He Ransomed His Secret Son and Left Our Daughter novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Old Kitchen

The house on Linden Street was dark when we got there.

Dario stayed on the porch with the door open behind me.

Colin sat at the kitchen table in yesterday's shirt.

He had taken Lily's Father's Day card off the refrigerator, and he was holding it in both hands.

"Talk," I said.

He didn't look up.

"I held her four minutes the day she was born," he said. "I kept thinking afterward about how long I'd been a father."

"That's not talking. That's crying."

"I know."

He put the card down.

"I'll plead guilty to all of it. The shell companies, the Sartori money, the Russians."

"I'll testify against her father. I'm not asking for anything back."

"You aren't getting anything back."

"I know that too."

I looked at the man I had worked double shifts for.

I felt almost nothing, and the almost was a relief.

"Lily has a checkup at my hospital at three," I said.

"You get ten minutes in a room with the door open and Dario in it. If she says stop, you stop."

He nodded.

He was crying again, without sound.

The family room on the pediatric floor had a rug with painted roads on it.

Lily sat cross-legged on the rug with her rabbit and looked up at her father.

Colin lowered himself to his knees in front of her.

He was too big for the little room, and it showed.

"Hi, Lily-bug."

"You can't call me that."

"Okay."

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