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“Robert Irwin,” she replies, showing me her screen with a goofy grin.

With measured steps, I round the bed, stopping at her side and grabbing her chin. “I’m gonna ask you a question, menace, and I need you to tell me the truth.”

Shock fills her orbs before she closes Instagram. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you kill your father, Delilah?”

I expect hesitation. Or even a flicker of regret. What I get is a subtle dimming of the light in her eyes and a whispered, “Yes.”

Eyes steady on hers, my right thumb caresses her cheek. Softly. Slowly. “Why?”

“Because he deserved it.”

Chapter 37

Whatever I am, You Did It

DELILAH

By my twenty-first birthday, I knew I was going to kill my father.

Before he put a price on my virginity.

Before the parade of men vying for my hand in marriage.

I knew I was going to kill him four years before any of it.

When I turned twenty-one, that was supposed to be it. A guarantee of my independence.

I agreed not to tell anyone what he’d done behind closed doors all those years.

But he lied. My father lied about so much, now that I look back on it, I don’t know how I was naive enough to believe him.

The goal post kept moving, my freedom became more evasive.

No matter how good I was, no matter how much I let him hurt me, it didn’t matter. Because he never planned to let me go.

I was obedient for nothing.

I kept my head down for nothing.

I kept hope blooming in my heart for nothing.

So, I turned into his worst nightmare.

He was already beating my ass every chance he got; I might as well do something to earn it.

It took four years, but I finally got that freedom. At least a sliver of it.

I terrorized every man he brought in that house.

I defied him every chance I got.

I was hell on two legs. And I paid the price. But walking away at the end of it all was priceless.

The day I killed him was unplanned, but everything culminated into the perfect storm, and I was at my limit. Past the point of being patient and trying to figure out how to smuggle poison into the house to lace his coffee. Past the point of trying to sneak upstairs with a knife after he hid them for what I’d done to Kenneth.

“Talk to me, Delilah.”