Tempting Venom (Vipers #3)

Prologue — Marcus

AGE SEVEN

Ihate my birthdays.

They always begin with the same bleak reminder that the one thing I want the most is the one thing I can’t have.

Maybe I should change the wish. Try to see if I can make a better one.

One that doesn’t revolve around wanting something I can never have.

Too late now.

Mom’s slightly trembling fingers tighten around my clammy hand—or maybe it’s hers that’s all sweaty. Her usually affectionate touch is jaded, smothered by the consequences of my stupid wish.

I peek up at her, sinking my teeth into my lower lip.

Mom is still in her pale-pink nurse’s uniform, her white sneakers smudged from the walk in the rain and a worn leather bag slung over her shoulder. Her jet-black hair is pulled into a ponytail, a few strands slipping loose around her face.

I love Mom’s face. It’s round and welcoming, accented by huge dark eyes that I see myself in and warm skin kissed by the sun.

She carries that faint trace of disinfectant, the scent I’ve loved for as long as I can remember because it means she’s home. My classmates say the smell of the hospital stinks, but for me, it means Mom’s hugs as soon as she walks in.

Doesn’t matter how worn out she is, Mom always smiles the widest when she sees me, falling to her knees to hug me and shower me with kisses.

“How was your day?” I’ll ask because that’s what she always asks me.

“Much better now.” She’ll sigh in my hair, hugging me again.

Mom works in the emergency room at the local hospital in our town, Stantonville. And because she works night shifts and overtime, she usually has panda eyes.

Like now.

Normally, she leaves me with Mrs. Rodriguez next door, but yesterday, Mom asked Dad to spend time with me.

Because it was my stupid birthday wish.

I waited by the window, peeking through the curtains all night long, holding the puck he gifted me last year, but I fell asleep, and Dad never came.

This morning, Mom found me sleeping slumped on the windowsill, grabbed my hand, and drove us here.

To Dad’s mansion.

I’ve never been here before.

The house looks as big as Dad. Too big. Like a castle. And…just far away, though it’s right in front of me.

It rises from the ground like it swallowed the whole street, with so many floors stacked on top of each other and countless windows and doors. Even the garden is wider and neater than the park back home. It looks as magical as the gardens in fairy-tale stories Mom loves reading to me.

I wonder if there are roses I can get for Mom.

“The least you could’ve done is tell me you weren’t coming, so I could’ve come up with alternate plans for Marcus.” Mom’s voice is bitingly low—the tone she always uses when she’s fighting with Dad. “A child his age shouldn’t be left alone.”

“He’s eight and grown enough,” Dad says in that dismissive way of his, the sound cutting through the air, although his voice stays controlled.

“Seven. Marcus is seven, Andrew.”

“Seven. Eight. What’s the difference? You’re being dramatic.”

I peek at Dad, not really daring to look at him fully. I don’t think he likes it—or me—that much.

Dad is tall and broad—so tall, both Mom and I have to look up at him.

We share the same cloud-colored eyes, except his are narrower, meaner, and barely shift. His light-brown hair catches the light from the thin sunbeam leaking through the clouds, nearly turning blond.

He hardly smiles or hugs me like Mom. He just looks.

Like now.

His gaze strays toward me, and I stare down at my blue-and-white sneakers Mom got me for my birthday last year.

Mom always tells me Dad is busy and doesn’t have time and that I should understand, but I think he just doesn’t like me.

“Dramatic?” Mom’s hand squeezes mine even tighter. “I’m dramatic for asking you to be a decent human being and treat your child right?”

“I give you money for whatever he needs, June. What else do you want from me?”

Mom releases my hand, reaches into her bag, and pulls out a few dollar bills, then throws them at his chest. “Fuck your money! Your son needs his father, not money.”

“Well, that’s all I have to offer him. I told you it would’ve been better to abort him; it’s not my fault you chose to keep the kid.”

Mom covers my ears with both her hands as if that will magically erase what I just heard.

Then she forces a smile on her trembling lips as she removes them, probably figuring out I can still hear—and see.

Mom crouches down so that she’s at my level and strokes my hair—it the exact shade of hers, so black, it’s almost blue—away from my face.

And she smiles, like every time she sees me, but her panda eyes make her look exhausted. When we go home, I’ll cut her the cucumber slices that Mrs. Rodriguez uses at night.

“Marcus, darling, do you mind waiting for Mommy near the car? I’ll be right there, okay? I just need to talk to your father for a bit.”

“Okay.”

“Love you, sweetie.”

