Page 137 of Filthy Liar

There was blood on the floor, but it was dry, a small note sitting on the chair waiting for me beside a recording device that the screaming was coming from.

Too late. Better luck next time.

- Stefano

“They’re gone,” I bit out, and Knox snatched the note from my hand to inspect it.

“What game is he playing?” he muttered, more to himself than me before grabbing the recorder to silence it.

I glanced around for more clues, my eyes continuing to return to the dried blood on the floor. It looked to be a day or two old, and it definitely wasn’t from this morning.

“The video was made just to fuck with you. They didn’t intend on being here to ambush you,” Knox stated, walking over to a spot further over and causing my stomach to roll when he motioned to a small patch of blood next to what appeared to be Blake’s shirt and jeans. “She was wearing these when they took her.”

If Stefano had stripped her of her clothes, had he started touching her? He was more about the mind games, so it could have just been a way to make her feel vulnerable, but I’d also known him to be a bigger monster than that if he was really mad.

Right now, he wanted to hurt me, which meant hurting people I cared about.

I’d known him to hold a woman hostage for over a year once, brutally raping her daily before finally releasing her to her husband, knowing the guy wouldn’t want her back as damaged goods.

Some days he’d done it, other days, he’d had his men do it.

I’d tracked her down last year when I’d discovered her husband had sold her, managing to buy her with counterfeit cash. Then I’d found her sister so she could return to safety.

She’d been the first of many I’d started helping, and I swore my soul got a little lighter with each person I saved.

I couldn’t help those women from when I was younger, but I could try to help those I saw now.

“If they’re not here to ambush us, what was the point?” Will asked as he walked over, eyeing me.

“I don’t—” Panic filled me as I scrambled to pull my phone from my pocket, realization setting in. “Because this wasn’t a trap, it was a fucking distraction.”

I almost dropped my damn phone hitting the call button to Raven, cursing when it went to voicemail. I tried Zavier too, but he didn’t answer either.

“Lavaro,” Cruz barked in my ear as I tried Raven again, snapping me back out of it. “You guys need to get to Ashburn.”

Dread pooled in my gut, and I was already running from the room, the others following.

“What’s happening?” I demanded, hearing his fingers flying over the keyboard at his desk.

“Cameras are down, but the gas station just called in a shooting to the cops. It might be a coincidence, but?—”

There was no such thing as coincidences, if you asked me.

Raven

“You’re okay with him taking off, right?” Zavier asked as we left the house to head to Rory’s, and I reached over to pat his thigh.

“Yeah. In another life, me and Blake could’ve been friends, you know? She keeps the guys on their toes,” I chuckled. “Hell, maybe one day we still could be.”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“I don’t hate Blake, I just get insecure around her because I know how important she was to Ander,” I sighed, feeling stupid. “And she’s pretty.”

“Not as pretty as you.”

“So you admit you think she’s pretty?” I teased, and he gave me an amused glance.

“I’m not falling into this trap. There’s no one in this world prettier than you, end of story.” He looked down at the dash and huffed. “We need to stop for gas. Logan definitely left this on empty so he got out of filling it.”

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