Page 88 of Hold Me Before You Go

“You…you and your team broke into a federal prison just to talk to my father?” she asked, raising a brow.

“That was the plan, yes.”

She gave me a look, narrowing her eyes. “Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t have your permission.”

She let out a humorless laugh. “You didn’t have my—”

“He’s your father, Carrie. Granted, he is a piece of shit and scum of the Earth, but nevertheless, he is your father. You get to decide his fate, not me,” I explained, holding her eyes.

Our gaze broke when she looked away from me, her eyes on Denver and the mountains just beyond it. I watched, studying her as she folded her arms over her chest. “What did he say? Did he ask about me?”

My chest tightened. “He asked who I was to you.”

“And what did you say?”

“It wasn’t any of his business. He doesn’t deserve to know anything about your life. He doesn’t deserve to know you’ve moved on from that place he left you to rot in,” I said softly, bringing my knuckle up to her face and brushing a curl from her cheek.

“He never cared about me,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “He never showed me affection, even when I was little. I was always a tool to him…an…” She trailed off, looking down to our laps, sniffling. “I don’t even know why I’m still upset over him.”

I tipped her chin up. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Carrie. You know that, right?”

Her next words shocked me down to the bone. “I wished you killed him,” she murmured, a single tear falling from her eye,landing on her pink tinted cheek. “Then, both of the men who nearly destroyed me would be dead.”

The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “Consider it done,” I vowed, my voice dark. This would be a promise I would gladly keep. She would never know how badly I wanted to put a bullet in his mouth for the pain he caused her, how he used her.

“You can’t keep killing people for me,” my sunshine deadpanned.

“Who says I can’t?” I returned.

A smile laugh bubbled up from her then, and it was music to my ears. “I would say the law, but I know you don’t give a fuck about that.”

My lips twitched. “Jesus, you sound like Mags.”

She grabbed my wrist, bringing my hand away from her face and tracing the head of the white snake down with her finger. “Did dear old dad even give you anything on Robert?”

I nodded, hesitating again. “He did, which led us back to St. Louis.”

She stiffened in my lap, her finger halting. “You went to St. Louis? Did you tell Jer? Sullie?”

I shook my head. “No. Again, that’s not my choice. We had to get to your in-laws.”

Confusion washed over her face, her brow pinching together. “What do they have to do with anything?”

“Carrie, Robert wasn’t the kind of man you thought he was.”

She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Isn’t that the understatement of the century?”

“I’m not joking anymore, baby.” My jaw tightened as I bit down, grinding my teeth. “What I’m about to tell you is going to shock you. I know you’ll have questions, and I’ll try to answer them when I’m done. Just…just let me get this out.”

Slowly, she nodded, fear twisting in her blue pools.

“Robert Hale is—wasthe St. Louis River Killer.”

---