NINETEEN
Everything in Rogan’s line of vision went red. This man, whoever he was, father or not, was putting Farren and his child in a precarious situation, and that was not something Rogan would ever stand for. He moved to place himself between Farren and the older man, helping her out of the booth.
“Who the fuck is this?” the father bellowed, sliding out of his own side of the booth to stand.
When Rogan’s gaze returned upward to look the man in the eyes, recognition slammed into him like a brick wall going ninety.
“You,” Rogan sneered. “You have some nerve showing your face here.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Mr. Fields - Tom Fields - remarked with a smart-ass, provoking tone.
“You’ll wish we’ve never met if I have anything to say about it. I know exactly who you are. I’ve spent a lot of years trying to have you tracked down.”
A flash of worry sparked in Tom’s eyes, but he continued to stand his ground.
“What do you know? This is my daughter. You have no right to stick your nose in our business,” Tom argued with bravado, pointing a finger at Farren.
“That’s where you’re wrong. That woman is the love of my life and the mother of my child she’s holding.”
That’s when the obvious realization hit Rogan with full force, the fact that had been glaring him right in the face since he realized who the man was standing before him. Tommy the Tank was Farren’s father. His face contorted with rage and disgust.
“You son-of-a-bitch. You were a harm to her then, and you’re a harm to her now. You’ll hurt her again over my dead, god-damned body, you murdering sack of shit!” His voice grew louder and more menacing with each word.
He heard Farren’s gasp of shock behind him. “No!” she moaned with disbelief, fear, and sadness.
He heard Harley start to cry as Farren continued to hold him.
Rogan wanted to destroy this sorry excuse for a man, tear him apart limb from limb. The rage inside him was consuming him, threatening to spill out from his control at any moment.
“Farren... leave, now,” he ordered, his voice eerily quiet.
“Rogan, don’t, please,” she clamored.
He didn’t take his eyes off the man in front of him. “Farren,” he gritted through his teeth, louder this time. “Leave. Now.”
A crowd was gathering around the restaurant, but they kept a distance, unsure of what was happening or why.
Rogan leaned over to grab the baby carrier from between the booth seat and table. He handed it to Farren, and she took it. When he no longer felt her presence behind him, he tried to ignore the urge to go after her, for fear she wouldn’t want to see him again. It was a small price to pay to get her to safety and away from this man, this murderer before him.
“You have some nerve showing your face here.”
“Well, here I am.” Tom motioned his hands as if putting himself on display, and giving him a look as though asking ‘what are you going to do about it?’
Rogan moved in closer to him, inches away from his face. “Maybe you don’t know who I am... Rogan Rayner.” Malice poured from his lips and the threat in his words was not lost on their intended audience.
He saw Tom’s eyes grow wide.
“Ringing a bell now?”
Rogan reached to grab a handful of Tom’s shirt. Craigan’s broken, bloody body flashed through his mind, followed by the memory of this man, Tommy the Tank, with his arm extended to fire the deadly shot. He was about to lose his shit, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. If anyone thought he was ruthless before, they wouldn’t know what to call him now with what he wanted to do.
“The cops have been called,” he barely heard a waitress call from several feet back where the several customers had gathered watching the scene unfold.
At the mention of police, Tom jerked away from Rogan and bolted out the door. Rogan’s first inclination was to go after him, but something told him to let it go. He stood in place to regain control of himself. Then he pulled out his wallet, threw a hundred dollar bill on the table and left.
He had to find Farren.
*
Farren sat in the room that used to be hers at her Gramma’s apartment. She held Harley close to her, taking comfort in his childish innocence and the love she felt for him. It was the only thing that overshadowed the confusion and anguish she felt at the moment.
Her mind was reeling from the revelation she had witnessed only an hour ago. Rogan… her Rogan… her boss, her lover, and the father of her child was the one who had charged in all those years ago and saved her from her abusive father? How could this even be?
But that wasn’t all he’d claimed. Rogan had indicated that her father had been the one who murdered his friend, Craigan. Could that be true? She couldn’t believe it. Sure, her dad used to get angry when he was drunk, but he wasn’t capable of killing anyone. There was just no way. She refused to believe this.
If she didn’t believe it, though, then what did that mean? Rogan would have been to blame for her father’s disappearance. He had run her father out of town, leaving her without a single parent, being shuffled around from place to place and from random stranger to random stranger until they’d finally let her go live with Gramma and Papa.
Gramma came in with a cup of hot tea and set it on a nightstand. She sat beside Farren on the bed and placed an arm around her.
“Do you know why my dad left when I was a kid?”
Gramma sat in pensive silence for a moment before answering.
“Honey, there’s a lot I didn’t know about your father. There’s a lot of things he did that he was raised better than, and I don’t pretend to know why. Your Papa was very hard on him – expected a lot out of him, but he had other directions he wanted to go. Some, I didn’t agree with.”
Farren thought about it for a minute. She stood to lay Harley in the bassinet across the room and sat back down on the bed.
