Page 147 of The Serpent's Bride
“Second mistake?” I murmured. “Putting your hands on my wife.”
Then I threw him into the pit. Angelo screamed before he even hit the bottom. The snakes exploded into motion beneath him. The first strike came. Then another. Then another.
His screams tore through the warehouse as venomous fangs buried into his arms, throat, legs. He stumbled blindly through the writhing mass, slipping in blood and panic while snakes struck again and again and again.
“LEO!” he screamed. “GET ME OUT!”
One snake lunged upward and sank its fangs deep into the side of his throat. Angelo choked violently. Foam gathered at his lips. His body convulsed hard enough to slam against the concrete floor.
Still the snakes kept biting. His screams weakened. Then broke apart entirely. Finally, he stopped moving. Silence settled slowly over the warehouse except for the wet hiss of scales sliding over his corpse.
Behind me, Sergio exhaled shakily. “Jesus Christ.”
I stared down into the pit at Angelo’s swollen body tangled among writhing snakes. Then the bullet wound in my side pulsed violently again, blood running warm beneath my shirt. I pressed my hand harder against it and turned away.
BythetimeSergiodragged me back into the penthouse, the worry was already eating through my bloodstream.
I knew because I recognized the feeling. Not the pain. Pain was ordinary. I’d been taught pain before I could properly read. This was different. This was cold.
A freezing sickness spreading beneath my skin in slow, deliberate waves, like ice water threading through my veins instead of blood. My fingers kept going numb. My vision pulsed strangely at the edges. Every heartbeat felt delayed, sluggish, wrong.
Poison. Of course it was poison. Edoardo never did anything halfway.
The elevator ride blurred around me in fragments of sound and light. Sergio shouting at someone. Blood dripping steadily onto polished black marble. The metallic scent of it thick enough to taste. I leaned harder against the wall once the elevator doors opened because the floor tilted beneath my feet.
“Boss,” Sergio said sharply.
I ignored him. Because Chiara was standing at the end of the hallway barefoot in one of my shirts. And for one horrible second, I thought I was hallucinating already.
Her blonde hair spilled wildly around her shoulders. Her eyes looked swollen from crying. My shirt swallowed her body nearly to her thighs, the black fabric making her look pale enough to break apart under my hands.
Her gaze dropped to the blood pouring through my fingers. The color drained from her face. “Oh my God.”
Fear hit her expression so violently it nearly brought me to my knees. Not fear of me. For me. Something in my chest twistedpainfully. Interesting. I hadn’t expected to survive long enough to see that. Then Chiara ran toward me. Actually ran.
“Leo!” Her voice cracked apart as her hands grabbed my arms. “What happened? Oh my God, there’s so much blood-”
I tried answering. Nothing coherent came out.
The poison spread fast now. My heartbeat felt strange. Too slow one second, too hard the next. Sweat slid cold down my spine despite the warmth flooding the penthouse.
Sergio grabbed my shoulder. “We need the medic now.”
Chiara looked up sharply. “Medic?”
“The bullet was poisoned,” I managed roughly.
Her face went completely white. Then the world tilted sideways. The next few hours came apart in pieces. Voices. Pain. Darkness. Hands holding me down.
At some point someone cut my shirt open. I vaguely remember Chiara screaming when she saw the wound. I remember Sergio swearing. The medic barking orders while blood soaked expensive sheets beneath me.
And through all of it… Chiara stayed. Every time I surfaced, she was there. Like a ghost my poisoned brain invented.
Sometimes I thought I was thirteen again. Back in my father’s underground rooms where the air smelled like chemicals and fear. I remembered restraints biting into my wrists. Silver trays lined with tiny crystal vials. My father watching emotionlessly while men forced poison down my throat to “build immunity.”
You survive enough times, he used to say, and eventually death gets bored of chasing you.
I remembered vomiting blood onto concrete floors while my father calmly took notes. I remembered convulsing hard enough to fracture teeth. I remembered him disappointed when I survived too quickly.
