CHAPTER 27 LINCOLN

I walk into the smoky casino, one of the few casinos left where cigar and cigarette smoke seems to hover in the air. I head toward the back since that's where the high-stakes poker rooms are, and I find my father sitting at a table back there just like my mother predicted. He's tossing chips out onto the table like he doesn't have a care in the world.

My blood boils.

He doesn't see me at first since he's focused on his cards and his back is to the door, but I sure as fuck see him.

His wife is leaving him.

His family is falling apart.

Because of him. Because of his actions. Because he's an asshole.

And he's sitting there tossing chips out onto the table, a glass of amber liquid in one hand and a cigar in the other.

Maybe this is how he distracts himself from the harsh realities he's facing, or maybe he doesn't have a heart after all.

I stand behind him and watch him. He loses, but he seems unfazed by the loss as the dealer rakes in the chips. He tosses more out, and I watch him lose another hand before I step up behind him and make my presence known.

"You losing on purpose so you don't have to give it to the woman leaving you?"

He freezes for just a fraction of a second before he turns toward me. "She feeding you that bullshit about leaving me?"

"I don't think it's bullshit, Dad." I'm about to add that she doesn't want to sell the farm, that she's heading back to New York, but I realize if he doesn't know, it's not my place to tell him. Knowing him, he'll find a way to stop her or to push the sale through or something that'll turn the tide back to his favor.

I will not be the one to help him do that.

"What are you doing here, kid?" he asks as he sucks on his disgusting cigar.

"Confronting you. Asking you to leave me the hell alone."

He huffs out a chuckle. "I'm sorry. Am I bothering you?"

"Leave Jolene out of it," I warn. "Stop working with Rivera and Jolene's ex to spin everything to your advantage."

He doesn't blink an eye at my insinuation, and he also doesn't deny it. I thought he'd either be surprised or hop on the defensive, but it's starting to look like I don't know the man as well as I thought I did.

In fact, I'm starting to wonder whether I ever really knew anything about him at all.

"Or what?" he snarls.

"Or you'll regret it," I snap.

He pushes to a stand and gets in my face. "Oh yeah? What are you going to do?"

I don't actually have a plan, to be honest, so that's why I decide to hit him where it hurts. "I'll confess everything to Jolene and let her run with the story. I will tell her exactly what you told me in my bedroom nearly twenty years ago."

I expect to see some sort of shock there, but to my own shock…I don't.

Instead, a cunning smile curls his lips up. "Go ahead."

My brows pinch together. "Go ahead? I've spent my entire life protecting your dirty little secret, and your response to that is…go ahead?"

Jesus Christ, my mother wasn't kidding when she said he's a loose cannon and she's not sure what he's capable of next.

He shrugs. "Yeah. Go for it. Your little girlfriend's colleague already knows all about it, in particular your role in it, and he's decided it's for the best to run the story in the morning. So you can tell her…but it's a little too late."

My chest tightens as I try to figure out how the fuck I'm going to handle this one—and why he just admitted that the story's going to run. Wouldn't it have had a bigger impact to just let it run? "Why are you doing this?" I whisper.

"Everything I've done has been for you, Lincoln. You're just too goddamn stupid to see that."

"I hate you," I hiss at him. "I fucking hate you."

My fingers tingle as I clench them into a fist, and as I pull my arm back, it almost feels like slow motion.

I shouldn't punch my own father in the face. Not again, anyway.

I expect to feel some measure of satisfaction as my fist connects with his jaw. I watch him as his head turns at the impact. A collective gasp fills the room, and I see security as they make their way over toward us. My father reels back a step from the blow, and from where I stand, he looks like a weak little old man.

Growing up, I thought he was a hero. I thought he was the greatest man on Earth. I thought he could do no wrong as he swung me up into the air. I loved seeing him on television every Sunday. I loved going to games and growing up as the kid of a pro football player.

But something changed in him, and our relationship was never the same. I don't know where it originated, but I know where it ended: the day he hurt Joseph Bailey. It was the day he changed the course of my life forever, and maybe it has taken me twenty years, but I'm determined to get it back on the course I was always meant for.

Even if it means doing it without my father in my life.

Because this is the last fucking straw. He can't continue to beat me down and tell me it's for my own good. I'm not that little kid anymore, and as hard as it is to walk away from him after he ingrained in me the importance of loyalty and family my entire life…this is the end of that road for me.

Security catches up to us. "You need to leave," the guy in a suit says to me.

"Fine." I turn toward my father to get the final word in. "I'm so fucking done with you and your lies and your manipulation. You're fucking dead to me. Do you hear me? Dead."

And I take those words and race out the door to get to Jolene's place so I can finally admit the truth about what happened all those years ago. I'll tell her my father was behind the article that printed about her, and we will fight back together. There will be no more secrets standing between us anymore.

I will finally be free.