Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
Grandfather.
It was a foreign word to me, one that felt wrong to even say aloud. I only remembered meeting Dmitri Zaytsev once, but I still remembered it like it had been burned in the forefront of my brain.
From the perspective of a little girl, he had been a tall, intimidating man, and I remembered his eyes, so full of hate and malice as he stared at me. I remember hiding behind my mother’s long legs as she introduced me in English.
He responded in that guttural harsh sound of pure Russian and he leered down at me and murmured my name in that low, immoral voice of his.
“Natalia.”
That was the first and last time I saw him. After that, I heard from my cousins that he had been killed. My mother tried to keep it from me since I was so little, but it didn’t help. They tried to scare me with gruesome descriptions of his death, each time changing the story.
Calling Dmitri my grandfather was laughable at best and insulting at worst. He wasn’t family. Even before his death, he had never been there. And once he died, all he left was a legacy of violence and revenge, a bloody legacy I wanted no part of.
I didn’t need revenge or riches or fancy mansions. I didn’t want to kill anyone or take down everything that Tallon had spent his life and his family’s lives building up. I just wanted to be a normal woman with a normal life who didn’t have to worry about any of this.
I wanted to go to school and learn everything I could. I wanted to travel to places I’d never seen or learned. I wanted to fall in love and marry someone in a beautiful wedding and live my own damn life.
I wanted Tallon.
I wanted his soft whispers as he held me in the early morning hours, as he murmured praises into the heat of my skin, the sweet way he held open every door for me and made sure to walk on the outside of the sidewalk so I was kept safe… his dorky smile as he made corny jokes, flirting in that dumb little way that only he could do.
His twinkling eyes filled with mischief as we bantered back and forth like it was all some silly game. I wanted his kindness, his sweetness, and I wanted to love him, truly love him like our families never were at war.
But it felt like my own blood was like shackles around my wrists and ankles. It was like someone had taken a needle and thread to my mouth, sewed me up, and controlled me like a puppet at their whim. I couldn’t trust that what I was saying was actually me or just what I knew they wanted me to say.
But there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and I couldn’t escape the mess I was born into. I’d done something truly unforgivable to the man I claimed to love, and even if I somehow ran to him for help, I doubted he would accept the ugly truth about me.
I doubted he would forgive me.
I wouldn’t forgive me.
*Tallon*
“This is Natalia. Leave your name and number after the beep, and I’ll get back to you.” A loud beep followed soon after, ringing out of my phone’s speaker into the empty room.
“Natalia, call me back please,” I muttered into the speaker, probably too close to my mouth, but I didn’t care at this point. “I… there’s something I have to tell you.”
I ended the call, feeling the exact same way as I did yesterday when I left a voicemail on her phone… and the day before… and the day before.
I heaved a sigh, planting my face straight onto the smooth wood of my desk and not even caring as it smooshed my features into the mahogany. Hunched over in an uncomfortable way, I didn’t even have the energy to lift my goddamn face.
How did everything go so wrong so quickly?
The hit on the warehouses had been bad enough, but it didn’t stop at just a few hits. With at least five of our men having been taken instead of killed, we were on high alert trying to find them. In the meantime, though, we were being attacked from all sides, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Attempts to track down the Russians and our kidnapped men all hit dead ends. They’d used common and disposable weapons and old tricks that were virtually untraceable.
All the old leads had been cut off since before Giovani left the position to me, and according to everyone they formerly worked with, the Zaytsevs were ghosts.
It was like trying to chase your own shadow on a cloudy day. I knew they were close, just one step behind us and lurking in the shadows, but I couldn’t grasp any sign of them.
And though we were being more careful now, it wasn’t enough. I could see how angry and impatient my men had become, wanting revenge on the people who had killed so many of us in one fell swoop, not to mention that the idea of a mole had swept through the family.
Paranoia had settled in. And as if the threat outside wasn’t enough, now we had our own men turning on one another. We would destroy ourselves from the inside soon enough before the Russians even had a chance to get to us.
And just to make it better, the woman I was in love with had been avoiding me.
And I had no clue why.
After the trip, she’d been distant, and I expected that. After all the fuss I’d made in rushing back here, I expected her to have questions and be a little upset, after all, but she wasn’t. The first thing she did was assure me that she was okay when we talked.
But after that, it was like she was keeping me at arm’s length again. Every time I told her I wanted to see her or I suggested a date or just to visit, she kept pushing it off. She’d answer me with, “I have a project at school,” or, “I’m hanging out with my friends.”
There was always something else going on. At first, I thought perhaps she was just busy, until she stopped accepting my calls. She’d text me still, but every call I made went straight to voicemail, not even ringing as if she kept purposefully denying the call.
I wasn’t going to lie. It stung, a lot.
But I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to know what I’d done wrong. Why did she keep avoiding me when I thought everything between us was going so well? Or at least I thought it was.
I sighed, running my hands through my hair again until it was unruly. I pulled a few mats on the way, not having cared about brushing it as much lately. I’d been so distracted with Natalia and the Russians and my men.
It felt like everything was falling apart around me, and all I could do was sit here and watch.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself, slamming my head against the desk and muttering a low, “Ow,” from the pain. No doubt I’d have a bruise in the morning but right then, I didn’t care.
Unfortunately for me, even though I only wanted to sulk in the darkness of my unlit study, life had other plans.
The door to the study opened and I heard a loud, boisterous call of, “Tallon!” before he cut himself off. I didn’t move from my place, but I did flinch when I heard the sound of the light switch, and the sudden brightness descended upon me.
I hissed into the desk, curling my arms over my head like I could block out the light from my view.
“Jesus man,” Vinny exclaimed, the shock and disgust in his voice justified, probably. “What the fuck happened to you?”
I moaned incoherently into the desk, wishing he would go away and leave me to my scheduled moping.
“Seriously? Is he still doing this?”
I perked up, glancing at the doorway in a whirlwind. There, leaning against the door stood my older brother, Alessandro, with a scowl on his face.
“Alessandro?” I asked, confused. “When did you get back? I thought you went home to visit Mom and Dad?”
“I did,” he scoffed, kicking off the door and grabbing the nearest leather chair, lounging in it like he owned the damn place. “But despite your best attempts to keep me from hearing what happened, I still have a loyal few who know when you’re in over your head.”
I glared at Vinny, who only shrugged, taking the other chair.
“You didn’t have to rush back here,” I sighed, scratching at my unshaven face. The hair growing there was patchy as it always was. “I have everything under control.”
“Right,” he said with a completely disbelieving look on his face as he glanced at my unkempt clothes and unshaved patchy beard.
“I’m fine,” I tried to grin, absolutely in denial and I knew it.
“Sure.” He rolled his eyes. “Your ass is lucky I kept Dad from coming down here. Mom and I had to stop him from flying here the second he heard the Zaytsevs were back. He says sorry, by the way.”
“Sorry?” I repeated, baffled.
