Page 117 of Sweet Oblivion

What the hell is happening?

How am I locked in my apartment with this man?

Shit. Where’s my phone?

I left it on the counter when I grabbed the box.

Brooks takes a step forward, but I hold my ground. For now. “What do you want, detective?”

“I want to know why, Ms. Rousseau.” He looks different now than he did last week.

He’s not in his normal suit. Today it’s gray track pants and a matching zip up. My eyes go to his hip, but there’s no badge and what looks like no gun.

Is he unarmed?

“Why?” It’s getting harder to hold still with every step he takes closer to me. “I don’t know what why you want answered, detective. This feels like a puzzle, but I haven’t been given the clues.” I fake a smile, going for calm and easy, but I probably look psychotic. Maybe he’ll feel like he’s looking in a mirror.

“Why you? What is it about you that makes it so easy to send the wrong men to jail and get the right men off without ever being charged?”

“I don’t understand,” I stutter, starting to wonder if there’s more to this than Ryker. Could he have been connected to Dennings in some other way? Wouldn’t he have been recused from the case then? “What wrong men? Ryker was never guilty. He never belonged in jail.”

“Fuck Roger Dennings. I don’t give a fuck about the overprivileged prick. He cost me a fucking fortune on the game the day you and your little boy toy killed him.”

What?

Holy. Shit.

There’s a whole lot to unpack there.

“Then who?” I push, wondering if I dropped my box how easy it would be to grab the cast iron skillet first and whack him in the head with it. Fuck. He’s probably more likely to kill me with the thing than I am to knock him out.

How am I getting myself out of this?

Think, Delaney. Think.

“Can you really be that stupid?” His eyes fall on my phone, and my stomach sinks as he reaches for it.

Fuck.

“Uh-uh-uh...” He wags his spindly finger back and forth, and I want to cry.

I made it twenty-four years living with my father. Being smarter than the men he brought home with him. Twenty-four years, and he was the only man who ever hurt me. But in the past five months since he’s gone to prison... A thought rolls around in my head. Not a good one.

Oh, fuck no.

“Tell me you aren’t mixed up with my father,” I demand in a way any smart woman wouldn’t. But it doesn’t matter. His eyes give him away before his mouth ever opens.

He was in bed with my father.

Is my father the wrong man who’s been imprisoned in his mind?

If so, Brooks is more fucked in the head than I even thought.

My father was a murderer, a drug dealer, a mid-level distributor, and an extortionist. And those are just the crimes I think of off the top of my head. The ones I’ve seen with my own eyes.

“Who do you think kept him clean for all those years, little girl? Your daddy wasn’t smart enough to do it himself. But his money was green, and he was willing to pay whateverit took to get the job done.” He takes another step closer, stopping this time within reaching distance as bile rises up my throat. “Your daddy always paid his debts too. But then again, he always had you to use as collateral if something fell through.”

“What?” The word shakes as it falls past my lips. The man I knew was a lot of things, but he never sold me. “What do you mean?”