Page 108 of Cruel Dominion

Images of a man so broken I couldn’t even tell who he once was. His face was completely smashed in as if it’d been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer. There was hair and blood and bits of bone and teeth. No face. A prone body with no face.

I turned and bent at the middle, spewing the breakfast Carter made me all over my dad’s Persian rug.

“What…” I gagged, coughing to get the acid out of my throat. “What is that?”

“That’s the work of your beloved street rat, Anna.

He climbed a pile of corpses to get to the top.

No. Those images could be from anything. Carter wasn’t even in them. This could be another one of my father’s lies.

In my gut, I knew I was in denial, but I couldn’t rectify them together—the Carter I knew as a kid on the beach and this man he’d become. Though he’d always had this in him. I’d seen it in glimpses before, he’d just stopped hiding it.

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Go ahead. Ask Carter. He’ll tell you that it’s true.”

I held back a sob.

“You know what, Anna, go.”

“What?” When I looked up, I found him not staring at me anymore, but rubbing his palm over his mouth, leaning a hand against the wall for support like he was too tired to stand on his own.

“Go. You’ve been nothing but trouble since you were a teenager. So go ahead, run off and find some ramshackle apartment or move in with Carter, let him be the end of you. I don’t care, as long as you keep the family’s secrets while you’re still breathing.”

He might as well have twisted the knife. I always knew he didn’t care, but hearing him admit it still stung more than I ever realized it could.

“What family secrets?”

“You know which ones.”

The ones I accused him of six years ago. I’d had evidence then, too, of him siphoning money from his fancy charity. I should’ve done something about it then and saved us all the heartache.

“I’ve seen your photographs,” Dad held up a handful of film rolls. I knew, with sickening certainty, exactly which rolls they were because I left them at Summer’s place. She texted me to say she’d drop them by the house for me, and I hadn’t seen the message until it was too late to stop her going. Of course he looked at them. Of course.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? You’ve gone around telling people about that disgusting club you worked at. Worse, you showed them the evidence.”

“It was a cocktail bar,” I said in a low voice. “And I’m not ashamed that I worked there.”

“You should be ashamed! We gave you everything. You could have gone to Yale, and really made something of yourself. Instead, you were an ungrateful brat. You spat on all the sacrifices we made for you. You would rather be a whore than act like you give a shit about this family.”

I felt like all the blood had drained from my veins. All the worst things I ever thought about myself, Hudson Vaught just gave them voice. The worst part was that he wasn’t just trying to hurt me. That was what he really thought.

I stared at the floor. My brain repeated all the insults people threw at me in a shitty refrain. I’d never felt more pathetic. More breakable.

Dad put a heavy hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard enough to bruise. “Well, I won’t let you ruin our family name,” he muttered. “I let you have your little hobby, but photographing weddings and sunsets is one thing. Showing off how you lived like a degenerate for six years? I won’t let you destroy us like that.”

He left the room and it took me three precious seconds too long to realize he was still holding my film.

I gasped, rushing after him, slingshotting myself into the sitting room where he was already standing by the fire.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed my negatives into the flames.

“I had my tech team erase the versions you saved to your laptop’s hard drive as well. If you have any other copies, you better hope I don’t find them.”

He turned swiftly on his heel to storm out the other archway and back out to the hall.

For a moment, I froze, watching the film light. Then I was there on my knees, reaching into the embers. Trying like hell to save even one frame.

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