Page 42 of Craving Venom

“If this is some long-lost father-son bonding shit, I’ll be so fucking disappointed.” I tuck the number into my pocket.

Her face stays blank.

I chuckle, shaking my head as I head for the phone room.

The guard barely glances at me as I take a seat. I pick up the receiver with the kind of forced patience I usually save for moments that toe the line between mildly amusing and a total waste of time.

The line clicks, and for a second, there’s nothing but silence. Then a soft inhale, like whoever’s on the other end wasn’t expecting this call to go through.

“Miss me?” I drawl.

“What the fuck?”

Bingo.

I laugh, low and slow. “That’s not exactly a warm welcome, good girl.”

“Zane?” she breathes, and fuck if that doesn’t do something to me. Her voice is tight, surprised, laced with something she probably doesn’t even realize is there. “How—why—”

“Didn’t think I’d call, did you?” I watch the guard from the corner of my eye. He’s not paying attention. “You went through all that trouble, lying through your fucking teeth, and now you’re speechless?”

Faith sucks in a breath. “Wait—how did you—”

“Oh, come on,” I chuckle, shaking my head. “Christopher Valehart’s assistant? That was the best you could come up with?”

There’s a beat of silence, and I can practically hear her brain scrambling for a way to recover.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” she snaps. “You’re calling me, aren’t you?”

I chuckle. “That’s funny. Shouldn’t I be calling you out on that? You’re the one who had my name in your mouth like a prayer.”

“I don’t pray.”

“Good.” My fingers drum against the metal casing. “God’s not listening anyway.”

The line goes silent, but it’s not the empty kind.

“So what? You finally decided to acknowledge my existence?” She scoffs.

“I figured if I ignored you any longer, you’d do something stupid. Like show up at the prison gates in a wedding dress.”

She makes a disgusted noise. “Not in this lifetime.”

“Shame. You’d look cute in white.”

“You don’t even know what I look like.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you look like.”

“Yeah?”

I shut my eyes, letting my mind overwork itself, pulling together pieces that don’t fit, forcing a face onto a voice. It’s a goddamn compulsion. I could describe the sharp angles of a cheekbone, the slope of a nose, the depth of eyes that don’t belong to her, because I’ve done it before. Photographic memory’s a bitch like that. My brain assigns meaning where it doesn’t exist.

Except with her.

Her voice is the only thing I can’t frame. It doesn’t belong to any face, any form, any thing. It’s soft, but not weak. Strong, but not sharp. Smooth like the drag of silk across skin but with enough grit to sink teeth into. A contradiction wrapped up in breath and syllables.

But she doesn’t need to know that.

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