The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 825

Serena's thumb hovered over the screen.

For a moment nobody in the yard spoke.

Then Marissa found her voice, the way she always did when money was in the air.

"Well, I'm not paying it," she said. "Don't anybody look at me. Gideon, don't look at me either. Who pays if she doesn't? Not us. We don't have a million dollars. We don't have a million of anything."

"We have a lot of curlers," Gideon said quietly.

"Gideon!"

"Sorry, dear."

Patricia didn't laugh. She was watching Serena the way a cat watches a bird with a broken wing.

Alex shuffled nearer the blue and white pieces, squatted on his heels, and turned one shard over with a finger.

"Is it a puzzle?" he asked.

Everyone looked at him.

"Is it a puzzle?" he said again, hopefully. "I'm good at puzzles."

Cordelia rolled her eyes to the grey sky. "Somebody take the idiot back to his kennel."

The whole yard laughed. One of Marissa's curlers fell out and bounced on the stones.

"Look at him, Serena," Patricia sang. "Your husband. Your knight. He thinks it's a game."

Serena did not look at him. She was counting the shards, the way she counted everything when she would not let herself cry. Nine. Ten. Eleven.

Her back burned. Her head was full of smoke. Maybe her hip had caught it when she turned. Maybe the lashes and the long dark had broken something in her, and she could not trust her own eyes any more.

"Maybe it was me," she said at last, very quietly.

Patricia's eyes shone. "What was that, cousin?"

"Maybe it was me. I'm sorry."

"Maybe?" Patricia tilted her head. "No. Say it properly. Say: I broke Grandma's vase."

"Patricia, that's enough," Gideon whispered.

"Say it, Serena."

"Go on," Cordelia said. "We're all waiting, and my feet are cold."

Serena swallowed. "I broke Grandma's vase."

"There," Marissa said, relieved. "Was that so hard?"

"Sweetheart, no," Gideon whispered. But he said it to the cobbles, and nobody heard.

Alex had stopped smiling.

He was still turning the same little shard over in his fingers like a child, but his eyes had moved to the garage-wing door behind her. The heavy old door with the iron latch. He had pushed it open a hundred times with a bowl of soup in his hands.

It opened inward. Into the room.

A door that swings in cannot knock over anything standing outside it.

Somebody had dropped that vase on the step.

He looked up at Patricia. Her red nails had gone white at the tips round her phone.

Alex said nothing. He laid the shard down very gently on the stones.

"All right," Serena said, and lifted her chin. "I'll pay. The whole million. Today. And then we're finished, Patricia. You and I are finished."

The yard breathed out. "Thank goodness," Marissa said. "Now can we please eat?"

Patricia smiled slowly.

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