Pretty Little Tainted, page 1
pretty little tainted
TERRI ANNE BROWNING
Copyright © Terri Anne Browning/Anna Henson 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Terri Anne Browning, except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976.
Pretty Little Tainted
Written by Terri Anne Browning
All Rights Reserved ©Terri Anne Browning 2024
Edited by Lisa Hollett of Silently Correcting Your Grammar
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Pretty Little Tainted is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including storage or retrieval systems, without the express permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.
contents
Prologue
1. Abi
2. Vaughn
3. Abi
4. Abi
5. Vaughn
6. Abi
7. Vaughn
8. Abi
9. Abi
10. Vaughn
11. Abi
12. Abi
13. Abi
14. Vaughn
15. Abi
16. Vaughn
17. Abi
18. Vaughn
19. Vaughn
20. Abi
21. Abi
22. Abi
23. Vaughn
24. Abi
25. Abi
26. Vaughn
27. Vaughn
28. Abi
29. Abi
30. Abi
31. Abi
32. Abi
33. Abi
34. Abi
35. Abi
36. Abi
37. Abi
38. Abi
39. Abi
40. Abi
41. Vaughn
42. Vaughn
43. Vaughn
Epilogue
prologue
VAUGHN
AGE 7
Blood dripped down my nose onto the white shirt I’d put on for school. A tooth was rolling around in my mouth, but it had been wiggling for a few days, so I was kind of glad the boy had punched me in the face a few times. I’d already lost three other teeth in the last two months. They hurt when they wiggled in the gums. When they were loose enough, I could pull them myself, but this one hadn’t gotten there yet.
Spitting out the tooth, I watched it hit the ground near where the boy had dropped to his knees and then curled in on himself after I’d punched him back. He was bigger than me and didn’t attend the same school, but he’d been taunting me all week when I walked home.
Words didn’t bother me. Daria tried to rile me up plenty, always telling me how much she hated me. How I was just like my real mom, Anya. I’d never met the woman who’d thrown me away because I was too small when I was born, but according to Daria and Polina, she was a bitch.
Wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt, I dropped down beside the boy and pushed him onto his back. The pocketknife I’d stabbed him in the belly with didn’t go too deep. It wouldn’t kill him. If he died from the wounds I’d given him, it would be from infection, not because I’d hit anything important. He was out cold, but that was due to the fact that I’d hit him in the head with a brick.
Wiping the blood from the knife on the boy’s shirt, I closed it up and slipped it back into my pocket. Picking up my bag with my books in it, I stood and slowly limped home. My body hurt, but that wasn’t anything new. If I didn’t get jumped on the way home from school, then Daria would have something she needed me to do that always ended up hurting.
She wasn’t going to be happy about the blood on my shirt.
Stray dogs barked as I made my way past a few abandoned buildings. The pimp on the corner sneered at me as I walked by, his few remaining teeth obviously rotting away. Ignoring him, I made a right at the next street and then stopped in front of a door that looked like it was going to blow off with a strong wind.
Grunting when my bag dropped forward, knocking into a bruise that was already forming, I pushed the knob inward. A secret panel popped up, a screen waiting for me to input a code.
As soon as the lock snicked, I stepped inside. The outside of my home was dirty, decrepit. A disguise to keep people like the pimp from trying to rob us. Not that he would live past getting in the door. But he would try, regardless. Inside, my house was all gleaming surfaces, sparkling lights, expensive art on the walls. Still, a lie, just like the outside.
Hearing a soft, whirling noise, I dropped my dirty bag and stood there waiting. Polina’s wheelchair came out of the office down the hall, her short hair sticking up in a few different directions, telling me she’d been working on a new computer program that had frustrated her.
Seeing me standing there, covered in dirt and blood, she released a heavy sigh. “Can you make it to and from school at least once without killing someone?”
“I didn’t kill anyone today,” I told her, not looking away from her displeased scowl as she powered her chair toward me.
No doubt Daria would find a reason to change that. Another test to ensure I was loyal to her and Polina.
“Yet,” she muttered, an underlying hint of affection in her hard tone. Or what I had to guess was affection. I’d witnessed a few parents being that way with their kids. One of my teachers even used that same tone with other students. Polina was my only source of comparison, so I wasn’t sure.
Anyone else might have been confused that she felt anything for a child who often came home covered in blood. Especially when that blood wasn’t primarily his own. I understood that murder was wrong. But I valued my life over any others.
There was a word for that, according to all the books I read.
Sociopath.
I called it surviving my surrogate mothers.
