Page 113 of Wilde and Deadly

He hit the button.

She raised the receiver to her ear. “Dad.”

There was a beat of silence. Then, a quick, sharp inhale of surprise followed by a gruff exhale. “Well, I’ll be damned. You do still know how to pick up a phone.”

Rowan swallowed. She had prepared herself for anger, for disappointment—but not for this. Not for the rough-edged relief in his voice, like he’d been waiting half a year for this exact moment.

“I’m sorry, Dad.” Rowan closed her eyes, focusing on the feel of Davey’s arms around her, steadying her. “I should have called sooner. I should have...” Her throat tightened, the words sticking.

“You’re damn right you should have.” Gabe Bristow’s voice was gruff, as usual, but there was no real heat behind it. Just an aching weariness that made her chest constrict. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like, not knowing where the hell you were or if you were even alive?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, though she knew the words were too small, too inadequate to make up for the months of heartache she’d caused her parents. “I had to leave. If I stayed, you’d have all been in danger because of me. And you had just had surgery and— I thought leaving was the only way to keep you safe.”

Gabe made a sound—something between a snort and a scoff. “Safe from what? You think a missing leg makes me any less capable of protecting my daughter?”

Rowan swallowed. “You couldn’t protect me from this, Dad. Or from the things I’ve done.”

There was a pause, a slight hesitation before he spoke again, softer this time. “Tell me, then. Help me understand, Rowan. Please.”

God, thatpleasenearly broke her. Her father was a brusque, sarcastic, hard man. He didn’t say please, much to her mother’s constant annoyance.

She hesitated, but she owed him the truth. “I was hired to kill Davey. I took the contract to protect him and figure out who wanted him dead, but I haven’t always been that noble in the past. I have taken other contracts, and I have carried them out.”

Dead silence.

Then, Gabe let out a long, slow breath.“Huh.”

Rowan winced. “That’s… all you’ve got to say?”

“I mean, I’d yell, but it sounds like you’re already doing a good job of punishing yourself.”

She almost laughed. Almost.

“Jesus, Ro,” he added softly after another beat of silence. “You always did take after me in the worst ways.”

“No.” The protest all but jumped from her lips. “You’re a hero. You save people. I’ve only ever been good at killing them.”

Gabe let out a low, humorless laugh. “I was a SEAL, Rowan, and I fought in a long, bloody, unwinnable war. And when I left, I built a team that pulled people out of hellholes. I’m good at killing, too, baby girl. I got paid to pick up a weapon, same as you.”

Silence. A long, painful silence.

Rowan wanted to argue with him, to insist that it was different, that her father had killed to protect people while she had killed for money. But the words wouldn’t come. Because deep down, she knew he was right. They were more alike than she wanted to admit.

Finally, Gabe exhaled heavily on the other end of the line. “I’ve always known who and what you are, Rowan. There is nothing in this world—nothing you could do or say or be—that could make me love you less.”

Rowan clenched the phone tighter, turning her face away so Davey wouldn’t see the rush of tears in her eyes. But he did anyway, and he gently brushed one from her cheek when it slipped out.

God, she loved him.

And her dad.

And she’d been so wrong to shut them both out for as long as she had.

She tried to form words, wanted to tell them both what they meant to her, but her throat was too tight, her chest too full.

“You hear me, baby girl?” Gabe pressed. “Nothing.”

She managed to nod before realizing he couldn’t see her. Her dad was old school and almost never called with video. “I hear you,” she rasped. “But I don’t deserve that.”

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