Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“We’ll keep watching them until we know their pattern of life–when they leave, when they come back, who comes and goes. You know the drill. Then when the time comes, we’ll storm the building at night like I said. We won’t kill them. We’ll just incapacitate them and drag them all to our warehouse where we can interrogate them.”
The bloodlust in his eyes was concerning, but I understood how he felt. I just hoped he wouldn’t allow his need for revenge to make him sloppy. A good interrogation required more than just anger. He would also need to keep his wits about him.
“I’ll oversee the interrogation,” I said, knowing it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Fuck that! I’m the one doing all the work. You don’t get to come in at the end and take over.”
“I’ll let you do the interrogating then, but I will be there,” I said in a dangerous tone of voice.
He shut his mouth, his eyes swimming with fury.
I had been tolerant of his disrespect because I wanted to placate him and get him to think that I really did trust him, but enough was enough. It was one thing for him to get in my way inside the compound, it was another thing entirely for him to fuck up outside business. He was going to have to learn to compartmentalize if he was going to force his way in.
“Thank you for everything, Alessandro,” I said sincerely, trying to smooth things over.
He was still an annoying prick, but this morning he had proven that he was more than just a guy who liked to run his mouth. I started to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to let him be the next in line. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about any future kids that Olivia and I might have getting caught up in the business.
I felt my heart pound a little faster at the idea of Olivia carrying my babies. As beautiful as she was now, I couldn’t imagine how much more beautiful she might become as her belly rounded with my child. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. The last thing I wanted was for Alessandro to see me getting googly eyed over the idea of hypothetical children with a woman I had just started seeing.
I cleared my throat, then continued, “Seriously, I’m impressed with everything you’ve done. I really appreciate that even with all our differences, you’ve been able to put that shit aside and get some real work done. This is what it means to be a part of this. We might not get along or even like each other, but at the end of the day, we have to have each other’s backs. That’s the only way we’ll ever manage to be successful.”
He nodded, a strange look in his eyes. Perhaps he wasn’t as willing to forgive and forget as I was, which was bullshit considering I had been on the receiving end of his little blackmail attempts. I had to remind myself that he was still young. I had been a hothead at that age too. Of course, I had never been stupid enough to try to blackmail my own goddamn cousin, but I also hadn’t been the son of the Don like he had. Maybe knowing that his dad had once been in charge had given him an idiotic sense of bravery. It definitely had given him a sense of entitlement.
He was just lucky that my temper was nothing like it used to be. I had been pretty liberal with my pocket knife in the old days, and I suspected that he enjoyed having all ten fingers. Now I was mostly unbothered by his blustering as long as he kept Olivia out of it. I knew that a lot of his greed and shitty behavior came from a sense of insecurity. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to live up to James’s legacy, and to be frank, neither was I. But I was willing to give him a chance, especially now that he had proven that he did have at least half a brain in his head.
“You’re free to go. Your plan is fine, but make sure you scope out not just the house but the entire neighborhood. Just because you saw only one guard doesn’t mean they don’t have snipers posted up on some of the neighboring rooftops. As much as you annoy me, I’d hate to send you and your men out just for you all to get killed.”
He started to turn, then his shoulders tensed up. I wondered if I had gone too far. We seemed to have reached some kind of truce, but maybe I had fucked it up by joking about his death. Sometimes I forgot that he hadn’t grown up in this world the way I had. Joking about death was just a way to cope with the fact that a lot of us did die prematurely. In this line of work, we couldn’t afford to be scared of ourselves or our buddies dying, because letting that fear creep in would cause mistakes to be made.
Although as I fell more and more in love with Olivia, I had noticed that fear creeping its way into my heart.
I leaned over and opened the door for Alessandro, but Instead of leaving like I had expected, he turned back to me and squared his shoulders. I rolled my eyes and prepared for another fight about how he should be in charge, but what he said next, I never would have expected.
“So… about you and Olivia.”
*Giovani*
I kept my face as blank as possible as Alessandro stared me down.
“What are you talking about? I thought we were past this bullshit.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You think of me like I’m just some stupid kid, but I’m not. I’m going to prove to you just how dangerous I am.”
I felt my jaw clench as anger coursed through me at his disrespect. This was it. I was finally going to beat the shit out of this idiot. I expected to see fear on his face as I stepped toward him, but all he did was look at me with his stupid cocky-ass grin and pull his phone out of his pocket. I was two seconds from grabbing him by the collar when he shoved his phone in my face, and then I knew exactly why he was so sure this time.
There on the screen was a picture of me with one hand on Olivia’s ass and the other tangled in her hair. It was slightly blurry, but it was obvious that we were locked in the type of kiss that promised a lot more would happen when we got home.
Shit.
He had finally managed to get real proof. I felt my face go pale, but I refused to let the little shit win. Instead of immediately bowing to his wants, I turned away from him and took a deep breath while walking toward my mini-bar.
I could practically feel the fury rolling off him as I kept my back turned. He hadn’t expected it to go down like this. I wondered what he had expected. Surely he hadn’t thought I would just cower and give him whatever he wanted? I was the fucking Don of a “family business” so feared that even the Russians didn’t dare confront us in broad daylight. They had resorted to kidnapping an innocent college girl rather than deal with us head-on.
No, Alessandro was sorely mistaken if he thought he could control me, especially now that it was obvious that some way or another, Olivia and I were going to have to tell people about us. I continued to make Alessandro wait by slowly pouring myself a glass of American whiskey, then carefully placing two ice cubes inside.
