Page 161 of Craving Venom

I don’t hesitate.

I lunge.

Two guards grab me—one on each arm. I shove off, jerking them forward, using their momentum to rip free. My hands close around Frank’s throat like iron vices.

His eyes go wide.

I drive him back into the wall, hard enough that the sound echoes through the block. His skull cracks against concrete. I don’t stop. I slam him again. And again.

“You like ruining people?” My grip tightens.

Frank claws at my arms, laughing through a crushed windpipe. “F-fuck… you…”

I slam my forehead into his nose before I drag him by the throat. His feet scrape against the floor and his breath comes out in a wet wheeze. The guards scream behind me, but no one steps in. No one dares.

I march through that open door and storm into the yard. The sun scorches down. Prisoners gather, but I don’t care. Let them fucking watch.

I hurl Frank into the dirt, and he rolls over, coughing with blood splattered down his chin. I don’t give him a second to think as I stomp on his ribs, making him choke on the scream. I straddle him with my fists already swinging. The first punch caves in his cheek, and the second snaps his head to the side as blood sprays across the ground.

“You think this is funny now?” My fists don’t stop.

His hands flail up, trying to block, but I bat them away like paper. I punch until his eye swells shut. Until his lip is split wide open and his teeth are loose.

“You like hurting people?” I spit. “Let’s see how you like pain.”

His face is a fucking mess. One eye’s purple, the other drowning in red. He’s trying to talk, lips shaking, breath rattling in and out of his nose—what’s left of it.

He coughs, chokes on blood. “P-please…”

I slam my fist into his mouth, snapping his head back as a string of spit and blood trails from his gums.

“I want you to beg,” I snarl, gripping his hair and yanking his head up just to crack it back down against the ground. “Beg like he should’ve. Like you never let him.”

The bastard fucking whimpers. “Z-Zane… don’t… I was just—”

“Just what?” I spit in his face. “Just fucking him? Just tearing him open with your diseased dick?!”

I beat him until my fists ache. Until blood slicks my knuckles and his body wobbles under me.

“Please… please… I can’t see… I can’t—”

I grip his jaw, and my fingers dig into the broken mess of it. “You’ll see enough when you meet the fucking devil.”

I raise my fist one more time, but before I can bring it down, someone grabs me. Five guards, maybe more, tackle me off him, but I claw for more. My nails scour at the dirt as I lunge again,my boots dragging through the gravel and my muscles straining to break free from their grip.

“Get the fuck off me!” I roar, spit flying from my mouth as I thrash against the guards holding me back. “Let me fucking finish him!”

Frank gurgles in the dirt. His face is a wreck, caved in and bleeding from every opening. His mouth is torn, with a split lip that reaches his nose and a shattered cheekbone. One eye is rolled halfway back while the other is swollen shut, but his heart is still beating.

Not enough.

I kick off the ground and twist, elbowing one of the guards in the gut. He doubles over with a grunt. I wrench my arm free and surge forward toward the limp sack of shit crumpled in the blood-soaked gravel.

A baton cracks across my back. Another bashes my side.

I don’t stop.

I drop onto Frank’s chest and drive my knee into his ribs with a sickening snap. “You fucking ruined him!” I scream as my fists rain down on him, knuckles crashing into his jaw before my palm slams against his temple and my forearm smashes straight into bone.

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