Page 73 of The Venom We Bleed

His attention sears against my jaw. “Yeah, you do.” Spoken in a low tone but no less firm, the words strike at me. “You’re in love with her. She’s not sticking around.”

“Then why are we helping her?” I demand. “Why is Nolan taking her back to his home? Why are we getting rid of the body of a man she killed?”

For a long moment, Gio doesn’t reply, but when he does, I almost swerve right off the road. “For you. We’re doing it for you.”

If I weren’t driving, I’d close my goddamn eyes at that statement. “Nolan and I know you’re no virgin, but you might as fucking well be,” he continues. “Those chicks you take back to the carriage house? They’re not girlfriends.”

No. They’re not. The women I fuck in the rebuilt carriage house I live in on my aunt’s property are paid for their time. And despite their choice of employment, I make damn sure they enjoy everything I do—as if they’re the woman I want more than my next breath, more than my own life. As if they’re Juliet Donovan herself. I don’t mind Gio knowing my business. I’d have gone crazy by now if I didn’t have someone to confide in. But what I do mind is the fact that his words—his claim—are a lie.

The front of the SUV shudders as I push the speedometer past seventy, flying down the darkened highway and beyond Silverwood’s town boundary.

“You want her too.” The words hang between us, the silence in the air before and after them making them louder than they actually were. Gio doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t refute it but neither does he confirm it.

“You tested her when she first came to Silverwood Public,” I continue. “You were curious. You wanted to know why I’ve watched her for so long.” If Gio knows me down to my core, then I know him just as well. “She surprised you, and now you get it. You see what I see.”

Juliet Donovan is more than a woman. She’s an addiction. An obsession. Every look, every touch, every breath she takes is a slow-acting poison. By the time you realize you’re dying, you’re too fucking hooked to ever let her go.

An hour later, after we’ve hit the edge of Silverwood’s town limits, I slow and pull down a dirt path. The SUV's 4-wheel drive gets a workout, bouncing along the unpaved path. The headlights wash over the darkness of the forest, illuminating thebase of the trees that line the road. Finally, after another fifteen minutes, I slow when I spy the gates that are held closed by a twist of rusted metal links. Gio pops the passenger door before the vehicle even fully stops. I watch through the windshield as he stomps towards the chains and unlocks them before pushing the gates open wide enough for the vehicle to pass through. I get to the other side and let the SUV idle as he closes the gate once more and jumps back inside.

It takes another five minutes from the gate to get to the old hunting cabin my parents used to own. I ignore the cabin's driveway set before the slanted metal roof, smudged windows, and sagging front porch. The SUV bumps and sways as I drive right up over the boundary line of the grass and around to the even older outbuilding in the back.

When I stop, I cut the lights and the engine. Both Gio and I get out of the SUV, circling around to the back. "Chainsaw still in there?" he asks, nodding to the dilapidated shack that doubles as a garage when we need it.

"Where else would it be?" I pop the back and stand back to let the door rise all the way up.

The scent of death is thankfully muffled by the tarp. There's no point in using any of the cash I've squirreled away on getting a new car when I can keep this one from smelling of urine and decay.

"After we're done here, we might want to double-check Juliet's place for any more evidence. She said she stabbed the guy, so we’ll have to scrub the floors and balcony."

I never thought I’d be so grateful for the summers we spent helping Gio’s mom make extra cash by cleaning houses. We know all we need to get blood out of anything. God, I want another cigarette. I eye Gio, debating on if I should ask him for another, but we're about to open up a shit ton of chemicals. I better not.

“I’ll send an email to Mr. Ritchie and tell him we took a prank too far or something to explain the door and other shit.” Gio scrubs a hand down the back of his head. “He’ll be pissed, but I’ll send him a couple hundred to cover damages.”

I snort. “That’s more than either of those doors or the railing was worth.”

“It’ll keep him happy, though I doubt he’ll be fixing it any time soon,” Gio replies. “You know how he is—always has to find the cheapest deal for any repairs.”

Having Juliet reliant on the three of us for longer? That’s just fine with me.

"Alright." I return my attention to the body in the back of my SUV. "Let's get this fucker inside and start the process."

G stares at the tarp-wrapped corpse for a second before releasing a snort. When I arch a brow his way, he shakes his head. "I'm rocking a B in chemistry," he tells me as if that explains the sudden outburst of amusement.

"So?" I reach for one end of the body and use the loose plastic around it to drag it closer to the edge of the compartment.

Gio reaches for the other side. "You'd think I'd do better in a subject I'm so damn good at outside of the classroom."

I pause, the body still lying sideways in my trunk. "Huh." I crack my neck to one side. "I never considered that."

It does take a considerable amount of knowledge and know-how to disintegrate a human body, bones and all. We’d learned that a few months after killing Xavier Pierce. We’d returned to the hunting shack only to find a bunch of wild animals digging the old man up. There’d still been pieces of him left. One thing to be said for the human race other than the fact that we breed like rabbits is that we're durable even after death.

With a groan, Gio takes his half and I take mine. "On three, we lift," he commands. I wait and as his lips form around thenumbers, I heft the body up onto one shoulder as he does the same. "Fuck, this asshole's heavy," he complains as we head for the shed.

"Not for long," I remind him. With enough lye solution and time, any amount of human weight can be overcome. Human remains are much easier to handle when they're watered down, and more than that, I hate burying bodies. It's honestly one of the least effective ways to make one disappear.

30

JULIET

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