A Very Venom Christmas - Kristine Allen Page 0,31
to help us.
I debated whether it was worth upsetting Decker by staying. Chewing on my bottom lip, I finally gave his calloused hand a squeeze and pressed a kiss to the back of it.
Worry wrinkled my brow as I stood. Without a word, Snow led me further down the hall before opening a room with a key.
“No one will come in here. You have my word. If there’s anything else you need, let me know. My room is two doors down on this side of the hall,” he told me as he pointed. I swallowed hard as I fidgeted with the edge of my hoodie. That’s when it hit me that I’d likely lost all of my worldly possessions. Not that there were many, but everything I owned was in my house.
The loss seemed overwhelming and my chest ached with the thought. “Thanks,” I whispered.
He hesitated, then he spoke. “Whoever was chasing you two got away. Do you know who it was?”
I shook my head. Though something was niggling at the edge of my brain that told me I should know who it was.
“You need to tell Venom the full story.” My brow raised as I looked at him.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, having no idea who Venom was.
“Why you went to prison.”
My breath caught, and my heart stopped momentarily before it began to race a mile a minute. “H-how did you know I was in prison?”
He smirked. “You worked in my club. We make it our business to know about our employees.”
Confusion knotted my brow.
“The Shamrock,” he explained, and my mouth fell open. Of course, it made sense. The men that would be in there in the leather vests with Demented Sons on the back. The way the girls always fell all over themselves to serve them. Which was why I rarely had interactions with them—I had no desire to fight over taking care of their tables like the other waitresses had.
My eyes dropped, and I slipped my hand in my pocket to finger the edges of the dreaded papers. I may not have even noticed them had Decker not told me to buckle my seat belt, but they’d been in the way.
“How much do you know?” I asked, wondering the extent of the information in those crumpled pages. I assumed Decker had gotten them from Snow if his club had done a check on me.
“Now? I know it all, but it’s not my place to tell him. Do you think it could’ve been Kelvin tonight?” My eyes bugged at his mention of my ex, and my palms began to sweat.
“But he’s in prison still,” I argued as my heart slammed against my rib cage. The thought that Kelvin might be out terrified me. It was made worse by the thought that he might know where I was. I’d moved up to Podunk, Iowa, in hopes of disappearing. I’d foolishly thought I’d be able to go to a small town and blend in or maybe even remain obscure. Yet I’d stuck out like a sore thumb. Not having come from a small area, I had no idea how small towns worked. The locals had immediately recognized me as an outsider. Despite my aunt having returned there after she’d retired from the military, I wasn’t from there.
My mother had never returned to her hometown. She’d left after graduating high school when my father had taken a job in the oilfields of Texas. My aunt was younger than my mom and had joined the military after Mom was gone. I’d visited my aunt over my summer breaks wherever she happened to be stationed. Well, except for when she was deployed.
The house I’d inherited from my aunt had been their childhood home. When she died unexpectedly while I was on parole and I found she’d left it to me, it had seemed like the perfect solution for a fresh start once my parole was done.
“He got out early for good behavior.” The gravelly words sent my heart plummeting to my feet from fear. The last words Kelvin yelled at me were coming back to haunt me.
“This is all your fault, you dumb cunt! If you would’ve just driven the fucking car right, I wouldn’t be going to prison! Then you testify against me? You’re going to pay for this! Do you hear me, bitch? You’re gonna pay!”
He’d screamed at me as they were taking him away in cuffs during the trial. The trial I’d had to testify at, thanks to