Page 107 of Cruel Dominion

“He’s not good enough for you!”

I rolled my eyes. “As if you care about what’s best for me. You’re all about your image, just like always.”

“I forbid you from seeing Carter Cole again.”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “You forbid me? Okay. Sure. Well, if you’re so bothered, I could always move out.”

And I realized I could. I didn’t have much money, but I could stay with Summer. She’d let me crash in her guestroom without a second thought and I could get a normal job. Pay her back for my living expenses. I could do it. Maybe I should.

“You’d move in with him?” Dad looked aghast.

“Maybe,” I said flippantly, even though I hadn’t considered it, not really, anyway. “Or maybe I’ll just get my own place. I don’t know.”

Dad pushed to his feet. Even in his middle age, he was still tall and imposing. “Before you throw your cards in with that man, there’s something you should know. I offered him a bribe to stay away from you six years ago. He happily accepted.”

My stomach dropped, and I needed to grip the back of the sofa to stay standing.

He…what?

“How do you think he got to where he is now, hmm? My money, that’s how.”

No. Wouldn’t.

There wasn’t any way the Carter I knew would have thrown me away for a payday.

…was there?

Unless there was a reason.

His mom’s cancer. The money could’ve paid for her treatments. My eyes burned and my chest ached as if it was empty, hollowed out to the bone.

Would he have done it to try to save her?

Could I forgive him if he had?

I remembered that pain, feeling it like a fresh cut instead of an old scar.

He’d been so cruel. So punishing.

No. I couldn’t forgive him for the things he said to me. The way he left me broken and all alone when he promised he would never do that. But a part of me could understand, even if I couldn’t live with it.

“You’re just as bad as him,” I choked out before clenching my teeth at him. “How could you do that to me? To him? He was just a kid. An abused kid on the verge of losing his mom. God. You’re not just as bad, you’re worse.”

“Me? You think I’m the bad guy here?”

“I don’t think it, I know it.”

“You want to see bad, Anna Grace?” He sneered at me, rushing forward to snatch my wrist and drag me from the room.

“Ow, let go.”

He didn’t release me until we were in his office. I rubbed the sore spot on my wrist as he unlocked a filing cabinet and began tearing through files.

I should have left right then, before his fingers closed on a worn manilla envelope and opened it, drawing out a fist full of images he threw over the desk in front of me.

Because now I couldn’t unsee them.

It was a menagerie of pain and gore and horror.

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