“Love you, too, Mommy.” I glance at Dad, and he’s scrolling through his phone. “Bye, Daddy.”

“Mm.” He releases the noise, but he doesn’t look at me.

Mom glares at him, then gives me one last smile before she ushers me down the couple of stairs. That’s where we’ve been talking to Dad the whole time—in front of his house. He was waiting for us there as soon as we arrived, and he never invited us in.

I guess he doesn’t want his wife and his other children to see us. Mom said I have two brothers and a sister, but they have a different Mom, and it’s better if I don’t get to know them.

Dad said I’ll never meet them.

“You come from different worlds, and it’ll remain like that. For your sake,” he told me once while we sat in our living room.

He was helping me put together a puzzle as Mom prepared dinner. It was one of my favorite times we spent together.

Dad had a strange look in his eyes as he stared in Mom’s direction. “And your mother’s.”

Now, I round the corner and spot Mom’s car, tiny compared to the huge, shiny ones lined up on either side of it.

Instead of heading to the car, I hide by the bushes and peek at Mom and Dad.

I know I don’t have parents who live together like most people in my class. The other day, Chad called Mom a whore and a gold digger, and I pushed him to the ground and punched him so hard, he started bleeding.

And it felt good—hearing him crying and begging me to stop.

He shouldn’t have said that in the first place.

But then the school called Mom, and it was so annoying.

When I told her what Chad said, she told his parents to educate their kid, so he won’t get beaten up like that in the future.

Then Mom told me people will say whatever they want, and I shouldn’t let it get to me.

She’s wrong.

I won’t allow anyone to insult my mom.

Even if it’s Dad.

“Listen here, you son of a bitch.” Mom points a finger at his chest. “Whether or not I chose to have Marcus was my decision, not yours.”

Dad is still staring at his phone. “Then don’t come here yelling the house down because he spent a night on his own.”

“It’s his birthday!”

“I don’t give a fuck.” He lifts his gaze to her. “His birthdays mean nothing to me. You’re the one who had him. Take responsibility for him.”

“Wow.” She steps back. “Not only did you lie to me back then, pretending to be single when you had a whole wife and three kids—”

“You were being dramatic, ending a relationship just because of a wife.”

Mom takes another step back, visibly vibrating with anger. “Dramatic for not wanting to be a mistress?”

“You would’ve had a better life than now.” He stares her down. “You look terrible, by the way. Gone are the days when you were attractive. Even your biting tongue is no longer amusing.”

“Well, I’m glad, because the last thing I want is to amuse you, asshole. I’m here to ask you to be a decent father to your son.”

“A decent father provides money.”

“That’s a bank, not a father!”

“Call it whatever you want.”

“I don’t know why I bother talking to you.

” A worn, brittle sound slips from her, her head bowing for a heartbeat before she lifts it again.

“You know, I really didn’t want to cut you out of his life, since you donated the sperm and all, but if you’re going to keep hurting him by not showing up or by being so emotionally paralyzed, you’re no longer allowed near him. ”

He smiles, but it looks evil, like in the cartoons. “You can’t keep me out of his life.”

“I can try. And keep your allowance. I don’t spend your blood-soaked money on my child anyway.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, June. You’d rather struggle than take the hand I’m offering?”

“You finally get it.”

Dad purses his lips, frowning like he always does around Mom. “You’re making a grave mistake.”

“The only mistake I made was meeting you, asshole. Actually, no. Marcus came out of it, and he’s the best thing that’s ever happened in my life, so I’ll consider the couple of years I spent with you fucking charity.”

My lips twitch in a smile. Mom always says that—that I’m the best thing that’s happened in her life, and that she doesn’t know how she’d lived without me.

If only Dad cared like she does.

It doesn’t have to be a lot.

Just a tiny bit is enough.

I don’t need to see him all the time. Just sometimes.

He grabs her by the elbow. “You don’t have the foggiest clue what type of family you’re up against, June. Quit with your spitfire attitude and listen to reason. Come here, let’s talk inside.”

Mom is saying something, but I don’t hear them as he pulls her through the huge door.

I drag my foot over a pebble and walk to the car, my head dropping to my chest. But I stop when, through the gaps between the perfectly cut square trees, I catch a glimpse of the garden.

The grass is so green, it feels alive, dotted with so many colorful flowers that look painted on.

I bite my lower lip. Dad won’t mind if I pluck a few and give them to Mom, right?

She loves flowers, and I always take her some from the side of the road. These are so much prettier and brighter, maybe they’ll make her feel better.

I take a look at my surroundings, then carefully step between the bushes but pause because, wow, there are so many of them!