Page 182 of Brutal
Then he lowers me slowly, resting his forehead against mine.
“You still don’t understand where this will lead you,” he says.
“Then tell me.”
He doesn’t answer right away.
“You’re still deciding what I get to know,” I say.
“Yes.”
At least he’s honest. “Then decide faster.”
He sighs. “My brother.”
“Nathaniel? Or Cain?”
“Nathaniel,” Samson says. “He’s the one who makes things disappear. Legal structures. financial pathways. Anything that needs to be contained.”
“And you didn’t know?”
“I did know.” He frowns. “But not like this. Not how far it went.”
“And now?”
He gazes out the window. “Now someone else is moving through those same channels.”
I wait a moment before voicing the thought I know we’re both having. Then, “Or he is.”
Samson doesn’t respond. Which is, in itself, a response.
“Say it,” I say.
“I don’t move on guesses.”
“Then what do you move on?”
He shakes his head, his jaw going rigid. “I was trained to look at what’s real. To put pieces together. That night was too precise. The access point. The timing. Everything already in place.”
A slow burn starts under my skin. “You think someone built it.”
“I know someone did.”
“And you think it was Nathaniel?”
He crosses his arms. “No. Nate doesn’t build anything. He fixes things. Covers them up.”
“Your father, then?” I say.
Samson lets out a breath. “Maybe. But it doesn’t fit his MO. The only other option is…”
“Cain,” I say.
He nods. “But he was sixteen that night. Still a kid.”
“So? That’s only two years away from legal age. He could have had a part in it.”
“He did have a part in it. He was there. But…” Samson shakes his head again. “He doesn’t fix things like Nate. He builds them. Situations. Outcomes. And if he engineered this whole thing, at that young age… Damn. Why? Why the hell would he want the wrong man dead?”
