Page 200 of Never Die for a Sinner
The door swings open.
“Ava!” I call out to the emptiness of the house. The scent of mothballs greets my nose. None of the familiar citrus I’ve been salivating for in the last week.
Behind me, Christian gets out of the car, hanging back, but I can see the look in his eyes, and I don’t fucking like it.
Something isn’t right.
I step inside, my boots creaking against the worn hardwood floor. The place is cold—too cold. A chill seeps in through the open door, but it’s more than that. It feels... wrong. Hollow. Like all the life has been sucked out of it.
“Ava!” I shout again, this time with more edge.
Still nothing.
The living room is a mess. Not in the way it would be were no one living here for years—no, this is different. A chair was knocked over. A shattered glass on the floor, tiny fragments glittering like a threat. Her coat is still hanging by the door, her sneakers neatly lined up beneath it.
She didn’t leave willingly.
Christian moves in behind me, slow and cautious, his hand drifting toward the gun in the back of his waistband.
“There was a struggle,” he mutters, eyes scanning the room. “That’s blood.”
My head whips toward where he’s looking—just past the kitchen threshold. A dark smear on the edge of the counter. Small, but fresh. My pulse kicks up, hammering in my ears as I cross the room in two long strides.
I reach out and touch it.
Still tacky.
“Ava . . .” I whisper, this time like a prayer.
Christian’s voice is low, urgent. “Levi.”
I turn.
He’s crouched by the coffee table, holding something up. A phone. Her phone. But it’s the picture still frozen on the cracked screen that fills me with lead.
As if on cue, my phone rings, echoing in the silence of the house.
I stare at it for a moment, rage bubbling through my veins like poison.
Lifting it to my ear, I almost snap it in half.
“Where is she?”
I can practically hear his sinister grin through the phone.
“Hello, golden boy.”
Iciness slips through my veins, my hand shaking with the effort to contain the blistering rage sliding through me.
She’s gone.
She’s. Fucking. Gone.
“If you hurt even a single fucking hair on her head, I promise I’ll be the last thing you see before God.”
He chuckles menacingly. “God doesn’t want me, Cross. It’s the devil I’ll see, and when I do, I’m taking your pretty little whore with me.”
This is all my fucking fault.