Daria tested my loyalty every day, which meant I had a ninety percent chance of being ambushed when I left the house. In her deranged mind, if I survived the day, I was loyal. If I died, I was the traitor she suspected all along. Each night when she stood before me, demanding a full report of my day, I could see the disappointment in her eyes that I had made it home alive.
What she considered my loyalty by walking through the door covered in other people’s blood, I knew was really stubbornness at not giving her the pleasure of my death.
Stomping footsteps pulled my gaze from Polina to watch as Daria walked from her suite at the back of the house. Her hair was just as short as Polina’s, but where the disabled woman was thin and fragile in appearance, Daria was more muscular than the average woman. She worked out for hours twice a day in the gym that was housed in the basement along with the small gun range where I had to practice every night before bed.
A sadistic smile pulled at her mouth when she saw me, her black eyes barely flitting across the blood on my shirt. “Mommy dearest has officially adopted your little bitch of a brother.”
Throwing down the paper she had in her hand, she spat at my feet. I looked at the printout of a new image, a beautiful woman in her thirties with dark hair and blue eyes who smiled for the camera. Beside her on a sofa sat a boy who could have easily been confused for my twin.
Ryan Vitucci.
My brother. We shared the same father, but his biological mother was dead. Not a real loss. Our father killed her when he found her abusing Ryan. Broke her neck without thinking. Daria had voiced sympathy for the dead woman, but she’d only valued Sheena O’Brion’s life for the torment she could bring Anya knowing the man she loved was married to someone else and they’d had a child together.
Now, Anya was legally Ryan’s mother. The woman who had thrown me away like trash for being too small at birth had adopted a son who looked just like me.
Ryan’s smile as he looked up at his new mom belied the neutral lines of his expression. In past pictures I’d been shown of the boy, he was normally tense, his eyes haunted. But the photographer had captured a joy on Ryan’s face I had yet to feel, ever.
I knew what physical pain felt like, but nothing else ever registered. Not fear or sadness. I couldn’t remember laughing or ever having a reason to smile. After seeing how the other students at school behaved, I knew I was defective. But I was starting to learn how to pretend so I didn’t scare my teachers. At least, not more than I already did.
“Look at them,” Daria sneered, not unlike the pimp on the corner, only she had all her teeth. “He stole her from you, Vaughn.”
“She was never mine, so how did he steal her?” I asked.
Anger flickered in her eyes. She disliked it when I talked back. I’d have to be extra cautious on my way to and from school tomorrow.
“Aren’t you jealous of the boy?” she taunted.
“Is that what I should be?”
“Yes! He has the life you should be living. She left you in that hospital to die. And now, she’s playing happy family with someone else’s son, while you come home every night bruised and bloody.”
I glanced at the picture again and shrugged. “Okay, then. I’m jealous.”
Polina muttered something under her breath, but she was already turning her
“Yes, Polina,” I said quietly.
Daria grinned down at me, the mania in her eyes increasing. “When you die, I’m going to gift Anya your body. And then I will take Ryan, turn him against her just like we have you.”
I stared back at her without blinking, knowing she was waiting for me to react, to give her something. Any sign that what she said hurt or angered me. But all I felt was the same cold numbness. “Okay.”
AGE 11
“Good, Vaughn,” Polina praised as she watched me tear down the firewalls. “Very, very good.”
My fingers kept typing, ignoring her as she continued to look over my shoulder. This job was time-sensitive. The offshore bank had high cybersecurity, so I only had fifteen seconds between each wall I broke through before it locked completely and they traced my IP address.
Not that they would find anything. I’d made contingency plans for not getting through each back door. If I failed and they tried to figure out who did it, they would be knocking on the door of a guy in Nebraska who liked his porn to be more animal-heavy than human.
A beep alerted from the computer, and then I was looking at hundreds of illegal bank accounts. Each with hundreds of millions of US dollars in them.
“Transfer them,” Polina commanded, finally sitting back in her wheelchair, a pleased smile on her face. I was already moving the money before she said anything.
With her no longer watching my every move, I skimmed a few million for myself from each account, hiding it away until I could transfer it later. Daria would never know, and even if Polina suspected, she wouldn’t find the funds.
If she could get into the bank herself, she would have done so. Instead, she needed my help. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, I had bypassed her in skill. For the last year, I’d been on multiple countries’ top ten most wanted lists for my hacking skills. If they’d known my identity, they would have already found me. But they had no idea who I was, let alone that I was an eleven-year-old kid living in Russia. To them, I was nothing more than Ghost, but they weren’t even sure I was the same person they were looking for. I didn’t leave a trail behind or a calling card or take souvenirs. All I did was steal money from people who exploited the weaknesses of others.
