Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“You’re going to tell her?” he replied in disbelief as he turned his gaze toward Allegra.
“I actually hadn’t said that I was going to, but now that you’ve made that comment, I guess we better explain everything to her,” Allegra snapped, her comment laced with venom over the fact that Neal had basically given it away, that there was something up.
“Yeah, you both might as well go ahead and explain to me. I mean, we’re on vacation, and if we’re going to all get to know each other just a little bit better, now would be the time to do so.” Parts of what I’d said seemed to have some type of effect on Allegra, and with a heavy sigh, she pointed to the chair next to her and forced Neal to sit down.
“Our lives weren’t always as easy as people seem to think they are now. We weren’t raised in the states, Becca. We were raised overseas. Our father was a very important man, once upon a time, and while everybody thought him to be a wonderful father and a wonderful leader, he wasn’t—”
“He was a complete prick,” Neal muttered, cutting off Allegra mid-sentence as he turned and sipped on his beer, acting as if he hadn’t said anything at all.
“As I was saying, he wasn’t a good man, and growing up, he had certain expectations from both Neal and me, even though our lifestyles were much different. Hand-to-hand combat training was a must, and learning how to use weapons was another must. While I was forced to stay home with tutors to prepare myself for the future, Neal was sent off to boarding school.”
As soon as Allegra had mentioned the words boarding school, I watched as Neal tensed up. It was clear that what had ever happened there had been a very traumatic experience for Neal. Realization of the nightmares that I had witnessed him have made me wonder if perhaps these were the reason for those nightmares.
“I think you didn’t like the boarding school, Neal?” I asked softly, not wanting to pry too hard but wanting to know the truth.
He hesitated to reply to me as he took another long sip of his drink. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark glasses that he wore, but I could feel the tension radiating off of him. “It was impossible to like considering the situations that occurred.”
Part of me screamed not to ask what had happened, but the curious part of me wanted to know. “What do you mean?”
“Becca, right now, this isn’t actually the kind of conversation that we need to be having—”
“Shut the f*ck up for once, Allegra,” Neal snapped at her, his personality completely changing as she turned her head with parted lips, seemingly taken back by his response.
“Neal, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” I muttered softly, not wanting to upset him. But I quickly stopped mid-sentence when he turned his stare to me.
“Leave it alone,” he replied as he stood, walking off in the distance.
I had never really seen this part of him, and now that I had, I was slightly concerned that there was a lot more about Neal that I didn’t know and probably should. Not that it would really change my view on him entirely. But it was things like that that made me wonder if he was hiding much more than I could cope with.
*****************
As the sun set, I gradually found myself making my way back into the house, eager to take a long hot shower and relax in bed with a cup of tea. It had been absolutely amazing, and spending time with Allegra poolside, and then walking down the beach, had been more enjoyable than I originally thought it would be?
Expected, though, is that when I passed Neal’s room, making my way towards my own, I would hear him on the phone inside, arguing under his breath to whoever he was talking to. “It doesn’t matter. Just make sure that it’s done.”
These words sent cold shivers to my heart. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, or possibly even what he was planning to do, but the problem was, there were more secrets that he was hiding and unwilling to share than I was comfortable with.
Pushing open the cracked door to his bedroom, I watched as he quickly turned to face me, narrowing his gaze before hanging up the phone. “How much of that conversation did you hear?”
“What is with the attitude, Neal? I’ve never seen this side of you. Why are you acting like this towards me?” I asked him, completely ignoring his question because it wasn’t about what he wanted to know. It was about why he was acting the way he was towards me. I had done nothing to him.
“Don’t avoid my question. I want to know exactly what you heard.”
With a scoff, I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “I didn’t hear anything other than you wanting something done. I literally was walking to my room when I heard you, and everything about the way you’re acting right now is completely off.”
A long, heavy sigh escaped him as he ran his hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as his eyes closed, taking in the situation. “Look, I just have a lot going on right now, and I don’t have time to answer all these questions.”
“Well, you need to f*cking make time, Neal, because I’m sick and tired of you acting the way you are, hot and cold, emotional. It’s almost like you’re the one that’s pregnant and going through the hormone changes than I am.”
Taking two steps toward me, he stopped and stared down at me with a narrowed gaze. “I think it’s time that you retreat to your room and go take a shower and get into bed. It’s been a long day.”
“Excuse me?” I gasped in disbelief. “Are you seriously going to treat me like I’m f*cking twelve? You’re not gonna tell me what I am and am not going to do! I’m a grown-ass adult.”
Seemingly taken aback by my outburst, he began to laugh. “Then maybe you should start acting like one. The world isn’t all pretty like you seem to want to believe that it is. Things aren’t going to just get better, Becca. Things will take a lot of work, and if anything’s ever going to be accomplished, you need to start listening to what I tell you to do.”
