A Hurt So Sweet Volume Four - Isabella Starling Page 0,24

here!" Emilian rushes down the steps, looking flushed as he undoes his bowtie and the first few buttons of his shirt. "Do you really know where they are?"

"Positive," I mutter. "Let's fucking go, right now."

We put our seatbelts on and Kelley pulls out of the driveway to the guys' insistence they should come with. But I don't want them to. I'm only taking Oakes so he'll stop me from killing Lily Anna when I find her.

I don't know whether the text is a sick game on her part, or another clever ruse. Why would she send me that? Why would she fuck with my head even more? She's a fucking bitch. I won't let her live after this. Not if she hurt the baby.

We drive in silence, the air thick with tension. I don't have anything to say to Oakes, and he seems too preoccupied with his own thoughts to deal with me, anyway.

My mind drifts back to Pandora. She looked so heavily pregnant in that photo, and yet exactly the same as I remember her. The hard truth of it dawns on me—it's been months since I've last seen her, felt her skin on my skin. Maybe she doesn't want me anymore. Maybe my effect on her has waned. Maybe she's over me.

But then I remember her tormented gaze in the photograph. She looked tortured, unhappy, miserable. And she never looked that way with me. Maybe defiant, stubborn, pissed off, but she was never unhappy. Lily Anna did this. Lily Anna took my beautiful toy and turned her into this.

I'm preoccupied with the sad expression on Pandora's face. I can't bear to think about what was causing her frown. Her belly, swollen with a child growing in it. A child that may or may not be mine.

I don't know which would be a bigger relief—finding out I am the father after all, or accepting that I am not.

I don't know how the truth will impact my decision, or Pandora's. If it's Julian, Caspian or Easton's... she might pick either of them over me.

And that fucking hurts.

I hate the feeling of pain.

Hate the way it swells in my chest and prevents me from breathing properly. Hate how fucking insecure it makes me feel. But I try to accept it, invite it in almost. Darkness has always been a part of me. Maybe it's finally time for me to hold the door open for it to enter.

There's a chance she won't want me. If that happens, I'll do everything in my power to convince Pandora Oakes I deserve her.

And if she picks someone else, I'll let them live their life, happy, together.

But if she picks me... then... maybe, finally, I'll have a chance of being happy, too.

My nails dig painfully into my palms. We're almost halfway to the cabin, and I'm being a sentimental fucking mess.

"How much longer?" I hiss, even though I know the answer.

"Another twenty minutes, I'm afraid, Master Booth," Kelley replies apologetically. "The roads up here are awful."

I groan, running my hands through my hair. "Why did nobody think to check the cabin?"

"It's been abandoned for years," Oakes replies. "Nobody knows about it."

"Lily Anna does," I hiss. "You should have known."

"You should have as well," Emilian strikes back.

He's right.

This is all my fucking fault.

I spend the rest of the drive sitting there in charged silence. When we pull up in front of the cabin, I nearly fall over myself, jumping out of the still moving car and rushing toward the house. There are no lights on.

I stumble inside, flipping the switch and calling out Pandora's name. I stumble, bumping into something heavy on the floor.

"What the fuck," I mutter. When I look down, fear shoots up my spine.

It's a dead body. A fresh one. Blood has pooled under the unmoving man's corpse. He's got a stethoscope around his neck, and a knife lying next to him, covered in his blood.

"Holy shit," Emilian mumbles as he walks in after me.

I point to a bloody footprint leading away from the body. "Someone went out this door. You need to find them. Go after the footsteps. Find whoever did this."

It's then that we hear a whimper coming from the other room, and we all step over the corpse. I flip another switch and feel sick to my stomach when I see the scene laid out before my eyes.

The wooden floor is covered in no-longer white sheets. They're covered in blood. Some running down from the kitchen, some coming from the frail