Page 94 of Deacon

The crack silenced everyone.

Richard stared at her, one hand rising toward his face. Lila shook with rage.

“Jackson grew up in our house,” she said, and every word landed harder for how low her voice had gone. “He was always my protector. The fact that you could even think that of him for even a moment shows me you aren’t the man I thought you were.”

Nobody answered. Even my anger stalled under what Lila had just said. She had defended me without hesitation, and I had no room in my head to understand that either.

The girl was crying now, silently at first, tears moving down a face she was fighting too hard to keep controlled. Evan went to her immediately and pulled her close.

“Hey, hey, gemstone,” he said, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “Don’t give these idiots the satisfaction of thinking they’re the main event.”

She folded into him like she had done it before.

Priest and Ink still held Matty, though he had stopped fighting hard enough to get loose. His glare stayed fixed on me.

“I’m an officer of the law,” he snapped at them. “You don’t put your hands on me.”

I wiped blood from my mouth and let him see the smile he had earned.

“Not in this city, you aren’t,” I said. “And you assaulted me.”

That bought one second of silence.

Lila stepped clear of Richard, fury still burning through every inch of her.

“Get in the truck and leave.”

Matty stared at her. “No. We deserve answers.”

A laugh scraped my ribs.

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, “I deserve answers before you do.”

That hit him hard enough to show on his face.

Lila met his stare without yielding. “He just saw Jade for the first time before you and Dad pulled up. He never knew about her. He and I have a lot to talk about, and that takes precedence over whatever it is you think you deserve to know.”

Jade. Her name caught somewhere beneath my ribs, attaching itself to the face I still couldn’t stop looking at. Lila had just handed me the truth in front of everyone, clean and brutal: I hadn’t walked away from my daughter. I hadn’t known there was a daughter to leave. Relief should have existed somewhere in that, but grief swallowed it before I could reach for it. Sixteen years opened between us all at once, packed with birthdays I had missed, scraped knees I hadn’t kissed, school pictures I had never seen, ordinary mornings when she had woken up and gone on living while I moved through the world with no idea she was in it. I had spent years believing I understood what losing Lila had cost me.

I hadn’t known the half of it.

Richard stepped forward.

“I think we’ll stay for this conversation,” he said. “We can’t be leaving you two women alone with criminals.”

The girl tore herself out of Evan’s hold.

“I am so damn tired of the two of you thinking you can run our lives!”

Her voice ripped across the lot. Tears still streaked her cheeks, but she planted herself there like neither man had a chance of moving her.

“This has nothing to do with either of you,” she shouted. “This has everything to do with me. Me. So you two need to leave now.”

Richard looked stunned. I barely noticed.

I was looking at her.

My daughter.