Page 31 of Sweet Venom

I didn’t expect a reply. I didn’t need one. Not yet. But I kept watching. I kept drawing her closer with the only kind of love I knew how to give. Madness. Possessive. Me.

Sooner or later, she would be mine. Whether she knew it or not.

And when she finally saw me for who I was—it would be my moment. The moment when I would lay bare every dark corner of my soul. Once she saw my truth, there would be no escaping it. My love for her— possessive, unwavering, and all-consuming—would be all she could see.

Chapter

Ten

IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE AND WAR

Azariel

“A day to celebrate love… or the inevitable heartache that follows.” – P

The night was quiet. Too quiet, it was like the night had nothing to say—like it was holding its breath for me. I didn’t mind it. I liked it. I had always enjoyed the silence, I just wished it were quiet in my head too.

It wasn’t. That was why I found myself out there again, in the garden, hiding in the shadows. The smell of earth and roses was heavy in the air, grounding me and replacing the stench of blood I could never rid myself of.

There had been a full moon that night, its pale light spilling through the branches of the trees, casting long, crooked shadows across the garden. Mom’s roses stood tall, their crimson heads gleaming in the moonlight reminding me of blood. Of the life I had left behind and the ghosts that still haunted me.

I hadn’t been able to stop staring at them.

I hadn’t cared about roses before. I hadn’t cared about anything really, not in the way people were supposed to. There had been little to no beauty where I came from. That world had been ugly—filled with violence, loss, and the constant need to survive. But those roses… they were different. Beautiful, even. They stood firm and strong, despite everything. Their thorns were sharp, but they endured.

They reminded me that even in the midst of violence, there was still something worth holding onto. Something beautiful and that refused to die.

I had crouched down, feeling the damp grass beneath my knees, my fingers brushing against the bark of a nearby tree. The garden had been still, almost like it was waiting for something. But nothing had happened. It had always been quiet.

Sometimes Mom had sat out there with me. Sometimes Dad. But not that night. That night, it had just been me, alone, in my cruel thoughts.

The voices of my past had been too loud, and I had to slip out and be on my own. The world before that, before my parents, had been noise. It had been chaos. It had been survival. Ugly memories clawed at my mind, but when I focused on the roses—on their perfect, sharp-edged beauty—they seemed to share a quiet understanding, like they knew what it was like to hurt, to survive. Maybe they were just like me. We had both been through things—painful things—but we kept going.

I had let out a slow breath, the cold November air sharp in my lungs, and just for a moment, everything had felt calm. Like I belonged there. In that space. The garden had been mine as much as it was Mom’s, in a way. Not like anything before. Not like the streets, the cold hunger, the whispers of death that always followed me.

I remembered those nights so clearly. The cold, the loneliness, the fear until I learned to numb it all. I remembered the sting of the wind and the feeling of being invisible, a shadow in the cracks of the world, until Mom found and saved me from ending up back with the bad people.

Her gloved hands—gentle yet firm—had taken me from the harsh streets and brought me here. Brought me to her world where the roses grew like a lovely promise, where I didn’t have to fight for air. Where I didn’t have to fight to survive.

The memory of her face that night, the softness in her golden-brown eyes as she spoke to me, still haunted me. But it wasn’t a bad haunting. Not the way ugly things were. She was different.

She was a crime boss. She was the first female boss in mafia history, and she had lived a harsh and sad life, yet she had found it in her to be gentle and patient with me.

I looked up at the full moon, my mind still swirling with thoughts that hurt me and wouldn’t free me. The roses whispered in the night air, a sound that was both haunting and comforting, and I thought for a moment that maybe this new life wasn’t as broken as I once thought. In the dark, amidst their thorns, I felt safe. For the first time in my life, I felt... safe. With Mom, Dad, Vernon and Crow, the roses and my knives.

I was lost in my head, staring off at the moon when I felt it.

A shift in the air. A subtle change.

I was no longer alone.

I didn’t move at first, not out of fear—never again, I had long since learned to be still—but curiosity, because I knew who it was before I even turned to look.

I turned, and there she was. Poe.

The little girl. The one who had been haunting my thoughts for days.

She stood there, her tiny figure framed by the garden’s edge, like a tiny shadow with form. Her dark, black-as-my-soul hair fell around her delicate face. Those eyes—those strange, otherworldly green eyes—locked with mine, and for a moment, the world stilled and time seemed to freeze.

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