It was my turn to laugh as I stared, wide-eyed, lips parted in shock. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Why would I joke?” he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders. As if my question was idiotic, and I wasn’t listening to anything that he said.
“Okay, I’m going to chalk this up to you being a little over-emotional about the conversation that we had earlier, and when you decide that you want to start being honest and tell me what the f*ck is wrong with you, or better yet, what happened to you in your past that completely has turned you into a f*cking prick, then come find me because the Neal that I’m looking at right now is not the same man that I was slowly falling in love with.”
As if I had dumped a bucket of cold water upon him, he turned pale, staring at me in silence. What I had said had obviously jolted him. I had admitted that I was falling in love with him, something that I hadn’t actually really talked about before, and then on top of that, I pointed out how he was acting was unacceptable in my eyes.
I didn’t care, though. It was obvious that with his current attitude, he needed a quick dose of reality because if he thought that he was going to act that way to me, and I was going to accept it, he was sadly f*cking mistaken.
“You want to know what happened?” he said softly, the tone of his voice dark and sinister. Clearing the space between us, he backed me against the wall, his hands slamming against the wall next to my head.
“Neal, what are you doing—” I said, hesitantly, as my nerves slowly set on edge. I was uneasy about the current situation I had put myself in, considering that Neal had never acted like this before, and it was obvious that something in him had quickly snapped.
“No. You wanna know so bad, you can shut the f*ck up and listen,” he snapped with a cold gaze. “I’m a killer, Becca. We grew up in a Russian family who did nothing but took care of the problems that nobody else f*cking wanted to. I was raised to be a f*cking cold-blooded killer, and when they sent me away to boarding school, things got worse. A cocky ass prick thought he could take advantage of my name, and so I f*cking slaughtered him in front of a group of boys without hesitation.”
Shock and fear flowed through my body like a raging river at Neal’s words. Not only had he killed people, but he was also Russian, just like Sergei, and to top it off, an assassin.
One that was bred to do the kind of work most people only talked about.
One that was bred to kill for fun.
Becca.
As I stood before Neal, staring at him, trying to process the words that he had said, I felt my heart slowly beat faster. A man that I had shared a bed with many times and grown to care about was a cold-blooded killer.
How was it that this kind, gentle person who had done everything in his power to take care of me could kill people without hesitation?
I didn’t know if I could believe that any of it could be true. I couldn’t see Neal being that kind of person. Yet, as he spoke, I knew the words were truer than I wanted to admit. It was the first time in a long time that someone had been genuinely truthful with me, and that raw information gutted me to the core.
“Please tell me that you’re lying, that all of that is just something you said to upset me. Tell me that’s not true.” As tears filled my eyes, I waited for him to say anything that would suggest the fact that he was simply making it up. But as I stared at him, I could tell he wasn’t.
“Out of everything I just told you, you want me to admit that I was lying, as if what I’m telling you couldn’t possibly be accurate.”
The sinister, snide remark that he gave me, with a look of disgust across his lips, made me flinch. He had never looked at me this way. And yet, as he stepped back away from me, I couldn’t help but feel that I had completely ruined any kind of relationship that we could have had between us.
“I’m not saying that you were lying…. I’m just—I don’t know. I don’t want to believe that what you’re saying is true. That a man I had grown to care so much about could have that kind of past.”
Neal scoffed at my comment, rolling his eyes as he shook his head. “So you don’t want to believe that I could have that kind of past, but you are sure find it acceptable that James had one. Come on now, Becca. That’s a bunch of bullshit, don’t you think?”
Perhaps it was. Perhaps me judging Neal for his background was wrong of me because I had sort of accepted the way that James’s life was and the issues that came with him and had still loved him regardless of it.
But yet, hearing everything that Neal said to me scared me. It terrified me knowing that I had been sleeping with a man who had killed people for a living, or at least that his family had, and that he had even killed people just because he wanted to prove a point.
“I’m sorry that I’m finding it hard to process all of this!” I yelled at him, throwing my hands in the air as I quickly turned towards the door. “It’s hard to process everything going on when you’re acting the way that you are. You can’t even have a normal conversation about this. Instead, you’re lashing out at me when all I did was care about how you were feeling.”
Before I could even reach the doorknob, Neal grabbed my arm and turned me to face him. The look on his face was unrecognizable. He wasn’t angry, at least he didn’t look angry. But what was there was remorse and guilt as well as a little sadness?
“I’m sorry, Becca,” he said softly as his eyes cast to the floor. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have acted that way. I just don’t want to relive my past constantly, and I don’t want people to think that my past defines who I am now.”