Page 118 of The Venom We Bleed

“She’s already running,” he tells me.

I groan. He’s right. We fucked up. Darrio fucked us up. I thought waiting until right before we left town would be the best time to get rid of him, but over the last few weeks, he’s been up our asses more and more—up Gio’s ass to spend more time with the gang. Then today…

“We don’t have time for this,” I say, shaking my head. “No, she’s not staying with you. She’ll come back here even if that means I have to tie her to my goddamned bed every night.”

Lex frowns. “I won’t need to go in the room often if I have her with me every night. I can lock it too. She won’t find out.”

How did we let her disrupt our lives like this? How didIlet her?

I stride across the room and pick up my phone. When I hit the button on the side and nothing happens, I curse, tossing it onto the coffee table. I shove a hand up through my hair, gripping a mass of it and yanking hard.

“I’ll get you a new one,” Lex says, nodding to the phone. “Don’t worry about it. What we need to do now is find her.”

“She’s on her way back from the prison,” I say. “She’s probably on the bus.”

“Then we wait for her to show up here.” If someone had told me at the beginning of this that one day Lex—the fucking stalker—would be the voice of reason, I’d have punched them. Now, though, it’s the truth.

“She’s not going to show up here.” She’d been too angry, too hurt. “But at least we know where she’ll be. She’ll go back to her apartment. She has nowhere else to go.”

Lex nods. “Alright then, you go to her apartment and I’ll go get Gio.”

Gio. My head throbs with an impending migraine. The last several hours have been all kinds of fucked up and the worst has yet to come. “His mom’s with him at the hospital,” I say. “But we should go see him before he gets out. He’ll be fine for now—whoever got the jump on him didn’t get away with just a few minor scratches. They’ve got to be hurting. I’ll scope out the hospital to see if they show up until it’s time to go get Juliet.”

Lex rocks back on his heels. “Do you think that’s wise?”

I shoot a look his way. “Would you rather I leave him on his own?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

I grit my teeth, frustration making the ache in my head pound all the harder. “Then, enlighten me.” Each word comes out clipped and even.

“She’s pissed at you.”

“She’s pissed at all of us,” I shoot back.

“Juliet is hurt. She thinks we forgot her. She doesn’t know about Gio.”

“And we’re not going to tell her.” I lower my voice and glare at him.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s not involved. The less Darrio Vargas knows about Juliet Donovan, the better. That man would gut her if he could.”

It’s not hard for Lex to pick up on what I don’t say. “Do you think he had a hand in Otis breaking into her apartment?” The careful danger in his tone would make a lesser man step back.

“I think if there’s anyone in town with unsavory intentions towards the daughter of Allen Donovan, it would be Darrio Vargas. He’s always had a thing against the Donovan family.” He’d always had a deeply rooted hatred for anyone he saw as better than himself. It explained why he hated his own son so much.

Lex's hands ball into fists and he glances at the door. “I’ll kill him.” The words aren’t spoken like a man angry or a man just spouting bullshit. They’re spoken with a tangible hint of daring, a man who’s killed once and has no compunction about doing so again. If I let him, Lex could fall very deeply into an abyss that would steal him away from Gio and me. He would cease to be himself behind his screens and cameras, finding his targets easyto track, and then learning every one of their weaknesses before he took advantage and they found themselves six feet under.

I take two steps toward him and put a hand on his shoulder, redirecting his attention to me. “We will,” I assure him. “It’s always been the plan—we’d never leave Gio’s mom here with that bastard when we leave. He won’t hurt her or Juliet. For now, we need to go check on Gio. We need to make sure whoever went after him won’t try to take him out when he’s weakened. He needs us.”

Lex’s brow furrows. “I need my laptop,” he says. “But…” He shakes his head as if trying to ward off the need for violence that rides him, a feeling I know all too well. “I don’t know that you should make it obvious that you’re watching Gio. If whoever hit him thinks he’s protected, it might make it harder to find out who was involved.”

It’s a good point and one I hadn’t considered, but the fact is that we need more information than what Gio’s mom had given us. The woman had been in hysterics, sobbing and worried over her son. I had to wonder if Darrio hadn’t had a hand in his own son’s attack. It was suspicious that he’d called in both Lex and me and not long after, Gio had been attacked. Gio was a good fighter; if he was in the hospital then there was a chance he’d had more than one assailant. Unfortunately, the cops would likely be unhelpful. Everyone in Silverwood knows who Gio’s father is. They’ll expect Darrio Vargas to avenge his son or to handle everything in his little gang of criminals.

I squeeze Lex’s shoulder and then drop my hold. “All I need now is an extra phone,” I tell him. “I’m going to head over to the hospital to look after Gio and his mom. I’ll wait until the bus is supposed to show up and go grab Juliet from her apartment.”

“What do I do?” Lex cracks his neck to the side, his body rife with tension. His hands are no longer balled into fists though, so that’s an improvement at least.

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