Page 205 of Beautiful Venom

I hang my head as tears gather in my eyes and drip onto my beat-up white sneakers.

Could Kane be the one behind everything?

Could he have manipulated me like a puppet on a string?

He wouldn’t have made me feel bad for lying when he already knew everything.

Right?

Or have I finally been burned alive by the sun?

35

KANE

After I return from feeding my father to the sharks, Dahlia’s disappeared.

Again.

She’s vanished right from my grasp.

Fuckingagain.

I came back to tell her the truth. To assure her that everything is forgiven. In fact, there’s nothing to forgive.

After last night, after the way she slept peacefully in my arms, I figured it was time to start with a clean slate. I can’t force Jude to like her, and he probably never will, but I can protect her from him.

She has nothing to do with his obsession anyway.

Her sister does, but her sister is practically dead.

It might hurt, but she’ll eventually accept that reality.

She’ll accept that I’m all she has.

Theonlyone she can have.

But she’s not here.

She even left her phone behind.

Julian goddamn Callahan came by and talked to her, and she left with him. That’s what my mother and Samuel said.

That’s what I watch on the house’s security footage over and over again, on a damn loop. I can’t stop looking at the way she trudges behind him, her movements lethargic, her eyes soulless.

Her fire completely extinguished.

She didn’t even have that look when Grant had her chained up in his goddamn dungeon.

A dungeon I spent the last hour blazing through with a machete, as if that will extinguish the torturous memories or the image of Dahlia hanging from the chains while bleeding.

And now, Julian has taken her away.

Julian is interfering in my fucking business.

He definitely didn’t learn a lesson from Grant’s murder. If I can kill my own father, nothing and no one will stop me anymore.

Not Julian, not the rules.

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