The old man kept his hand low, blocking the younger man’s view of the floor.
But his eyes stayed on the photo.
A young woman smiled from the worn picture, holding a baby wrapped in a red blanket.
His chest tightened.
He knew that smile.
He had spent years trying to forget it.
The younger man noticed the silence stretching.
“What are you hiding?”
The old man picked up the photo slowly and looked at the girl under the table.
His voice softened.
“Where did you get this?”
The girl swallowed hard.
“My mom gave it to me,” she whispered. “She said if I got scared, find the man with grey eyes in the old bar.”
The old man stopped breathing.
The younger man stood suddenly.
“She’s confused. She belongs with me.”
The locals by the bar shifted, not threatening, but ready.
The old man didn’t move his eyes from the child.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
The girl’s lips trembled.
“Anna.”
The name cut through him.
Anna.
His daughter.
The daughter who had disappeared eight years ago after telling him she was running from a man who smiled in public and hurt people in private.
The old man looked at the photo again.
At the baby.
At the red blanket.
Then at the girl’s frightened face.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Ellie.”
His rough hand closed around the edge of the table.
That was the name Anna had chosen before she vanished.
The younger man stepped back toward the door.
The old man finally stood.
Slowly.
The whole bar rose with him in silence.
He placed himself between Ellie and the man in the white shirt.
Then he said, with a voice so calm it made the room colder, “You’re going to sit down and tell me where my daughter is.”