ROGAN
Rogan let out a sigh as he walked toward his office. Every one of his men knew they didn’t hurt innocent women and yet someone had.
Someone had gone against his authority and hurt this girl. He didn’t even know her name.
Rogan didn’t know why it bothered him so much that he didn’t know her name. Maybe because he didn’t like the look of her petrified eyes when she was in the car or when she stared at him. It didn’t feel right. Maybe it was because he felt a connection to her and he was trying to deny it.
He didn’t know if this woman downstairs was trying to hurt him or what her motive was. But that didn’t mean she needed to be tortured so badly. He figured from his first encounter with her in the car, she would have answered the questions truthfully the first time.
It pissed him off that someone had gone against his rules, his order not to hurt innocent women. He gave no indication this woman was dangerous. Anyone with two eyes could see she was absolutely petrified and wasn’t messing around. But that still didn’t answer why she climbed into his car. It didn’t make sense.
He walked into his office and sat down at his desk. The one time his cameras were getting worked on was the one time he needed them. It was the first place he would have looked for answers.
Rogan didn’t know why or how, but he had Kirk looking into it and trying to figure out how the cameras went down. Things were starting to make sense now. The cameras going down no longer seemed like a coincidence. Whoever had messed with them was probably the same person who’d hurt the woman in the basement. Kirk had finally figured out what was wrong and fixed it, but it had taken him until today. Whoever had done this was good, but not good enough.
“She passed out,” Lucius announced as he walked into Rogan’s office. “Before I could get any answers from her. She was absolutely petrified and made herself pass out.”
“Do you think it was deliberate?” Rogan asked.
Lucius shook his head. “No. She was truly terrified. Her whole body was shaking and the fear in her eyes was too real. No one can make that up.”
Rogan let out a sigh and closed his eyes for a brief second. This was not good. It wasn’t good at all.
“I thought you said we didn’t hurt innocent women,” Lucius said.
“When did that change?”
Rogan glared at him and clenched his jaw. “It didn’t change. I told them to leave her in the basement in the dark. Nothing else.” He sighed and sat up straighter in his chair. “And the cameras were down?” Rogan nodded.
“Nobody was in the house besides your sister and her two Daddies. Whoever went down there wouldn’t have made the mistake of being seen.”
“Don’t you think I fucking know that? I’ve already thought about this. Someone, one of us, has defied my orders and I’m trying to figure out who it is.”
“Maybe one of the new recruits?”
“They wouldn’t have seen her come in.”
“Not unless one of the old recruits was talking about her. She is really pretty.”
Rogan growled and glared at Lucius. He didn’t like to think of people talking about her.
Lucius held up his hands in front of him. “Sorry, I didn’t think I was going to hit a nerve with that.”
“I don’t know who it was, but I’m going to figure it out. Even if that means I have to sit down there until he comes back.”
“Whatever you do, just don’t kill him right away. Wound him so he can’t run, but don’t kill him. We need to ask questions,” Lucius said.
“I’m the fucking boss. I know what I’m doing, and you don’t have to tell me,” Rogan replied, feeling on edge. He didn’t like that this happened. He normally had a tighter grasp on his men. The fact that one of them had apparently gone rogue did not sit well.
Most of them didn’t want to hurt innocent women because the Daddy inside of them didn’t like it. Even when the woman was truly evil and trying to harm people in the Ricci Crime Family, the men still didn’t like to torture her. That’s when the two female members came in handy.
“Sorry, man,” Lucius said again, backing away. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was just saying.”
“I’m going to go sit in the basement and wait for him to come,” Rogan growled. “Who knows if he’ll mess with the cameras again.”
“You know he won’t be able to. Kirk has that stuff on lockdown right now. Monitoring it almost every minute.”
Rogan nodded. He’d asked Kirk to take care of everything until they found out who had messed with them in the first place. He didn’t want anything else going down without them knowing.
“If you need me, you know where I’ll be,” Rogan said as he got up from his chair.
“Do you need me to call Angelo to look over her?” Lucius asked.
“Not yet. Whoever did this to her, I don’t want them to get spooked or know we’re onto them. Her wounds didn’t look too bad. None of them looked like they were still bleeding. But I’ll let Angelo know to be on standby.”
Rogan hadn’t looked at her cuts very closely, but they didn’t appear to be very deep. Once he figured out who’d done this, he was going to call Angelo to check on her again.
“Good luck. And if she wakes up and starts crying, try not to scare her even more,” Lucius said.
Rogan shook his head and walked out of his office. Everyone knew how he felt about women crying. It wasn’t a secret. His mother had been a crier. It had just given his father another excuse to beat her.
Rogan wasn’t like his dad; he would never harm an innocent woman. But seeing them cry brought back unpleasant memories. Women should only cry when they are alone so they don’t show weakness. That was what his dad told him and what he stuck by.
Reaching the basement door, he sighed, looked around and saw no one, so he made his way downstairs to wait out the woman’s abuser. He had a feeling this was going to take a while.
When he entered, he turned the lights on, dimming them a bit from their usual brightness. He didn’t want to sit in the dark, but at the same time he didn’t want to alert the guy he was on to him. Plus, he wanted the girl to look at him when she woke up.
He sat down in a chair and watched her. Something had changed between them and he didn’t even know her name. Seeing the petrified look in her eyes, the genuine fear, did something to him.
But he could also feel a spark between them. Sure, he had only barked at her and told her to stop crying, but even then, he could feel something. One look at her and she almost had him wrapped around her fingers.
Somehow, the idea of being wrapped around someone’s fingers made him think of Raynar. He hadn’t seen Raynar since their interaction the other day. Something had changed between them as well.
Rogan sighed. He needed to stop thinking about them both and focus on the things he needed to get done. Like catching whoever had disobeyed his orders.