Page 35 of Deception
“She needs me to… She needs me to take care of her husband.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Glaring at him, she crosses her arms under her chest. “So… he could be completely innocent, and you’re going to go kill him?”
He snorts. “My mother doesn’t fall for nice or upstanding citizen types. He’s done something, but all I know is that sheneeds the insurance money. And he’s a son of a bitch. Whatever that entails.”
Shaking her head, Marnie moves and blocks the front door with her body. “No.”
It would amuse him if he wasn’t so upset at seeing his mother again. Marnie couldn’t physically stop him from leaving the house. Picking her up and moving her to the side would be easy.
“Marnie—”
“No. You aren’t going to do this. It’s too big of a risk.”
“I know what I’m doing. It’s not that big of a risk. I have yet to get caught.”
“And what if this is the one time you do? You’re really willing to risk your freedom and leave me to go out and kill a man for your mom? Because she needs insurance money?” she says, spitting out the last two words like they disgust her. “Is that really worth more than us?”
“I owe her.”
“For what?”
Venom bites his bottom lip and looks at the ground. “For being here.”
“What?”
Saying the words aloud gut him, but he tells her how he owes his mother for not aborting him. She chose to raise him against everything she felt and what everyone said. He’s trash, but she didn’t throw him away like she could have.
Marnie’s on him in a flash, her arms wrapping around his waist. “Baby, no.”
“But—”
“A child doesn’t owe their parent for being alive. That isn’t something she gets to hang over your head and manipulate you into doing things you shouldn’t.”
His heart races, and the conflict of what he wants to do and should do rises once again. He knows exactly who he is, but healso knows the man he wants to be. The man Marnie believes he can be.
“I told her I would—”
“Fuck her,” she says and pulls back. “Don’t go. Please don’t.”
“I have to.”
Falling to her knees, she looks up at him. No matter how many times he’s allowed her to take him in her mouth in this position, he always sees the memory of the first time he ever saw her like this. How she was almost forced to do something she didn’t want to do, and Venom killed the man who did it to her.
“I’m begging you, baby. Don’t do this.”
“Marnie, get up,” he whispers.
Shaking her head, she clasps her hands in front of her, making it even worse for him. “Not unless you tell me you aren’t leaving.”
“She’s expecting me.”
“She’s a big girl. She can figure it out on her own. Would Lex want you to go?Allowyou to go?”
“That’s not fair.”
