Page 120 of Cruel Dominion

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I sped over to Summer’s place as quickly as I could, calling Paulson for an update from his men along the way.

“Where is Anna?” I asked as soon as he picked up.

“Uh, just one sec.” I heard him tapping a few keys and speaking into a radio and every second felt like an eternity. “Yep, still at the best friend’s house. She hasn’t left in days.”

Someone was going to die for this.

Maybe a lot of someones.

“She’s not there,” I seethed down the line.

Paulson floundered. “That’s not possible. We have seven men around the perimeter. No one went in or out without us seeing it. Not a fucking chance.”

“I’m on my way there now, and if I don’t find Anna safe in her fucking bed, someone’s head is going to roll.”

I hung up just as I reached the foot of Summer’s driveway. She was already there waiting for me, anxiously shifting her weight back and forth in the doorway.

I took the stairs two at a time and shoved past her. “Show me where she was staying.”

“Do you think something happened? Hey! Carter.”

I cleared the hall in three strides and stalked through an all-white kitchen to a power pink living room, searching for the bedrooms with Summer right on my heels.

“Should I call the police?”

“You should call the fucking undertaker,” I growled, throwing open the door to the first bedroom and then the second, my hands shaking as something hot and uncomfortable slithered up my back.

“This is about her ex, isn’t it? She said she was worried he’d find her, but I didn’t think—I mean, she didn’t say that he was?—”

“Dangerous?” I filled in, whirling on her with enough lethal rage that she shrank back from me with a yelp.

I spied Anna’s phone on the nightstand of the next room and stalked inside, tearing it off the nightstand and the charger from the wall.

The blankets were all messed up and it smelled like her in here.

I scanned the room, looking for signs of a struggle, and finding none.

“What’s through there?”

I was already halfway over to the only door in the room when Summer answered in a squeak. “The en suite.”

I broke the door handle trying to open it and shouldered through to a dim en suite bathroom with a stand up shower and ring lighting around the mirror.

It smelled different here. Like…cigarettes.

Anna didn’t smoke.

She almost bit my head off when I brought a pack to the beach once, making me swear I’d never touch one again.

“What is that?”

I followed Summer’s gaze to the towel sopping wet in the base of the shower. Was that…blood on the corner of it?

Icy rage consumed me. Someone must have come for Anna.

I never should’ve let her leave my villa.

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