My Daddy Had That Tattoo Too
I looked around the diner. A few regulars were starting to stare. I nodded towards the back door. “Outside. Now.”
We filed out into the chilly Virginia morning, the air smelling of pine and damp earth. We stood in the gravel lot behind the diner, next to a rusty dumpster.
“Her name is Lily,” Anna said softly, as if that explained everything.
“Lily Cross?” I asked, the words tasting like acid.
Anna nodded, clutching her daughter closer. “Yes.”
The math was simple and brutal. Lily was seven. Mitchell had “died” seven years ago. My engagement with Anna had ended a few months before that.
The betrayal was a physical thing, a cold, heavy weight settling in my gut. My best friend. The man who took a bullet for me, who I mourned every single day. And my fiancée.
“You two…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The words were too ugly.
Anna’s face crumpled. “It wasn’t like that, Sam. It was complicated.”
“Complicated?” Derrick scoffed from behind me. “Looks pretty simple from here. You left Sam for his best friend, and then Mitchell faked his own death to run off with you.”
“No,” Anna cried, her voice rising. “He didn’t fake it to run away. He faked it to protect us.”
“Protect you from what?” I shot back. “From me? From the truth?”
“From him,” she said, her eyes wide with a fear that I now realized was years old. A fear that went deeper than just being discovered.
“From who, Anna? Who are you talking about?” Gabriel, ever the calm one, asked gently.
Before she could answer, Buster, who had followed us out, let out a low, guttural growl. He moved to stand in front of Anna and Lily, his body tense, his gaze fixed on the road beyond the diner.
A dark sedan had pulled into the far end of the parking lot. It just sat there, engine idling, windows tinted too dark to see inside.
Anna saw the car and all the color drained from her face. She grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong. “You have to go. Right now. Please, Sam, just get in your car and drive away. Forget you saw us.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I said, my voice low and steady. I looked at my team. They all nodded. We had never left a man behind, and we weren’t about to start now.
“Lily, honey,” I said, my voice softening as I looked at the little girl. “Why don’t you take Buster and show my friends here your favorite spot behind the diner?”
Ben and Marcus understood immediately. They knelt down. “Yeah, Lily,” Ben said with a forced smile. “I hear there’s a cool creek back there.”
Lily looked to her mom, who gave a shaky nod. As they walked off, I turned back to Anna. “You have five minutes to tell me everything. Start from the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.”
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