Page 25 of Sweet Venom

I raised an eyebrow. “Exactly. Now suck it up, brat.”

Raiza glanced off-screen, her expression softening instantly. “I had to go. My baby needed me,” she said with a sweetness that was borderline unnerving.

I raised an eyebrow. “The panther?”

“Hades,” she corrected, rolling her eyes like I had forgotten the name of her treasured child. “Yes, my heir. He was hungry, and I didn’t want him chewing on my shoes again. You knew how he got when it was feeding time.”

I shook my head, muttering, “I regretted giving you that animal already.”

She grinned, leaning closer to the camera as if to make her next words even more intimate. “Nonsense. You knew you loved him and me.”

I didn’t respond, but my eyes said enough. When words failed me, my family read my gaze. That was all they needed.

Before hanging up, my sister sweetly added, “I would bury a body for you, Aza.”

“Good,” I replied, my voice deadpan. “Because I’d kill and dismember the Pope himself for you.”

I would.

I had killed for her, and I would again in a heartbeat.

With that dark but normal goodbye, I hung up the video call.

I glanced at the clock on the wall, the hands ticking past the time of my next scheduled meeting. My newest talent was late. The woman couldn’t be on time to save her life.

My jaw tightened, annoyance curling through me. Punctuality was a basic expectation, not a favor. But that was the thing about her, she never ceased to surprise me. When I thought she’d do something, she went the other route. Like now, this was her dream, yet she couldn’t be bothered to be on time.

With a sigh, I pushed myself up from the chair, the leather creaking softly, and I strode toward the glass windows. The skyline of New York City stretched before me, a mosaic of steel and light, but its beauty did little to soothe my irritation. I clasped my hands behind my back, the tattoos on my knuckles faintly visible as I stared out at the city, trying to refocus my thoughts.

Then, I heard the faint sound of the double doors to my office creaking open.

My chest tightened instantly, the irritation forgotten as an entirely different feeling gripped me. I didn’t turn, not yet. I didn’t need to. My body knew before my mind caught up.

It was her.

The woman who had been a menace to my thoughts for years, ever since she was a little girl with ridiculous, colorful headbands perched on her dark hair and eyes that always said far too much. Eyes that saw too much.

My grip tightened behind my back, the organ in my chest betraying me with an unwelcome squeeze. I kept my gaze fixed on the city, my expression carefully composed. But the air in the room felt heavier now, charged, as if the past and present had collided.

They had.

She was finally here.

I exhaled slowly before finally turning around.

I froze the moment my eyes landed on her, irritation immediately giving way to two things far more complicated—and far more annoying. Obsession. Admiration.

Her blue hair, of all things, had been pulled into a low bun that looked like it took five seconds and zero care. Practical, boring. Typical. Not her. My eyes trailed down to her outfit, and I tried hard to suppress a groan. Baggy jeans and a black blazer that might as well have been thrown on at the last minute with nothing underneath. No bra. No shirt. Fuck this woman.

Tempting. Too goddamn tempting for a business meeting.

I shouldn’t have expected anything less from Poe Vaeda Nicolasi James.

But fuck if she wasn’t sin, wrapped in a lovely blue package.

Even then, standing there looking like she had rolled out of bed and barely tried to get her shit together, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The girl who used to hide behind her father and blush if anyone looked at her too long had blossomed into a woman who could wreck a man’s heart without even realizing it with a flick of her delicate wrist.

And yet, there she was, in an outfit that screamed I don’t care. It irritated me almost as much as it amused me.

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