Page 4 of Venom and Velvet

He grunted and pulled away, turning his back to me. “Fuck,” he muttered and shook his head. My fingers trembled as I touched my lips, still tingling from his kiss.

“What do you plan to do with us? Why are we here?”

His shoulders sagged and he was quiet for a moment. “Three days ago, Orin came to me with a tip from a bounty he was chasing.” He stood with his back to me. “Regarding the leader of the Voledetti Mafia planning to eliminate the fiancée of the wealthiest billionaire in Chicago.”

A chill ran up my spine as I realized what Cian was saying. “But why?” I gasped.

He shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know for certain. Money, we think. Anything is possible with Goodacre.” He walked around the desk and pulled out a thick envelope, and dumped a stack of pictures onto the desk. “You want to know why you’re here? This is why.”

I glanced down at the pictures on the desk, hundreds of them—pictures of Ryzen, Riddick, and a slew of men who had trouble written all over them.

“After he tried to ruin me all those years ago, I vowed to never let him hurt another innocent person.” Cian slammed his hand on the desk, and I jumped. “We’ve been collecting evidence, everything we could find so that we could finally lock him away. And then you came along, and everything changed. Iknewyour engagement was a sham. I just didn’t know why you were going along with it.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked anywhere but at his face. How the hell was I supposed to explain this to him? That I’d had no choice but to go along with Ryzen and pose as his fiancée or he would have ruined my business? He had held my livelihood in his hands, and I’d had little to no choice in the matter? Would Cian even understand? The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. The pain in my head worsened and I cringed as I wobbled over to the couch. Cian rushed over and gripped my hand as I sat.

“You were just another toy to him.” His voice was laced with bitterness. “When I found out what Voledetti had planned, I came for you.”

I was silent as I took in everything he was saying. There was no questioning what the truth was. It was right in front of my face, in a stack of photographs that showed exactly what kind of person Ryzen Goodacre was.

Heat rushed through my body, and I bit my bottom lip. All my life I had trusted the wrong kind of men, ones who hurt and deceived me. And now it was no different. Ryzen had manipulated me. Lied to me. And I had taken it all in like a naïve, stupid fool.

And now I was here with Cian. Who had come to save me, not to hurt me. My gut told me he was telling the truth, that there was no ulterior motive. But something was nagging at me. “Why didn’t you just go to the police?”

“You don’t get it, Nova. The Mafia controls the police in this city. Never met a cop who wasn’t dirty.” Cian scoffed. “We came across four unmarked police cruisers at the edge of the property well before those vans showed up. Whatever they were doing there, it wasn’t good.”

I swayed to the side and squeezed my eyes shut. This was too much. I lived a normal boring life where my biggest worry was if I ordered enough vibrators. Oh, fuck. “The Shiver Box… Our warehouse? It was on fire…”

“It’s gone, Nova. Everything is gone now.”

A wave of nausea crashed over me, and I thought I would be sick right there. It was over. Fucking done. That was all Juliet and I had had. And now I was left with nothing. And for what? So I could be a pawn in some sick game that I hadn’t even known I was playing?

Cian stood in front of me, lifting my chin. “I would have come no matter what, Nova. Come hell or high water, I would have never let you marry him.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and let out the breath I had been holding. My whole world had been turned upside down more than once over the past few months, and this was all that was left of it. Me, in this room with Cian, a man I had desperately fought to ignore, who had ended up stealing my heart and destroying it. Or so I’d been made to believe. All the angry energy I had had moments ago drained away, and I lowered my head.

“I need to lie down. My head hurts.” I stood up. He tried to grab my hand, but I shook my head. “Please, Cian. No more. Not right now.” I didn’t want to look him in the eyes, to see what was there. Pity, probably.

He dropped my hand and let me walk out without following. Eros and Orin stood in the hallway, their arms crossed against their chests as I hurried by. I didn’t know what to say. If Cian was telling the truth, then they had all put their necks on the line to save Juliet and me. And I didn’t understand why.

When I got back to the room, I flopped down on my back, staring up at the ceiling. What a fucking mess this was. Juliet’s bag was on the bed, and I reached over, dragging it closer to me. On top was a magazine, one of those cosmopolitan magazines that gave you eight hundred ways to wear your eyeliner. On the cover was the actress from that popular vampire movie teenagers went crazy for.

‘How I learned to trust and find love again!’ Actress Phoebe Crane details her quest to find her soulmate.

I rolled my eyes and threw the magazine across the room.

Oh, shut the hell up, Phoebe Crane.

You don’t know anything about love.

Chapter Two

Day Four

I lay in bed covered in sweat, the sun having long gone down. How long were the nightmares going to last? Days? Months? Years? I shivered at the thought. In my senior year at college, my economics partner had been held up at gunpoint one night leaving a bar. He hadn’t been able to leave his dorm afterwards for weeks. Hadn’t been able to go to class. Eventually he’d had to drop out. Life was messed up that way. You worked your whole life towards a goal, and in a matter of minutes, your future could be ripped out right from under your feet.

I didn’t want to end up like that. Scared. Hiding. Too afraid to face the world. I had to get a hold of myself. I paced around the room, trying to shake off the image of the monster trying to abduct me. The room felt empty without Cian in it. I replayed our conversation over and over again in my head.

“I would have come for you no matter what.”

---