Page 172 of Brutal
“Why?”
“Because if I did, it changed everything. If I thought ‘my father,’ I became something else.”
His gaze locks on mine. “What?”
“A daughter,” I say. “And daughters don’t do this. They don’t build cases. They don’t stand over evidence. They don’t—” I gulp. “They’re supposed to grieve. I couldn’t afford that. I needed him to be simply Halstead. A name. A file.”
Samson doesn’t move.
Doesn’t speak.
He’s watching me like he’s seeing something he didn’t expect. Something he doesn’t know how to handle.
Good.
Now he knows how it feels.
“And now?” he asks, his voice low.
“Now,” I say, “I don’t get that choice anymore because everything has changed.”
He clears his throat. “What changed?”
“I slept with the man who killed him.”
There’s no walking that back. No softening it. No pretending it’s anything else.
“Delaney—”
“He was my father.”
45
SAMSON
I don’t move. I don’t speak. I barely breathe.
He was my father.
She said it. Now everything lines up.
I step back.
Not from her.
From it.
From the weight of what just shifted into place.
I killed him.
I killed him.
I killed the man who fathered this woman. This remarkable, amazing woman.
I close my eyes for a second.
That’s all it takes.
