Page 72 of Cruel Dominion

Pathetic.

A waste of skin.

A quick chill ran over me. Anna’s ex might’ve left physical bruises on my girl, but Hudson had hurt her, too. He cared too much about appearances to mark her on the outside, but I knew she had just as many scars as I had. Different ones. The kind that made it feel impossible to just to exist. Made even breathing a chore.

“Leave her alone,” Hudson repeated. I tipped my head back, in the mood for a little fun.

I licked my lips. “No. I don’t think I will.”

He balked.

“Excuse me?”

“I said ‘no.’”

I heard movement. Scraping, like the sound of a chair across the floor. Hudson Vaughn standing to his full height.

“Did you forget, boy? That money you took came with strings.”

“So you weren’t just trying to help an underprivileged youth pay for his ma’s hospital bills?”

“Leave. Her. Alone.”

“No.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he snarled.

I was getting under his skin. It was surprisingly thin for a politician. With that job, you would think he was comfortable with a little ribbing.

“Ask Anna who I am. She knows better than anyone.”

“You’re a dirty, worthless piece of trash just like your father. You wouldn’t be able to so much as walk past that building you work in without being arrested if it wasn’t for my help.”

He might as well have taken that line right out of the Frank Cole playbook.

When I was a dirty, worthless piece of trash who wouldn’t be welcome to clean the floors of the building I worked in, maybe his words would have hit different.

I wasn’t a broke, desperate kid with a sick mother, scared that I’d be homeless the next month. He wasn’t as powerful as he thought anymore, not over me and not over his daughter.

“If you’re done, I’m sure both of us have better things to do tonight,” I said. “I can think of at least one on my end.”

A low sound almost like a growl came down the line, and I wondered why he made it so fucking easy to find just the right buttons. The man, for all his success, had a lot to learn with this sort of business.

“I know what you said to her. Why do you think she’ll give you a chance? You broke her heart. I saw her when she came home, Carter. Do you really think she’ll forgive you?”

My teeth ground together. Cold snaked around my neck. What did he know? She wasn’t close to him. She wouldn’t come crying to him about what happened between us. I swayed, losing my footing in the ring.

“Why don’t you ask her, Vaughn? This time, she might even tell you the truth.”

“You will leave my daughter alone or I’ll?—”

“You’ll what? Tell the police what I did six fucking years ago?” I scoffed. “I have every judge up the entire mother fucking coast in my back pocket.”

“No,” he replied, dripping venom. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell Anna.”

My blood practically froze in my veins.

Anna was smart enough to know what I was capable of, and strong enough to bear knowing it. But seeing it would be different.

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