Table of Contents
Copyright
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Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Epilogue
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Copyright
Wicked Venom © copyright 2021 Asa Torrance
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, businesses or places, events or incidents are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Prologue
It feels evil to be here, but only because I know what I’m doing is wrong.
But the plan is already in place, has been ever since I called and asked if I could come look for some notes for the midterm project I shared with Jessa.
“Of course, Windy,” her mom, Vivian, had said. Her voice has been different lately, but it still sounds like her, only cracked like an eggshell and ready to break. “I’m sure there’s other things here you might want to grab.”
She’s right, and I don’t know if I can face it.
I know there’s probably a hundred things. You aren’t best friends with someone, holding onto each other as tightly as we did, without your lives intersecting in the simplest of ways.
It’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve been inside Jessa’s room, but if it’s still the same, I know I’ll find the forest green cable knit sweater I let her borrow six months ago hanging off the back of her desk chair.
I know the picture of us posing in front of the lit up tilt-a-whirl at the boardwalk, with our ridiculously wide smiles and brimming bouquets of cotton candy, will still be sitting on the shelf next to her bed. The shelf with her prized first edition paperback of The Catcher in the Rye, and the troll doll we rescued from the thrift store bins back in eighth grade.
“It has my hair,” she had noted gleefully, fluffing out her wild auburn locks over her head. In reality, Jessa’s hair was just curly, a mop of waves and undulating ringlets not unlike mine. To our classmates who fried their hair stick straight every morning, it was ‘frizzy’. But Jessa knew how to laugh, most of the time, at herself, at how fake everyone could be, and she always found a way to make me laugh, too.
I can barely look Jessa’s mom in the eye when she lets me in. She doesn’t seem to notice, not trying to make eye contact with me either, probably guarding herself from the hurt looking at me might bring. She directs me upstairs with a soft, “You know where it is.”
On the outside, Jessa’s family seems perfect. Her father has just been elected sheriff of Diablo Beach for the third time in a row. Their house is spotless. Jessa gets straight As in school. Her mother does dressage in the spring and summer. In the winter, they vacation in Cabo.
“Only no one gives a shit,” Jessa once told me. “Being the Sheriff’s daughter sucks. Everyone in Diablo Beach basically hates me, they think I’m a giant narc for my dad.”
“I don’t hate you,” I had replied, throwing my arm around her shoulder. “That’s gotta count for something.”
She grinned. I could always get her to smile if I tried hard enough. “You’re my ride or die.”
I take a deep breath, her words echoing in my head with so much clarity it gives me goosebumps, and head up the stairs.
I’ve made this same journey a hundred times, usually trying not to get slugged in the face by Jessa’s oversized backpack, impossibly full of books. Now I’m doing it alone, and for what could possibly be the very last time.
Her door is closed, but the whiteboard stickied to the back of its wood surface is still there. Her swirling purple writing is still there, proudly declaring her last message, one she had scrawled months ago.
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, I LOVE YOU.
I swing the door open, seeking an escape, seeking her, even though I know she’s not here. Instead, my sweater greets my eyes first, the green knitting hanging like a flag, telling me to go.
I know it’s now or never, and there’s only so much time.
My eyes spring around the room before my body does, moving methodically over every surface. I can picture the journal’s black surface, fake leather pebbled like snakeskin. Jessa called it her “classy notebook”, a gift from relatives across the country that were obliviously out of touch with who she was.
Jessa was neon colors, and sometimes glitter, and always so fucking cool.
Tears fill my eyes, but I can’t think about it, not now. I lift stacks of papers off her desk, and shift her laptop over to the side, scanning tauntingly empty surfaces. Going over to her bed, I lift her pillow up, scanning, searching, panicking.
“Looking for something?” a voice behind me says.
I consider not even turning around at all, because I already know who it is, and I don’t want him to be able to read the guilt on my face. But I know I have no choice, so I shift my feet around and turn.
Jessa’s brother, Damien, gazes back at me and I shudder despite the heat flooding into my cheeks from being caught.
He wasn’t supposed to be here, the black sheep of the family sent away to St. Sebastian Academy, a military school halfway across the state, for failing a drug test administered by his own father. Surfer turned soldier, they’ve shaved his head of the sea salt tousled dark waves that used to curl around his head like a crown of thorns, but his skin is still sun-kissed and golden.
My mind traces back in time to when I first realized the brooding boy that all the girls in my grade swooned over was my best friend’s brother. While she was a year younger than Damien and me, Jessa was so smart she was allowed to skip a grade, putting her solidly in my orbit.
I used to think we were kindred souls who were always meant to find each other. Now I can’t help but wonder if Jessa would have been better off without me.
