That should've calmed me.
It didn't.
My pulse hammered harder. Wrong. Everything about this felt wrong.
I crossed the street in three strides. The bookstore door hung open. Not wide—just cracked. Like someone had shoved through it and never bothered closing it behind them.
A display of romance novels lay toppled across the threshold. Bright covers scattered like broken wings across the hardwood. Pages bent. Spines cracked.
Belle would never leave books like that.
Ice poured down my spine.
I pushed the door wider.
The bell above it didn't ring. Someone had torn it down. It lay in pieces near the counter.
A shelf sagged halfway off the wall, books spilling from it in a cascade of chaos. The neat order Belle maintained religiously—destroyed.
My breath came shallow. Too fast.
I stepped over the scattered novels, glass crunching under my boots.
"Belle?"
My voice came out low. Deadly.
Silence answered.
Not the comfortable quiet of an empty store.
The hollow, violated quiet of something taken.
I moved deeper inside. Past Fiction. Past the counter where she'd smiled at customers yesterday. Past the aisle where I'd kissed her for the first time.
The display case where I'd?—
A splash of red on the floor stopped me cold.
Not paint.
Blood.
Not much. Just a few drops. But enough.
Enough to shatter the last thread of control I'd been clinging to.
"Belle!" Louder this time. Desperate.
Nothing.
I spun, scanning every corner. Every shadow. Every goddamn inch of this place.
The back room door stood open.
I bolted toward it. Empty.
Her coat hung on the hook. Her bag sat beside the desk, phone inside it, screen dark.
