Page 227 of Craving Venom

“Y-yeah… fuck, man, yeah. You’re him. You did this same thing to Cash. To Cody. Malik. They all fucking disappeared.”

“Not disappeared.” I crouch in front of him and drag my fingers through the blood running from his nose. I smear it across his cheek. “They’re fertilizer now.”

“You, fuck, I didn’t, I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

“You signed up the second you looked at a scared girl and thought about your commission before her name.”

He tries to crawl. I let him get two feet before stomping his ankle hard enough to snap something. His scream peels through the walls.

“You think I’ve got time to waste on some limp-dick college dropout with cum stains on his sheets and a spreadsheet full of pussy quotas?” I crouch beside him, grab his hair and jerk his head up so he’s looking at me. His eyes are drowning in blood and panic. “I don’t have time to waste on bottom-feeders who call themselves recruiters. That’s not a job title. You’re not even a middleman, Davis. You’re a fucking usher at the gates of hell.”

I let go.

His face hits the carpet again with a wet thud.

I take the broken desk lamp and slam it into his ribs, again and again, until the resistance fades and he coughs up dark, heavy blood.

“They sent instructions,” he gasps, spit and blood bubbling at his lips. “I don’t know who—I swear—messages came on a dead drop... money wired through three crypto shells and some offshore bank in Malta—I didn’t ask questions, I just—”

I crack my open palm across his ear. Blood sprays from the side of his head and he whimpers. I dig into the flesh above his collarbone with a hunting knife I brought just for this. A red line wells up beneath the steel.

“I’m not asking about how, Davis. I want where,” I snarl. “Where the fuck is Nina, and who owns her now?”

“I don’t—fuck—I don’t know!” he sobs. “I got a ping! Okay? I got a ping this morning—they moved her. Said my part was done. I don’t know where. It’s always one step at a time, man, I get an address, I get paid, and then someone else takes over. I don’t see faces. Just usernames and phone numbers thatdisappear after twenty-four hours! I don’t know what happened after she said yes!”

I backhand him so hard he hits the floor with a spin. His body’s a twitching mess of blood, spit, and broken skin. I’ve seen this dance before. The fake stuttering. The useless tears. The same excuses on rinse and repeat from assholes who think being on the bottom rung makes them innocent.

It doesn’t.

I sigh and reach into my jacket and pull out my phone. My thumb unlocks it with muscle memory. I scroll, then open the news.

I hold it to his face. “Recognize him?”

His head jerks weakly. “Wh-what?”

I shove the screen closer showing a man’s photo, bloated and dead-eyed with waxy skin from the morgue shot they used. His throat’s been torn wide, sliced too deep for a scream. They put “businessman” in quotes like it softens what he did.

“Recognize. Him.”

Davis squints. “No… no, I never met him.”

“You should’ve.” I step over him, drag the screen slowly across his bloody cheek. “He was one of your douchebag ‘masters.’ That’s what I did to him.”

Davis goes quiet. The kind of quiet where you realize you were a joke to the people you worked for. That they sent you out to fetch meat without ever inviting you to the real table.

“I tend to give easier deaths to recruits like you. Not outta mercy. Just boredom. I don’t like expending my energy on parasites.”

His mouth opens, but I raise my hand before he speaks.

“Give me a name,” I say coldly. “One name. And I’ll walk out of here. Maybe I’ll even let you OD yourself in this jerk-off cave with your dignity half-intact. Or…” I crouch again and drag thehunting knife across the inside of his thigh. “Or I will skin you alive. And I’ve got time for that.”

I pull the blade tighter against his skin.

“I’m not walking out that door without a name.”

“John Bailey. I never met him, just a name that came through on a burner once. ‘She belongs to Bailey now.’ That’s what the message said.”

“Where will I find him?”

---