Page 252 of Tempting Venom
My only friends were the stars on the ceiling, and I couldn’t even see them when he had the pillow on my face.
I thought I’d die.
He said he’d kill me if I kept being a naughty boy.
“Do you want to leave your poor mother all alone, Preston?” he asked me. “The only reason I’m staying with such a train wreck like her is because of you. If you keep acting like this, I’ll get rid of you and leave her and tell her it’s because of you. She’ll hate you just like your dad.”
All I could think about was what she told me when I suggested I spend more time at Dad’s, hugging me close and crying.
“You want to leave just like your dad? Do you not love me anymore, Preston? Am I such a bad mom? Have I failed at that as well?”
She wasn’t a bad mom. She was my world. So I had to stop fighting.
To just lie still and take it.
It’d be over soon anyway. The pain, the discomfort, and the inability to breathe.
I could do that much for my mom.
But it didn’t work.
One night, she walked into my room and saw Claude on top of me with his limp dick in my mouth.
Mom kind of…switched off. She roared so loud and hit him with a lamp, making him fall unconscious, then hugged me so tight that I couldn’t breathe.
But it was okay because Mom finally heard my internal screams.
She finally helped me.
She had tears in her eyes as she soothed me, gave me a shower, and put me to bed. For the first time in years, she slept with me in the same bed and sang me a French lullaby.
It was the first time I slept soundly since Claude had come into our house.
The following day, I woke up to Dad hugging me tightly, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said in the same guilt-stricken tone she’d spoken in. “I should’ve seen the signs. I’m so sorry, son.”
“Dad heard my cries for help, too,” I thought. “It’s finally over, right? I can have my mom and dad now, right?”
Not really.
Mom killed herself that night.
Didn’t matter whether I’d told her or not, she still abandoned me.
After that, I never saw Claude again. I think Dad killed him. I never asked, and I don’t want to know.
Didn’t matter whether the asshole was there or not. He still fucked me up and made me lose my mom.
A few years later, when I was eleven, a teacher at the boarding school used me again. I didn’t fight as he forced his dick in my mouth, because that’s what I do, right?
Stay quiet so he doesn’t tell Dad something about me that will make Dad hate and abandon me, too.
As he came on my face, though, Kane and Jude found me. They pushed him off me, and Jude gave me a candelabra and told me to kill him.
I didn’t know I could do that.
But as I smashed his skull, I felt a sense of liberation I’d never experienced before.
