Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
Gabriele just nodded.
I finally lost the battle with my will, grabbing the bottle from my desk and removing the cap before I downed the whiskey straight from the bottle. It had gone lukewarm at this point, but I didn’t care.
It burned as it slid down my throat, a welcome distraction from the throbbing of the headache that had just hit me like a ton of bricks being thrown at my head. The room was spinning, and I felt dizzy despite sitting down in a chair.
Vincent was dead?
It wasn’t true. It was impossible.
I’d brought Vin into this life after his parents were killed in a fire.
He’d been left alone, an orphan with nowhere to go. Like so many others, he willingly dedicated his life to our family.
If Gabriele was my right hand, then Vincent was my left. The three of us had grown up together like brothers. He and Gabriele had been more like family to me than my own parents had.
He’d been chasing a lead in the States before this whole mess started. I told him to keep doing his work over there despite what was going on over here, so why the fuck had he come back without telling anyone?
I already knew the answer–for us, to help. He’d have come even if he had been on fucking Mars. I should’ve known that. He was loyal to a fault; he always said I’d saved him from a life worse than death.
And the minute he’d stepped back on Italian soil, he was murdered.
“What happened to the body?” I said coldly, the years of being the leader of this damn organization taking control. The wounded man was locked away until I could deal with this properly.
Emotions complicated things, and the last thing I needed was more complications.
“Being brought back,” Gabriele said, just as emotionlessly. “The airport was shut down for… cleanup.”
“He’ll be buried with full stars.” I took a long drink of the whiskey, downing it until there was nothing left. It spilled over my lips, and I wiped the remaining drops from my chin before I dropped the empty bottle onto the floor.
“What do you want to be done?” Gabriele asked “Vincent… they have to pay for this.”
“They will,” I promised, a cold glint in my eye as I stared down my right-hand man. Vengeance was filling up every inch of my weeping heart, filling all the cracks that had been left behind from a lifetime of misery.
“He’s dead,” I swore to myself, “and I’m going to be the one to kill himself myself.”
Dmitri had threatened to destroy me, but I wasn’t going to break. Every broken jagged piece he stabbed into me only made me stronger.
“Keep this quiet. I want a blackout on Vin’s death. Tell Alessandro, but no one else needs to know,” I told Gabriele.
“What if your girl starts asking more questions? Dom said she was trying to investigate.” Gabriele crossed his arms.
“Don’t let either of the girls know, especially Olivia,” I warned him firmly.
I had lost too much recently, and with the loss of Vin, I couldn’t afford to lose her too.
Oliva was everything to me. I couldn’t let her be even more afraid than she already was, lest I have to chase her down when she finally ran.
*Olivia*
I glanced around the bustling cafeteria as Dahlia told me about a gelato date with her latest guy. Our bodyguards stood against the wall behind us, alert but not interrupting the steady stream of students.
I took a deep breath and another bite of the grilled cheese I’d taken to ordering here. Sure, it was kinda plain, but the Italian cheese and bread worked wonders for the American classic.
It felt like a little piece of home.
Dahlia waved her hands in my face. “Hellooo, Earth to Olive. Did you even hear what I said about the spoon thing?”
I blinked. “Sorry, Dolly. Got lost in my head. Tell me about the spoon thing again.”
She put her hand on mine, genuine concern shining in her eyes. “Still scary to be at school?”
I looked at the bodyguards again. Nothing had happened here since the note, so it seemed like they were doing their job.
I shrugged. “Actually, no. It’s starting to feel safer here since nothing has happened in so long. I was just thinking, that’s all.”
A thundercloud crossed Dahlia’s brow. “Did my cousin do something?”
I laughed. “Relax, everything’s fine. I was just thinking about my class, that’s all.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “You sure?”
I shook my head. “Crystal.”
Dahlia opened her mouth to say something, but an alarm went off on her phone. She checked it quickly and winced. “Shit. Sorry, I have to run if I want to get to class on time, and the professor’s a real stickler.”
I waved her away. “Go, go. Accounting waits for no one.”
She laughed as she gathered her things and raced away, her bodyguard peeling away from Dom to follow.
I nursed the rest of my grilled cheese. I had a busier schedule than Dahlia overall, but I’d scored fifteen minutes more for my lunch break.
I hadn’t been entirely honest with her; I was thinking about Gio. It had been a while since our fight, and he still wasn’t telling me what I needed to know.
Memories of that night kept coming back, the night I slept away from him. Dahlia and I had eaten breakfast in her room while we got ready, and I’d been at school all day. I couldn’t decide whether that was better or worse. I’d grown so used to seeing him that it felt like a part of me was missing, but I also couldn’t stand to look at him if I thought about the platitudes that he kept giving me in place of real information.
I’d realized some time that night that what I really wanted was to be treated like an adult. I loved how he saw me as something precious to be protected, loved the way it made his touches gentle and his eyes soft, but that made him think of me as fragile.
I needed him to understand that I knew what I was getting into. I understood the danger. Hell, I’d had it splashed all over my face, though the memory still made me shiver in the warm cafeteria. Dom’s head moved sharply toward me in the corner of my vision, and I felt a little more at ease.
I needed Gio to treat me like an equal and tell me the information I asked about if I was ever going to get my footing in this life. I was tired of half-truths and not-my-problems. I couldn’t figure out if I could handle this without knowing what I had to handle.
I popped the last bite of grilled cheese in my mouth and began gathering my books. I had Art History next, and the art building was basically on the other side of campus, so I’d lingered a little too long to be confident I could get there on time.
Dom stepped to my side, and I immediately felt my shoulders drop down from around my ears. I was definitely less frightened than I had been in the immediate aftermath of the note, but it was hard to feel totally confident with so many puzzle pieces still missing.
How could I tell Gio he needed to treat me like a grown-up without sounding like a teenager? The more we had that discussion, the more I felt the gulf of age between us. He expected me to rely on nothing more than promises, promises that had been proven false after Dahlia and Alessandro got taken.
I knew he could protect me if I would just restrict my life to his compound forever, but as much as I loved him, I couldn’t keep myself locked up like that. I needed my classes, my friends, and my own career someday. Now that I was looking to the future, I needed—
“Oof!”
I rounded a corner and smashed face-first into another student, falling backward onto my ass. Both of our books scattered across the hallway, and I felt Dom tense behind me.
“I’m so sorry!” I babbled, shoving my hair out of my eyes to finally get a good look at the person I’d just body slammed.
