Page 237 of Craving Venom

He blinks. “You—you can’t. It’s mapped to my bone structure.”

I grin.

Then I grab his face.

His scream hits the ceiling when I drive the blade beneath his chin and peel the skin back in jagged slices. Not enough to kill. Not yet. The red floods down his throat like ink on silk.

“Please,” he gasps, snot bubbling from his nose. “Please, I gave it to you. I gave you the key.”

“And now,” I slice a flap of cheek away, “you’ll give me silence.”

Terry crackles in my ear. “Zane... you actually planning to wear that motherfucker’s face?”

I pull a heat-sealed mask kit from my bag, the kind that comes vacuum-locked in sterile foil. When I peel it open, the mask unrolls in my hands. It is thin, pliable, skin-toned film with embedded circuits running just beneath the surface. It looks like latex and tech got stitched together in a lab too deep underground to have ethics.

This isn’t off-the-shelf gear. It’s facial mimicry tech that is adaptive, real-time, and dangerous. You press it to your skin and it syncs to your bone structure, scans your face, then reconfigures to replicate whoever you feed into it. Eyes, jawline, even blinking patterns. I stole it from someone worse than the people we’re hunting now.

“Not planning. Already working on it.”

Bailey chokes one last time. I don’t bother giving him a clean death.

He dies knowing his face is my invitation.

This time, I’m getting in.

And I’m not leaving until the Dominicus begs for a name.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE BEAUTY

Ishould be thinking about school. My project. The life I’m supposed to give a shit about. But all I’ve been doing for the past six hours is reading Reddit threads and dark net leaks that aren’t even verified.

After Sebastian left the entire Veridian was made aware that The Nighthawk is in town. Local channels released a composite sketch and preliminary crime details. A male, mid-to-late twenties, height between 6’4” and 6’6”, lean build, military posture.

My laptop’s overheating against my thigh, but it’s a good distraction. My brain finally latched onto something that isn’t cock and the way Zane made me fucking beg for him like I didn’t know better.

I’m neck-deep in a Reddit thread titled: The Nighthawk – Facial Mapping Breakdown Theory v12.6.

Fifty-seven comments. Forty-seven of them unhinged. One asshole swears he’s pieced together the jawline behind the mask using dream interpretation. Another posted a sketch that lookslike Batman fucked a scarecrow and forgot the condom. I scroll through every last one.

My phone buzzes beside me.

Tria’s name lights up the screen.

It’s the fourth time today. The forty-eighth since I stopped answering. She’s trying. I know she is. But every time I hear her name, my stomach knots and my face burns because I know the second she looks at me, she’ll know something’s off.

I groan and roll over, smashing my face into my pillow.

If I see her, I’ll crack. I’ll blurt out the truth in one breathless, fucked-up confession.

Tria wouldn’t scream. She’d just go quiet.

That’s worse.

So I ignore the call. Just like I’ve ignored all the others.

It stops ringing.

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