AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“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.