“Do you remember when he first took off, how a man had come for me and found me?”
Gramma nodded. “I do.”
“Do you know who that man was?”
“No… It took several weeks for me to locate you. I never did hear who it was that found you. Why?”
With disbelief, she told Gramma, “I found out tonight it was Rogan. The thing is, I think he’s the reason my dad left.”
“Oh, honey.” Gramma shifted so she was facing Farren. “I want you to listen to me. Your father wasn’t run off by anyone. I don’t know why he left when he did, but your Papa and I had been fighting with him for years to keep him from abandoning his responsibilities. He’s wanted to be free long before he left, and even long before you were born.
“It’s in his nature, in his soul to be a wanderer. That has nothing to do with anything Rogan did or anything you could have ever done.”
Farren searched her Gramma’s eyes as tears welled up in hers.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Listen, I may not know Tom anymore, but he was my son. I knew him. I’m surprised he stuck around as long as he did if I’m being honest.”
“But Rogan, I just know he ran my dad out of town that day. I don’t know why. How can I forgive that?”
Gramma took Farren’s hands in hers.
“Maybe you should give him a chance and hear him out.”
Farren shook her head in protest. “No, I can’t trust him anymore. Too much has happened over these past couple of days. I feel like he’s betrayed me in so many ways, I don’t see how we can come back from all of it.”
She held her face in her hands and cried the bitter, desperate tears of agony, consumed with the grief of not only her own loss but Harley’s, too. He didn’t deserve all of this, and she wanted better for him. She wanted better for her, too. She loved Rogan still, so much that it killed her inside.
Gramma wrapped her arms around Farren and held her tight, stroking the back of her hair.
“You just have to have a little faith
in people. Have a little faith,” she said.
After several minutes, Farren felt Gramma look up as they heard a knock sounding at the apartment door.
Farren recoiled in panic, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. She shook her head in violent resolve. “If that’s Rogan, I can’t face him right now.”
Gramma stood. “Are you sure, honey? Maybe sitting down and talking would help clear up some things.”
She waited for Farren’s answer as another round of knocks came, this time louder and more urgent.
“No, I can’t do it right now. Please tell him to go away,” Farren pleaded with desperation.
Gramma’s mouth opened as if she were going to say something else, but then thought better of it.
“Okay.” She left the room and Farren’s breath held as she listened to Gramma open the door.
“I need to talk to Farren. I know she’s here. I saw her car outside,” Rogan’s determined, muffled voice said.
“I’m sorry, Rogan. She’s going to need some time,” Gramma replied.
“Mrs. Fields, I have to see her. I have to know she’s okay. Please.”
In the bedroom, Farren’s hands reached up to cup her face as her anguish at the situation threatened to consume her. A part of her wanted to let him in, but she didn’t know what do believe anymore. Even though it had all happened years ago, long before they met, she felt an enormous betrayal that she wasn’t sure she could ever get past, even aside from everything with Edith.
“Give her some time,” Gramma urged again, and the compassion was evident in her voice.
When Farren heard the door close and silence loomed in the apartment once more, Farren broke down, unable to hold back the onslaught of tears and agony.
Gramma came back in the room, but Farren waved her away.
“I just want to be alone right now,” she said between sobs.
She was defeated, exhausted, and emotionally battered. How was she ever going to get through this?
TWENTY
“Boss, are you sure there’s nothing I can help with?” Rita asked, standing in Rogan’s office doorway.
He didn’t look up. “Positive,” he muttered, thinking if he ignored her she would go away.
Instead, Rita shifted on her hip and leaned against the door frame. He looked up at her slowly, and through gritted teeth, he asked, “Did I stutter?”
Rita quirked an eyebrow, unimpressed with his unhospitable mood. “Sir, it’s been over a week. I don’ know what’s going on, but things just aren’t the same around here.”
She was right. With every passing day, it felt as though he were drifting further into some dark abyss. He’d tried getting Farren to talk to him. He’d gone to her Gramma’s apartment every morning before work and every evening after, hoping she’d at least let him in to talk.
The most he’d gotten was some time with Harley, which killed him knowing Farren was only as far as the other side of a wall away but unwilling to even lay eyes on him.
He’d called countless times, but each one went to voicemail after one or two rings, the classic tell that she had hit the Ignore button. Even his texts went unanswered, no matter how many professions he’d made that he missed her, he loved her, or pleas to just talk to me.
All were met with radio silence. It was infuriating at the same time it devastated him. He was at a loss for the first time in a very long time, being powerless to do anything.
“Boss?” Rita broke through his thoughts.
“Don’t you have work to do?” he snapped.
“No, it’s ten ‘til six. My shift’s been over for nearly an hour,” she replied, unaffected by his venomous glare.
“Then go home,” he ordered, turning back to the screens of his computer.
Rita stood for a while longer in silence. “Goodnight, then,” she finally said and closed his office door behind her.
