Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
Cat fiddled with her fingers in her lap. “But, somewhere along the line of being together… Paul changed. He used to be so calm and easy-going, then all of a sudden, it was as if his entire personality flipped around. He became controlling.”
“Controlling in what way?”
She shrugged her shoulders back. “He kept trying to tell me how to do things, told me how I should dress, how I should talk, how I should deal with classes. Then he tried to tell me which people I could talk to. But we quickly reached the point when he didn’t want me talking to anybody at all.”
She blinked back the saddened tears in her eyes.
“At first, I didn’t want to think too much of it. I thought it was purely looking out for me and wanted what was best. But it reached a point where I felt completely isolated. I was trapped at my own school. And whenever I tried to question his behavior, he’d either deny it or….”
“Or what?” Alessandro pressed.
“He’d turn violent. He’d grab me tightly to the point of leaving these ugly bruises all over my arms and skin.”
I felt the anger rising in my chest at the thought of someone putting their hands on Cat, but I tried to keep it to myself so she could continue talking to Alessandro. I watched him let out a controlled breath, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was as disgusted by this guy’s behavior as I was.
“Okay,” he said. “One more question and then we can stop. What’s this guy’s full name?”
Cat dapped the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “Paul Bryant.”
We both watched Alessandro take out his phone and make a call.
“Hey, it’s me. I need you to run a name through the system for me… yeah, Paul Bryant.” He turned back to glance at Cat. “Caterina, did you say that he attended your school as well?”
Cat shook her head. “No, Paul went to another school close by.”
He turned back to his phone call and gave the receiver a bit more info before hanging up.
For a moment, we all fell back into silent resolution with ourselves. I found it strange that someone would go through all that trouble to control someone else when they didn’t even attend the same college. How did this creep even find Cat in the first place, I wondered… to think of the lengths he’d gone through just to get a hold of her.
Part of me wished that Paul was standing right in front of me so I could let my fist fly through the air again and knock him on his ass. What gave him the right to treat Cat, or any woman, that way?
Caterina sunk further back into the couch while her eyes wandered off in thought. I hated the fact that I hadn’t gone with her today. But what good would that have done?
I didn’t want to coddle her. What Cat needed was support, not someone to stand around and dictate how she should go about her life. After all, that was what Paul had done. I didn’t want her to be afraid of the world around her. But if this issue with Paul didn’t get resolved, I didn’t know how things were going to go down.
A little less than an hour went by before Alessandro’s phone went off. The sound nearly caused Cat to jump out of her seat. I reached out to rest a hand on her knee while he took the call.
“What have you found?”
Ever so slowly, I watched as his eyes started to widen. Oh, my God. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Alessandro look so shocked. It was beyond unsettling, and quite frankly, disturbing.
He nodded his head. “Alright. I’ll be in touch. Yeah, that’s all for now.”
The call was dropped, and he turned his head back to face the two of us.
“Alright, you two. Caterina, I’m going to need you to be as calm as possible.”
Her breathing hitched in her chest, yet she nodded in response.
“Paul Bryant is not who he says he is.”
My brows drew together in question. “Then who the fuck is he then?”
“Antonio Jr. He’s Antonio’s son.”
I felt as though a piece of my brain had literally imploded on itself. What the actual hell? No. No, it wasn’t true….
“This can’t possibly be right,” I challenged. “I don’t believe it.”
Alessandro nodded his head. “Our guys have found a lot of this guy’s fake IDs, so it was easy to crack. According to his real identity, he was born and still lives here in California. Chances are very likely that Antonio Jr. was sent to get close to Cat.”
A burning rage scoured through me like a wildfire. Who the fuck did this guy think he was to come into Cat’s life just to tear apart my family?
Well, I wasn’t going to stand by and let it happen. I was going to find a way to bring down Antonio. I was going to pay him back for taking away Cat’s father, even if it meant evening the score by taking away his son from him.
I refused to remain powerless in this situation any further.
*Caterina*
My nails had been biting into the palms of my hands as I waited for Alessandro to get off the phone. My nerves were already terribly on edge from earlier that day, so much so that I didn’t even know how I was still functioning at that moment.
I was practically sitting on the edge of my seat when he finally ended the call and came to stand in front of Elio and me. The grave look on his face should have been proof enough that something wasn’t right.
“Paul isn’t who he says he is….”
That right there must have been the catalyst for my mental breakdown. Meanwhile, I felt Elio grow tense next to me. He was just as upset and curious as I was about the whole issue.
Alessandro’s voice came out gravely. “Paul is Antonio Jr. He’s Antonio’s son.”
Oh. My. God.
I thought I was prepared to hear the worst. I thought I’d mentally prepared myself well enough to face whatever the hell Alessandro was about to throw at me. But my God, was I wrong.
My stomach twisted into knots. I was nauseous. My bottom lip trembled until my jaw went completely slack. I was numb, pure and simple. I was numb.
My hearing went slightly muffled, but I still made out what Elio and Alessandro were saying. Apparently, Paul—or Antonio Jr.—was actually sent to me with some kind of purpose.
The muscles around my heart clenched in relative anguish.
‘So, none of it was ever real,’ I thought blankly to myself. Even before he’d changed and gotten violent, I thought at least things had started between us with some sort of affection. But it turned out that Paul never cared about me at all.
The concept hit me like a punch to the gut. I wasn’t a love interest. I was an assignment, a mission. He weaseled his way into my life and caused me nothing but chaos and grief. All that time was wasted, the time I spent harping over the way he made me feel, the time I spent completely filled with delusion and anxiety, trying to be the way he wanted me to be.
All that God awful trouble… only to find out that he was the son of the man who had murdered my father.
Something began to slowly seep into my bones. That feeling of numbness gradually started to fade where a feeling much worse began to take its place—the feeling of being violated.
I raised my hand to cover my mouth while a broken, distorted sound slipped past my lips. A million grueling shivers broke throughout my body. I was disgusted at my ignorance.
“Fuck, Cat.”
Elio tried to shake me from my semi-permanent state of shock. He curled his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. I wished I could lose myself in his touch. I wished he held the power to make that terrible feeling inside of me go away.
“Elio….”