“You know, they say the best way to drink whiskey is straight, but I think adding two cubes makes it go down so much smoother.”
I was just taunting him at this point; refusing to turn around and acknowledge his proof. I took a long sip of my drink, grimacing slightly at the taste. No matter how much ice I put in, American whiskey never went down quite as smooth as I expected. Finally, I turned back to Alessandro.
“So what exactly do you want? You realize the only reason I’ve even given you the position you have now was because I wanted you to leave me and Olivia alone.”
Looking at his smug grin, I wanted nothing more than to reach out and grab him by the throat. But I knew this was a delicate situation. If I could placate him just enough to convince him to keep his mouth shut, maybe I could get Olivia to be more comfortable with the idea of people knowing about us before it became necessary to tell everyone else in the compound.
“You know exactly what the fuck I want,” he said, his muscles bulging with his pent-up anger. “I want more power. Make me your second in command. And then when the time comes, move the fuck over so I can become Don. And since I’ve got a lot of reasons to show this picture to Dahlia and hardly any reason not to, I want some money too. You know how hard it is for me to lie to family,” he said the last bit with a sarcastic sneer.
“Alessandro,” I tried to say calmly, even though my body was screaming for a fight, “surely you realize that I’ve given you as much power as I can without putting us at risk. You’re inexperienced as hell.”
“Shut the fuck up!” His face was red with rage. “You don’t know anything about me or my experience. Just shut the fuck up and give me something permanent, or else I leave this room and immediately go find Dahlia. I know Olivia would never forgive you for destroying her relationship with her best friend.”
He was more unhinged than I had initially realized. Anyone this willing to blatantly blackmail me had lost their sense of self-preservation. The second I had a chance, I would get my revenge on this whiny little punk. But now was not the time. For now, I needed to play it cool. I just needed to be able to talk to Olivia before he left this room and started running his mouth.
“Alright, fine. I’ll do some thinking, and I’ll find a permanent position for you, something that people will respect.”
“And the money?”
I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. He sounded like a spoiled, whiny child. I knew that James would be ashamed of him for acting like this. He was out of control.
“Are you that strapped for cash? Fine. I’ll make sure an extra few thousand a month finds its way into your account. Happy?”
He looked slightly deflated, like he wasn’t sure exactly what to do with himself now that his demands had been mostly met. This was the exact type of inexperience that I meant, but he wasn’t self-aware enough to realize that. He really thought that he could handle interrogating the Russians on his own? He couldn’t even successfully blackmail his own cousin.
“Don’t think I’m just going to walk away and forget about this,” he managed to choke out.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said blandly and opened the door for him.
I knew the calmer I behaved, the more furious he would become. He expected me to fly off the handle, and although I wanted to for sure, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. At the end of the day, he did have something he could hold over my head. Now I realized that it was all this was ever about. Ever since he had confronted me about his “right” to be the Don, I should have known that he would stop at nothing to try to force his way in, even if that meant using his own cousin and the woman he supposedly cared about as cannon fodder.
He stormed out of my room, and I shut the door quietly behind him. As much as I wanted to continue to play it cool, I was five seconds away from totally losing my shit. I turned back to the drink in my hand and downed the rest of it in one gulp. How the fuck was I going to break this news to Olivia? The one thing she had asked from me was to keep our relationship a secret, and now I was going to have to tell her that I had failed her. And the worst part was I had a full day of work ahead of me, so there was no chance I could talk with her until late that night. I didn’t know how I would possibly be able to focus knowing that at any moment, Alessandro might decide to loop her in on his little blackmail plot.
I checked my watch and noted I needed to be in the meeting room in fifteen minutes. It only took five minutes to walk over there. I decided to pour just one more drink. That would help keep me from strangling the first person who looked at me wrong.
***
*Olivia*
It had been a long day of spending time with Dahlia, and as much as I was so glad to have her back, I was looking forward to having a little alone time before bed. I had never kept something from Dahlia before, but now that I had such a big secret, every time we were together it was exhausting. I always had to be thinking on my toes to make sure I didn’t let something slip.
Sometimes I almost wanted to just tell her about Giovani, but then I remembered that she didn’t see him the way I did. To her, he was an older man who could never be anything more than a great protector. She would never understand how I could even want to be with someone his age, and I was sure she would hate me for it. At first I had been terrified that what I had with Giovani would affect my mom’s job, but now I realized that my fear extended to myself as well. What if Dahlia insisted that I go back to the States? My heart broke at the thought of never seeing Gio again. What we had was so much more than just some Italian fling.
I shed my clothes and rummaged through my drawer for some pajamas. At first I pulled out some old sweatpants that I’d had since high school, but then I thought about the fact that Gio might come visit me tonight. He was so much more experienced than I was. The last thing I wanted was for him to see me in a pair of sweats that said ‘senior’ across the butt.
I shoved the sweatpants to the back of my drawer and instead pulled out a little lacy nightie that I had found while shopping with Dahlia not long before coming here. Initially, I hadn’t planned on buying it, but it had been Dahlia who encouraged me, saying, “When else are you going to have the chance to sleep with so many Italian men?” I chuckled to myself at the memory. If only she had known which Italian man I would be sleeping with, she probably wouldn’t have pushed me so hard.
I pulled the nightie on and stared at myself in the mirror. It framed my breasts in black lace and my nipples clearly peaked through the sheer fabric. It fell just below my hips, just barely covering me up. When I turned around, I could see that my ass was basically fully out.
