, and balances on itself against the floor.

The door to the mansion opens, and Saint strolls in looking like he fell from the cover ofGQ.

I glance down his body, and my mouth widens in a silent grin. He’s wearing a patterned silk shirt that is undone halfway down to his navel, and he has layered silver chains at his throat. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, and a pair of dark jeans cling tohis legs. Finishing the outfit are what look like snakeskin boots. I can't tell if they're real or not, because I'm hardly into fashion, but, knowing Saint, they will be. I don't give a crap about clothes, mostly. I wear what feels comfortable, and if I did have a style, it would probably be closer to the grunge of the 90s than anything else. Except those kids were all skinny with painted fingernails, and I'm practically a giant.

Saint has bags in his hand, and he walks by me and into the kitchen. Intrigued, I stand and follow. I lean against the doorway as he unloads the bags. We’ve managed to get the electricity flowing in this place via solar power, so we have a refrigerator. He takes out chips and dip, placing it on the side, before also pulling a large bag of mixed, salted nuts free from the paper carrier. Finally, he takes out a bottle of white wine and places it in the fridge, followed by a bottle of vodka, which he puts in the freezer.

The wine must be for our guest, because we never drink that stuff. We prefer the vodka. Not that she's old enough to drink, but if she wants a glass, I'll gladly give it to her.

Lex sent a message this morning saying there was a new plan. He explained he'd found the new girl digging around in the dean's office.

The fact that she broke into Rossi’s office makes her even more attractive to me. That's a pretty ballsy move on her part. It also means she has the skills to pick a lock, which makes me hard whenever I think about it. What a contradiction she is. Big, innocent eyes, sinful body, and the skills to pick locks.

She’s certainly piqued my curiosity. What the hell was she doing in there? It's kind of good for us that Lex went a bit overboard and decided to stalk her in the early hours, so he saw what she was doing. It means we now have something to hold over her. We don't have to play the nice guys, which is probably a good thing, because we suck at that. Instead, Lex says we shouldsimply barter. Get what we want the good old-fashioned way, by trade.

She wants us to keep quiet, and we want her to suck our cocks. Seems fair to me.

“She’ll be arriving in around two hours,” Saint says. He turns to me, and his gaze runs down the length of my body. “Are you going to get changed?”

I shoot him a perplexed glance.No,I say with my hands, using our sign language.

It's not American Sign Language, it’s our own invented way of communicating, and it’s limited. We can have basic conversations with it, but anything in-depth and I use my notebook. It gives me a way to cover the basics, though, without me having to write everything down. Typing out my every utterance either on my tablet or writing it out with a pen and paper is a ball ache and seriously pisses me off.

It makes me feel weak, too, which I fucking hate.

Last night was particularly bad. I didn't sleep, and tossed and turned as I thought about a lifetime of this. A lifetime of having to write down my thoughts instead of being able to speak them. It's not just that it singles me out from the rest of the pack; it’s that I truly find it a complete pain in my ass.

I hate trying to get people to understand me on a day-to-day basis. It’s not so bad if they already know who I am, and that I’m unable to speak, but when I head into town and have to communicate with a stranger, they look at me like I’m stupid. Then I want to break their faces, even though it’s not their fault they don’t know what’s going on.

When I finally get the people who did this to me, I'm not going to slit their throats in return. I'm going to cut their cocks off while they’re still breathing and make them eat them. I’ll literally shove those useless appendages down their throats untilthey’re gagging. Then I might just disembowel them too for added fun.

Enemies of my father did this to me, and he's been looking for them, but so far, he's not found them. It means it’s up to me to get vengeance for myself. When I do, I'll rain hell down on them.

Where is Lex?I sign.

Training,Saint signs back. “He has a fight in two weeks, remember?”

He shrugs.

Oh, yeah, of course. I've been away, and it's easy to fall out of the routines and rhythms of college life when you keep having to take long breaks.

I wonder when my next fight will be. I'd relish one. In fact, I'd happily take Lex’s place. Nathaniel seems not to have picked me for the longest time. I think it's because he knows deep down that the rage within me would probably have ended up with me killing my opponent.

While the fights here can be brutal, they most certainly should not be deadly. The shit that would cause as various mafia factions went to war would tear things apart.

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