Page 109 of Cruel Dominion

Because I didn’t have any others save for the few small prints in my bag.

Before my skin could fully burn, slender arms grabbed me and pulled me back. I fought them, but I didn’t have the strength. My muscles felt broken and unusable as my vision went and my body wracked with chest aching sobs.

The film quickly flaked into cinders, and I collapsed against my mom. She stroked my hair as I cried.

“I’m so sorry, darling,” she whispered into my hair after a few minutes. “So, so, sorry.”

“They were…they were…the only good thing I’ve done since I left.”

“You’ve done so much that I’m proud of,” Mom said gently. “You’ll take other pictures. He can’t take away your talent.”

I wished I could just believe her. Just wipe this away and forget all about it. But I couldn’t.

“I have to get out of here.”

I sniffed, disentangling myself from her. “I’m leaving.”

“I know. It’s okay. Let me give you my credit c?—”

“I don’t want his money,” I snapped, fixing her with a stare I hoped conveyed just how serious I was. “I’m never coming back here, Mom. As long as he lives in this house, I’ll never step foot through that door again.”

I felt Mom nod, her fingers gently rubbing my back as her blue eyes welled with tears.

“I understand, darling. Do what you have to do.”

25

CARTER

Governor Vaughn was a punctual man. When he said the money was mine as soon as I took the deal, he meant immediately. He set up an anonymous fund that covered the full cost of my mother’s current treatment at the hospital and any other treatments she could ever possibly need. The other funds were dropped into my meager checking account, prompting a slew of calls from my bank asking me what I intended to do with my new ‘inheritance.’

That was three days ago. Now Ma was getting her treatment, I wasn’t under arrest, my father had been scrubbed from existence, and I was left to plan my revenge.

I was scared every morning that when I woke up, it would all be a scam.

Just an elaborate plot to get me in jail on worse charges and eventually a convicted murderer on a lifelong sentence. I was barely sleeping, scared that any footsteps I heard through the flimsy door were the cops coming to get me. Or Hudson Vaughn’s men.

It hadn’t happened yet.

“Do you want something to eat? How are you feeling?” I asked Ma hollowly, bending forward in the chair next to her bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Me?”

“About your father,” she said.

I flinched. She didn’t know the truth. Hudson’s people had it all cleaned up as though it never happened by the time she was ready to come back from the hospital. The official story was that he died in a hit and run. Some kind of big rig truck must’ve rolled right over his head.

I swallowed back bile. “Can’t say I miss him. I mean, can you?”

It’d been three days but she had known the guy longer than I’d been alive. Maybe they were…I don’t know, bonded or something, if not in love.

“I’ve missed him for a long time,” she said wistfully. “I miss the man I married. The one who I fell in love with.”

“I well… I guess I never met that one.”

She sighed and crossed her arms, running her hands up and down her biceps like she was cold. I pulled her blanket up for her.

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