Sometimes it was hard for me to even see how Damien and Jessa were related, besides their shared last name of Black. Their personalities differed in about a dozen different ways.
Jessa was playful but reserved, an old soul. She felt everything and wore her heart on her sleeve.
Meanwhile, Damien is wild and reckless, and infinitely more popular than either one of us could have ever hoped to be, navigating the sharks at Diablo Beach Prep with ease despite being the Sheriff’s son.
Personalities aside, other times I could see it.
In the right light, the dark waves he used to have, the ones he was constantly pushing out of his eyes with long fingers, picked up shades of red like hers. Jessa’s eyes were crystal green, while his are hazel. But most of all, they share the same galaxy of freckles, carbon copies of the ones that run down their mother’s nose and cheeks. On Jessa, they were bright, loud, and proud. On Damien, they’re barely there, one shade darker than the rest of him, hidden from the casual observe
r not keen enough to look.
But I’ve looked, maybe a million times, traced the lines of his face, his cheeks, his jawline, his lips, swirling over him with indulgent eyes when I thought he wasn’t looking.
But for the first time in my life, I wish I was staring at literally any other person in the world right now.
“You’re looking for this, aren’t you?” he asks me, raising his hand to show me the item clutched in his hand. Sure enough, it’s the journal I’ve been looking for, the one I scrawled my signature into five weeks ago to bind myself to a promise I never thought I would break.
It could be the last entry in there, but wherever it is, I know Damien has found it.
“I—” I begin, my voice choking up in my chest as panic rushes through every nerve in my body. “I was just looking for my sweater.”
I reach out and grab the green knit cardigan from the back of Jessa’s chair and clutch it to my chest like a shield. I never thought it would save my life, and I’m still not sure if it’s actually going to.
Damien looks at me with an unyielding stare. He knows I’m lying.
He’s always been athletic, but I can see the muscles swelling beneath his T-shirt. Military school was meant to break him, but from this view, it’s only made him stronger.
And meaner.
What would happen if he backed me up against this very wall? Compelled me to admit every terrible thing written on my face and reflected in my eyes?
“Let me go,” I say in a voice just above a whisper. It feels like the room is closing in around me, and I can barely breathe. “Please.”
He presses his tall frame against one side of the doorframe, making a path for me as his eyes dare me to cross the threshold.
I hold my breath and move towards him.
His eyes tell me he knows, and even if I burned that journal to ash he would always know. And always remember.
But he doesn’t say anything at all, not even when I make it completely out of the room, and that just might be the worst part. Especially when I know someday, sooner or later, he’s going to make me pay.
And I know I’ll deserve every bit of the wrath that’s coming my way.
1
I could leap through this open car window right now. It just might be my last chance at ever tasting freedom again.
I busy myself with mental gymnastics, the logistics of doing such a thing. First I would need to unbuckle my seatbelt. If I manage to do that without giving away my next move, I’ll have to toss my body through the narrow window of Damien’s hunter green Ford Falcon, another obnoxiously loud classic car that now trolls the streets of Diablo Beach once again. Despite the wind slapping my face like a taunt, the space has an irritatingly low profile.
I don’t bother thinking about the rest.
The car is moving way too fast anyway, the perfect metaphor for my life ever since Damien Black returned to Diablo Beach for good.
For some reason, I was convinced I would never see him again. Now he’s sitting next to me, dressed in all black, just like the last time I saw him. Tonight, hatred still burns in his eyes when he looks at me, just like the last time I saw him, too.
He glances over at me as the car pulls up to a red light. Knives shoot from his hazel eyes, slicing my every nerve. “Don’t look so upset,” he tell me ironically.
I suppress a grimace and don’t say anything.
I could do it now. Go for the window, take my chances with the pavement. But I know he would catch me, just like he’s caught me now.
“Cat got your tongue?” Damien asks, reaching over and cupping my chin in his hand to turn my face towards him.
I pull away. “Don’t touch me.”
“There she is,” he coos as the light turns green and he hits the gas, propelling the car down darkened roads once again. “Classic feisty Dusty.”
Calling me ‘feisty’ is so far from the truth it’s not even funny, but a laugh still sputters from my lips, and I nearly clamp my hand down over my mouth at the sound of it.
Damien eyes me again, cold stare narrowing over dangerously high cheekbones that threaten to hold my stare longer than I want. He’s always had a way of holding my attention.
Looking at Damien now, I can still see parts of Jessa, and maybe that’s why I don’t want to look away.
“I miss her,” I utter, my voice breaking the silence that spreads between us in the dark space of the car. It feels like this could be my only chance to tell him how I feel, the only time he’ll ever really listen to me before he makes the decision to tear me apart or let me be.
But I also have a feeling it’s entirely too late.
