Page 107 of Smith

Kira was shady as hell on the phone—which meant she had nothing and no way to track Aria.

Jesus fucking shit.

“Z,” Linc called from the kitchen. “The Captain’s calling.”

Captain Taylor.

Hearing Aria’s dad’s name was a hit to the gut. The man had to be going out of his mind.

“He’s getting on a flight,” Zane told me before he went to get his phone.

Jonas stepped over the blood staining the floor.

I have a confession.

My gut rolled.

What’s that baby?

I’m falling for you.

I heard her whispered words in my head, felt the kiss she’d brushed on my chest.

On the heels of that, Rie’s voice came at me.

This is all your fault.

I followed Jonas into Aria’s bedroom. Bloody prints on the walls.

Aria’s blood.

Bile clogged my throat, raw fury flowed through my veins, fear ate at my insides.

The bed was unmade from us sleeping in it, but that’s not where the struggle had taken place. Her closet door was open,bloody smears on the door, clothes pulled off the hangers, more clothes still on the hangers on the floor like she was holding on to them while someone—no, whileBillywas pulling her out. I glanced up at the shelf above the bar of clothes.

Her gun safe.

Aria was going for her weapon when Billy got her.

Fucking shit.

I peeked into her bathroom. Completely undisturbed.

I paused in the doorway, looked back at the bed to where I’d last seen her.

I very much dislike Billy Rice.

Jesus shit fuck.

I moved back down the hall in a haze, visions of Rie at eighteen bloody and beaten at the hands of her father. A beating she’d taken while I sat in the idling car outside her house. Those visions morphed into a beaten and bloody Aria.

When the kitchen came into view, the scene before me hit hard. The bile clogging my throat turned thick and started to choke me.

Coffee machine on its side on the counter, the handle to the carafe on the floor. A puddle of coffee on the floor had time to seep under the kickplate of the lower cabinet. A drawer was pulled completely out, the drawer box and its contents scattered. A broken mug. Two of the stools Aria kept pushed under the bar on their sides. A chair from the small breakfast table half out the broken window. It looked like a war zone. But it wasn’t all the broken shit that held my attention, it was the blood—everywhere. The counters, the cabinets, on the fridge, pooled on the floor.

This was ground zero.

This was where Aria was drinking coffee, talking to her father, when Billy got to her.

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