Those governments should have been thanking me, not calling me a criminal. If the deeds I did were those of a villain, then I wasn’t sure what a superhero was supposed to do to be deemed worthy. Seemed like bullshit to me, but no one asked me, and I wasn’t going to go around supplying them with my opinion.
It took a while to clear out everything, but once I did, I deleted the entire bank. Offshore banks shouldn’t exist anyway, and I’d just shut down one that housed the profits for some of the biggest players in sex trafficking. In the blink of an eye, they went from being major underworld players to being nothing.
“You did well,” Polina said as she picked up her cup of tea and took a small sip.
I didn’t imagine Polina had wanted me to empty those accounts for any noble reason. Her only goal was to steal the money, not shut down the trafficking. In the past six months alone, I’d stolen over a billion dollars for her and Daria in exactly the same way. Enough money to keep her in luxurious comfort for centuries. She was simply greedy for more.
Yet her constant craving for money was nothing compared to Daria’s need for supposed vengeance on Anya Volkov, now Anya Vitucci since she had married my biological father several years before.
Closing my laptop when I heard footsteps, I sat at the desk, watching Polina tilt her head in the direction of the door. Anticipation darkened her face as she held her breath until Daria entered the room.
If anyone wanted revenge against Anya, I would have figured it was Polina more than Daria. According to my surrogate mothers, Anya was the one responsible for Polina being without the use of her legs. Daria’s tale of the incident didn’t make sense to me, but I didn’t care one way or the other.
But while Daria fanned the embers of Polina’s anger toward the one who had made her dependent on her chair, most days, it was Daria who was close to full-on rage when it came to Anya.
“The child was born,” Daria announced, crossing to the desk with a stack of pictures in hand.
Polina expelled a long sigh, a flash of longing filling her face before she returned to her normally indifferent mask. “And?”
“A daughter,” Daria informed her with a huff of disgust. “You know what will happen.”
Polina nodded. “She will start the girl’s training before she gets out of the toddler years.”
“As she should,” Daria gritted, slamming the pictures down on the desk in front of me. “Congratulations, boy. You have a baby sister.”
The desk lamp glared off the glossy photo. I reached out, shifting the pictures closer. Something pulsed in my chest as I gazed down at the little bundle wrapped in a pink blanket. A black curl of hair had escaped the swaddle. A tiny nose. A sweet smile. The biggest blue eyes that were so full of innocence.
A baby. My sister.
Warmth spread outward from my chest, a sensation that, for once, had nothing to do with physical pain. She was beautiful. A tiny little girl who was dependent on those around her to keep her safe.
I curled my fingers around the picture, drawing it closer, wanting to commit every inch of her face to memory.
And then Daria snatched it back. With a vicious curse, she tore the photo in half. As the pieces floated back down onto the desk, that warm feeling disappeared, almost as if it had never been. Leaving me numb once more.
Her grin was unhinged as she bent toward me. “You’re going to kill that little bitch one day, Vaughn.”
AGE 35
I adjusted the scope, zeroing in on the beautiful woman as she gazed up at the Parliament Building. I saw what I could only describe as longing in her expression. In the months that I had begun following her around, I hadn’t learned much about her personal life. No boyfriends. No girlfriends. Hell, not any friends that I could discern meant anything to her.
Samara Vitucci was an enigma.
From the closer look I’d had to take at her for her entire life, I would have to diagnose her as borderline psychopathic. She hid it well, though. If I hadn’t been looking for a weakness, I wouldn’t have noticed all the little tells. To any unsuspecting person, her idiosyncrasies were cute and quirky. To a trained psychologist, it all added up to a hell of a research paper.
She might not have a current lover, but she did have one obsession. If everything went smoothly for her while she fulfilled this favor for her mother, she would be in Creswell Springs in just a few weeks. And the poor bastard she was besotted with would have to deal with her special kind of crazy.
Was he the reason she was so in love with architecture? How long had she been obsessed with him if she’d mapped out her entire career, moving people and opportunities around like chess pieces until she finally had everything perfect?
I couldn’t even begin to understand that level of love. Or in this case, pure, unchecked obsession.
Why did anyone love anything?
It was a question I honestly wanted to know the answer to. Having never felt anything except numbness, I craved to feel something other than the constant emptiness that lived inside me. Watching Samara as she enjoyed something as mundane as the sight of a building had me pausing with my finger on the trigger.
For years, I’d been watching the Vitucci family, but in the last several months, I’d been focused more on the daughter. I’d known about her from the day she was born, yet I’d never felt a single moment of connection to her.