The only reason I’m riding with him now is because he wanted me so bad, every other gang in Diablo Beach willing to forsake me, my body, my soul, in exchange for the return of a stolen Cadillac. Deals are always being made in this city, and rarely are they ever fair.
“You miss who?” Damien’s words slice towards me, the nonchalance in his voice betrayed by the grimace that turns his lips when he says it.
“Jessa—”
“Don’t,” he cuts me off with a tone so harsh it makes me bite my lip to keep more words from fluttering out. “You don’t get to say her name.”
I don’t argue. Right now is all about self-preservation, a thing I can tell is desperately important to me by the way my heart beats faster in my chest. “Where are you taking me?”
The car accelerates faster down familiar roads, and my fingers tighten around my seatbelt. He’s getting off on scaring me, something that’s blatantly clear by the smirk that turns his lips when his gaze sweeps over to take in my frozen expression.
“Damien,” I gasp, urging him to tell me.
He gazes over at me, his eyes leaving the road for longer than I want them to at this speed. Goosebumps rise on my skin and I take a breath, silently urging myself to calm down.
“You think I don’t remember where you live?”
The breath I just took expels from my lungs. “You’re taking me home?” I ask disbelievingly. There has to be more, something worse. He’s paid for me in his own way, and I know there’s no way he’s letting me out of his grasp without making me suffer. The way my nerves fire on all cylinders tells me I must believe I’m just as guilty as he thinks I am.
And now I have to pay.
He doesn’t answer me, but as the car careens around the last turn to my neighborhood with an eardrum-scraping squeal that makes me cringe, I know he’s not lying.
Maybe he’s going to let me say goodbye to my mom one last time before he kills me, or worse, feeds me to rest of the Snake Eyes Crew. I know the most depraved gang in the city would like nothing more than to tear me to shreds, especially at the command of their new leader.
Damien pulls his car into the driveway, and throws me a sidelong glance. “Home sweet home.” As though encouraging me to run, he unbuckles my seatbelt for me, and I nearly forget my wrists are bound, the last remnant from being held for ransom this afternoon by the Black Roses, the toughest all-girl gang in the city.
I’m surprised Damien would even allow himself to be manipulated by their plan, but then again, it doesn’t feel like I blinked an eye when he finally showed up to claim me. I’ve known he’s wanted me since the very first moment I laid eyes on him again, a mid-year transfer to Diablo Beach Prep, and already the leader of his very own gang.
Jessa once told me she was loosely related to the Valentinos, a family with dirty hands in this city. Turns out ‘loosely’ was an understatement. Her mother is a Valentino, save for the last name she changed when she married Jessa’s father.
The Valentino family is infamous, but their power has been waning. Extortion, money laundering, even murder, all their dirty deeds have caught up with them. The sweeping blade of justice has been dropped on their heads this past year, led by the courageous efforts of Sheriff Black. The Sheriff. None other than Jessa and Damien’s father.
Appa
rently, he had no qualms about taking his extended family down.
The icing on the cake had been Rey Valentino, my former classmate and the former leader of the Snake Eyes Crew, getting busted by the cops right after homecoming.
Well, at homecoming.
But every organization worth keeping alive has a successor. I just never thought it would be Damien, even if he is half Valentino blood.
Then again, I hadn’t thought much about the subject at all. The gangs of Diablo Beach had always left me alone. I was outside of their orbit, and just in case, I always made sure to stay out of their way.
Just like Damien meant to say, I’m anything but feisty. I’ve always just wanted to be left alone. And since Jessa’s been gone, I have been.
Until now.
I freeze as Damien’s hand reaches down into my lap, fingers loosening the rope around my wrists. “Can’t have you going inside like that, now can we?”
I don’t look at him, not when he’s leaned over this close, but the scent of him is so familiar it nearly brings tears to my eyes. I’ve spent so much time around him, at his house, pretending not to see him when he’d traipse across the room while I studied with Jessa.
There was a time when he didn’t hate me.
My gaze sinks over the way his thumb moves over the reddened groove on my wrist. The rope was mostly for show, but obviously tight enough to leave a mark. The way he touches me is almost tender, but I gasp at the juxtaposition of his fingers tightening around my wrist to pull me toward him.
“Look at me, Windy.”
I used to crave him saying my name. Now I dread it.
But I still do what he says, raising my eyes to his face. It’s been two years since he was shipped off to military school, two years since I last saw him, but looking at him now it’s not hard to feel like he never really left at all. His eyes are familiar, but the mischief is gone, replaced by a harshness I can’t help but think is exclusively for me.
“What?” I say, hoping he’ll let me go as my wrist throbs and my pulse races against his hand. His grip on me is so tight I know he can feel it, the way my heart races like a bird’s, so fragile I could die.
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