He sat in the deafening silence. He looked over to the door that led to Farren’s office, and the angry, burning hole in his chest pulsated with ghost pains that were nearly crippling.
Unable to focus on work, he shut everything down and decided to pay a visit to the only other person he called family. Twenty minutes later, he found himself ordering a vodka on the rocks from the bar at Elaina’s Lounge.
“Might as well pour the next,” he said as the bartender, a young red-headed woman, slid his first drink in front of him.
He sat alone, drinking the edge off his misery for about a half hour before a familiar voice broke his reverie.
“You look like hell, Rogue,” Elaina said, leaning her elbows on the bar top in front of him from behind the bar.
He let out a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, well, apparently that’s where I live now days.”
He tossed back what remained of drink number five before meeting her eyes.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in here,” she said.
She knew him well enough to know not to come out and ask if something was troubling him, much less ask what. He nodded and held up his empty glass to signal for another.
Elaina walked around from behind the bar. She grabbed him by the arm, pulling him off the stool he sat on.
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
He reluctantly followed, and she led him over to an empty pool table in the back of the bar.
“Rack ‘em up,” she ordered as she went to grab two pool sticks from the wall.
He wasn’t in the mood for games, but he accepted the distraction for what it was and took the triangle out to rack the balls.
Elaina walked back and handed him one of the sticks.
“They say bartenders are as good as therapists,” she said, looking at the pool table and not at him.
“And what do they say about bar owners?” he asked, lining up his shot to break. He hit the cue ball with a deliberate force, sending the balls scattering across the green. He looked back up, waiting for her response.
“That we’re gluttons for punishment,” she answered with a wry smile.
He scoffed. “That makes two of us, I guess,” he said under his breath, aiming for his next shot.
She waited until he sank the purple stripe before chiming in again.
“I take it there’s trouble in paradise?”
He aimed and missed his next shot, so she moved around the table to take hers.
“Trouble would be an understatement.”
“What did you do this time?” she asked before sinking the solid red.
He shook his head and blew out a distressed breath. He took his glasses off, rubbed a hand over his eyes, and put them back on.
“She left me,” he said, his voice deep and overly steady.
Elaina paused briefly to look up at him, then looked back at the table.
“Why?”
“Where do I begin? It started with me going on a trip to New York, where I bought her a fucking engagement ring, a trip she probably still assumes I fucked around on her on – which I didn’t,” he began.
Her eyes had gone wide when he mentioned the ring, but she kept quiet, allowing him to go on. She missed her fourth shot and he took his turn.
“Then it all really went to hell when… maybe you should sit down for this.”
He motioned toward a stool behind her, so she turned and pulled it forward, perching atop the seat.
“Go on,” she urged.
He laughed as if what he were about to say was so absurd, even he couldn’t believe it.
“Farren’s father is Tommy the fucking Tank.”
He could see the color leave Elaina’s face.
“No,” she said, unable to wrap her head around this revelation.
He abandoned his pool stick and moved right in front of her. “I stood face to face with the bastard, Elaina. I held his shirt in my fists and let him slip through my fingers. He was right there.”
He struggled to regain control.
“To her, now I’m the ass hole who ran her father out of town, the re
ason he abandoned her as a child.
“Damn,” Elaina breathed, still in disbelief.
“I used to have nightmares about that night. The night I… the night he…”
Elaina nodded. She understood the thought he couldn’t complete.
“But since she left, for the last week it’s a different nightmare.
She swallowed. “What is it now?”
“That I have to live the rest of my life without her. That I have to watch my son grow up apart from her. It’s a dark, enveloping void, looming inside me, and I can’t escape it.”
Elaina thought for a while when she looked back up at him. She had clarity in her eyes. “My brother died saving her?”
He nodded in defeat.
“Rogan… do you realize what this means?
He looked at her questioningly, awaiting her words of wisdom, praying she had some to give him.
“There is no such thing as coincidences. Craigan made a sacrifice that day. You made a sacrifice that day. You both chose to save that little girl from an evil man.”
She grabbed hold of his shoulders.
“Rogan, my brother died doing something he believed in, but there’s a reason that little girl got a second chance that day. She was better off without her father, and you know it.”
“But she doesn’t know that! All she knows is she’s been abandoned by everyone who’s ever meant anything to her, and part of her thinks that’s my fault while the other part thinks it’s only a matter of time before I abandon her, too.
His fevered words came out in a rush.
“So make her understand,” Elaina said, as if that were such as obvious answer.
“She won’t talk to me. She won’t take my calls, respond to my texts, she won’t even face me when I go to see my son. Our son.”
Elaina thought for a moment, staring at their abandoned game of pool. Finally, she shrugged, at a loss.
He hung his head in despair. He was supposed to be the man who made shit happen, never taking no for an answer. He was ruthless and direct, known for doing whatever it takes to reach a goal.
Boss Unavowed: A Love On the Rocks Romance (The Boss Series Book 2) Page 8