Page 79 of Cruel Dominion

“I doubt many people use film like that anymore,” James mused, looking at Summer how I wanted people to someday look at my art.

“There are more of us than you might think.”

20

CARTER

People said the beach was peaceful. Those people were idiots.

Seagulls squawked loudly as they fought over the carcass of a crab. Waves crashed against the beach, pounding broken shells into sand.

Some days the crosscurrent was so strong, it dragged people out so far they had no hope of finding the surface, swimming back to shore.

Boats sunk in ocean storms. Entire crews lost to the abyss of blue.

Then there was what lurked beneath the surface. Things that could sting and bite and poison and kill.

All nature was brutal.

Beautiful, but brutal.

It was why I liked it here. I felt at home among the self-destructive landscape. Among the beasts and the broken shells.

After Hudson Vaughn’s attempt to blackmail me, I was hot-headed and ready to draw blood from the first person to look at me wrong.

I hadn’t slept since, which probably wasn’t helping.

This did, though.

Our beach called to me. As soon as I could break away from work this afternoon, I came straight here, parking myself in the sand where the blood of Anna’s lost virginity once stained the sand.

Crazy to think how long ago that was. We were just two vulnerable teens marked by their fathers’ cruelty, sharing secrets and creating a bond that would become completely unbreakable.

Anna was so perfect when I brought her to my villa, letting me hold her, letting me punish her, letting me fuck her. It ate me knowing my seed wasn’t in her right now. Wasn’t in her at all times. Fuck, I wanted to fill her with it so completely that no form of contraception would work against the battalion of it.

I was distracted by the buzz of my cell. Sighing, I pulled it out and answered Paulson’s call.

“What?”

“I’ve got news, and you’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me.”

“Remember, I’m just the messenger.”

He was stalling. Paulson’s self-preservation tactics were really starting to annoy me.

“Spit it out,” I growled.

“Fine,” he said, sighing. “Your girl’s ex never stopped putting up bounties for her on the dark web. They were buried deep and my guys didn’t find them until they’d been up awhile. We took them all down, but there were some replies on the posts.”

An icy dagger twisted in my gut.

“What kind of replies?”

“Information sharing mostly. Her…her real name was used several times.”

Jesus fuck.

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