Page 247 of Never Fall for an Angel

I surge away from Bella and climb to my feet. Levi races towards the door.

“Where the hell are you going?” Bella barks, following after us. When I grab the shotgun, I keep it loaded in the closet by the front door, her eyes go wide as saucers.

“Paulina,” I point to her in the doorway on the front walk. “Keep Bella here. There’s a gun in my nightstand. Grab it. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

“Your father—”

“Fuck him,” Levi groans from the driver’s side of the car.

I nod to Paulina, who looks back and forth between the two of us with both despair and confusion. Today’s been a day of revelations for her. Finding out Sebastian’s dead. A missingBella. Now, a missing Mila. I’ll deal with her later. For now, I need to get my wife.

Bella chases after me when I storm towards the car, still wrapped in a throw from inside. “Christian—” she starts, and because I know she’s going to ask to come with me, I pull her into a hug.

Her spine stiffens, and she freezes, but eventually, she hugs me back.

“Please . . .” she can’t say the words.

All I can do is nod when I pull away.

I’ll get her back or die trying.

Because without her, what else have I really got to lose?

“Don’t leave the house.”

MILA

The first of my senses to return is, unfortunately, smell.

The airsmellslike death. Bleeding, pungent death. Like a body burnt to a crisp.

I groan as pain blooms behind my eyes, my skull throbbing and my head groggy. I try to sit up, tugging on my hands that are bound to a metal chair.

Fuck! Bella!

My eyes snap open, peering around the space.

I’m no longer at the cottage. I’m in a house. Or what’s left of it. The walls are burnt to a crisp, the old wallpaper peeling and stained with years of rain leaking through the hole in the roof.

Tears fall from my eyes as the panic takes over. Am I in the cabin where Christian’s mother died?

This isnothappening.

“CHRISTIAN!”

“Screaming won’t help.”

I freeze, my blood running cold at the voice behind me.

“Sebastian . . .”

His lips tip up in a smirk.

“Hello, Mila.”

He steps forward into the light, his gaze unfeeling as he watches me struggle against the chains that bind me. It’s like looking at a replica of my husband, only with the knowledge that something isn’t right.

“What do you want, dickhead?”

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