“That wouldn’t be safe for either of us.” He opened a door and led us through. “He only knows I’ve been here a long time, and we get along well. With Todd, that isn’t very difficult. I expected I’d have to use my powers to make the other guards go easy on him, but that’s never been a problem. Which doesn’t mean it’s been easy on him.” Anger laced his voice and he shoved the next door open a little harder. “All she had to do was confess. All she still has to do is confess.”

“He wants her to have a chance.”

“Too bad. This isn’t about her. She made the deal. If you do that, you take responsibility for the outcome. You don’t drag someone else along. He didn’t deserve that.”

One last door opened. We walked through and…he was there. My father. Standing right in front of me, nothing between us.

When I walked in, his face was tight, as if braced for an official to say there’d been a mistake and order him back to his cell before I arrived.

Even when he saw me, it took a moment. A pause. A blink. Then a blinding grin, and he stepped toward me, his arms wide.

The young guard accompanying him warned, “Todd…” and the Huntsman growled, “Don’t be an ass, Porter.”

And then Todd was hugging me. My father was hugging me.

No, not my father. My dad. His arms went around me, and it was as if every repressed memory broke free. The feel of his embrace, the rasp of his cheek against mine, the sound of his breathing, the smell of him—it was everything I’d been missing sitting on the other side of that Plexiglas. That full sense of the man I remembered, my little-girl’s daddy.

When he pulled back and said, “It’s so good to see you, sweetheart,” even his voice was different, plucked straight from my memory, the one I’d heard through the speaker a poor reproduction.

And I cried. I hugged him, and I cried. Gabriel stayed behind me. The young guard stepped aside, taking a great interest in the decor, until the Huntsman guard said, “I’ve got this, Porter,” and the younger man left without another word.

I moved back, and we walked to the chairs and sat, Todd pulling his chair around until we sat face to face, no table between us.

That’s when I remembered why I was there. What I’d come to do. That little girl inside me screamed a tantrum shriek of a no. Not now. Not ever. Don’t do this. Don’t upset him. Don’t ruin it.

But I am my mother’s daughter, as much as I would like to deny it. I had a goal, and I needed to reach it, even if that might be cruel, might be painful.