Page 286 of Craving Venom

The second we step inside, the air shifts.

Chandeliers drip from the ceiling like molten crystal. The floors are white marble, streaked with veins of onyx, shining so bright I can see my reflection in them.

Waiters are gliding past with gold trays stacked with flutes and strawberries dipped in chocolate so dark it looks black. The men are in designer suits. The women in gowns that look airbrushed on. Masks cover every face. Feathered, jeweled, intricate. Nobody speaks unless they’re whispering. Nobody looks surprised by how expensive sin can be.

If Zane wasn’t holding my hand, I’d be doing a perfect 180 and sprinting straight back to the car.

The ballroom is worse. Bigger. Richer. Red-tinted lights turn the walls into a womb of indulgence. The music is slow, sexy, and absolutely not for dancing, it’s for making bad decisions and getting fingered in dark corners.

Every eye turns toward us. Or maybe just toward him.

I don’t blame them.

He’s in a black suit. I look up at him and see, how he became someone else the second we crossed that threshold. More dangerous. More in control. As though this isn’t their territory.

It’s his.

We pass a man in a navy mask who’s whispering into a woman’s ear. Her dress is nearly transparent. His hand is already between her legs and nobody stops him. Nobody even notices.

I keep walking.

I feel Zane’s thumb brush the inside of my wrist, and I know what it means—breathe.

A woman in a red mask passes us, her tits are barely covered. A man in a matching mask tugs on her collar. She smiles, wanting to be dragged.

I grip Zane’s hand tighter.

He doesn’t let go.

Instead, he leads me toward the far edge of the ballroom, through a corridor with less light, fewer eyes. I catch a glimpse of a girl being led down a stairwell by someone in a black-and-gold mask.

Nothing about this arrangement looks forced.

And not that I’ve had a lot of experience walking into underground sex palaces, but I’d like to think I’d know if a girl was being dragged against her will. The one going down the stairs doesn’t fight. Her eyes aren’t wide. Her steps don’t falter.She’s high or she’s numb or she wants it, maybe all three, but she’s not being forced.

Zane doesn’t comment. He keeps moving with the certainty of someone who’s memorized the path, and it makes me pause.

He told me it was his first time here, but the way he’s leading me down the stairwell, it doesn’t feel like first-time energy. It feels rehearsed.

I don’t ask. Not yet anyway.

The stairwell is spacious. The walls shift from marble to matte black. The music fades the deeper we go, replaced by a silence that haunts. Zane stops in front of a tall, smooth black door with no handle.

He reaches up and lifts his chin, letting the mask he’s wearing pass under the scanner built into the wall.

There’s a quiet click before the door opens.

I follow him through, and we step into a hallway so dim it swallows color. At the end, we reach another massive door. It’s so tall it touches the ceiling, and wide enough to swallow a car. Zane steps in front of a hidden panel, punches in a code with fingers that don’t pause.

The locks hiss.

The doors groan open.

And hell opens with them.

The basement isn’t a room.

It’s a fucking auditorium.

---