Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 318 -

*Giovani*

I pulled my black car into my usual parking spot and turned to look at Alessandro. He was staring straight ahead, his back stiff with some sort of emotion that I hadn't yet identified. We had spent the day checking out the shipping yard and

looking for intel in the city, but we hadn't found much.

I would have preferred to make the trip alone, but I had hoped that bringing along Alessandro would help smooth things over between us and show him that I was willing to give him a little more trust if he was willing to act like a man instead of a little boy.

But instead of playing along and making nice, he had been as cold as a block of ice the entire day. It was starting to piss me off, and I had decided that I was going to do something about his shitty-ass attitude.

"So what do you think?" I asked, starting out calm in spite of my rising irritation.

"About what?" he responded, still avoiding looking at me.

I rolled my eyes. This felt like some fucking middle school shit. It wouldn't surprise me if the next thing he did was disinvite me from his birthday party. "About what we saw today-I'm asking for your opinion."

In spite of my best efforts to remain calm, a note of anger found its way into my voice. It was so goddamn easy for him to set me off, and knowing that only made me angrier. He had successfully wound me up like a jack in the box, and just the slightest turn of the crank was enough to make me explode.

"I don't know. It looks like the Russians are laying low for now. There's not as much movement as there was when my team first found their safe house," he muttered, somehow sounding as if he was blaming me for the lack of intel we had managed to gather.

I decided I had had enough of this conversation and got out of the car, not slamming the door nearly as hard as I would have liked behind me. I was starting to get a headache right in the center of my forehead, and I wanted nothing more than to finish up the day's work and have a stiff drink.

I also needed to check in with Olivia. I still hadn't seen her since last night, and although it seemed like she was going to forgive me, I was nervous about the whole thing. She had been really pissed at me, and that kind of anger didn't just blow over. I hoped that she had at least had a nice day while I was gone.

I got to my office and thought through everything I needed to accomplish before I could see Olivia. I hadn't noticed that Alessandro had been following me. My annoyance with him increased; he really didn't know when to leave me the fuck alone. He walked into my office and gestured to me to close the door. I took a deep breath to calm my temper.

'James loves this kid,' I thought to myself in an effort to keep from just killing him then and there.

Instead of pummeling him until his face caved in, I politely said, "I have a lot of work to get done, and I don't want to be up late. What do you want?"

"I'm sick and tired of being treated like a child. Are you kidding me with the fucking babysitting you were doing today? You know I could have done that on my own."

I rubbed my hand down my face as my headache got worse. This is what I fucking got for trying to make peace with this asshole. I should have remembered that he acted more like an angsty teenager than a grown man. Instead of interpreting today as the peace offering that it was, he took it as a punishment. Fuck, I was so tired of him.

"I'll be honest, I just don't have time to deal with you right now," I told him.

Blackmail be damned, I had to have time to focus on our organization or shit would start slipping. Alessandro didn't understand that our entire focus wasn't just on getting retribution from the Russians. We still had to keep our other operations running. Most importantly, we had to keep making money.

"You better fucking make time. You think you don't have time for me? Do you think Olivia will have time for you after I tell Dahlia all about how her much older cousin doesn't have time for me but has plenty of time to fuck her best friend? You know, it's pretty fucking funny to hear such an old man talk about time. Maybe that's why you're so desperate to get in Olivia's pants. You know you're running out of time, but she has plenty of it. I wonder what you'll do when she-" I didn't wait to hear what other vile shit was going to come out of his mouth. Without really thinking, I kicked out my right leg and swept his feet out from under him. Before he even knew what had happened, I was on top of him with my knee digging into his chest. His face turned tomato red. I didn't know if it was because of anger or pain, but I hoped it was the latter.

I leaned close to him and looked at him with the same fierce glare that I had used to stare down far badder assholes than him. "I'm tired of being threatened," I said quietly.

I knew from experience that it was far more terrifying to speak quietly than it was to scream and yell. Showing your opponent that you still had full control over yourself while they were pinned to the ground was a power move that I had learned from one of the higher-ups when I was just a young guy. It was a move that I had pulled on countless people, and one that I knew would work now. For all his blustering, Alessandro had no real idea what it was like to be in hand-to- hand combat with someone. His face paled slightly, and this time I knew exactly what emotion he was feeling.

'Good, let him be scared,' I thought to myself.

In my line of work, I had been around a lot of scared people. I had noticed that there were two ways that people typically dealt with fear: either they clammed up and turned inward, or they started yelling and screaming in an effort to appear less afraid. Alessandro appeared to be the second kind.

"Fuck you!" he screamed, spit flying.

I leaned back, putting more pressure on the knee that I held in the middle of his chest.

This time, I chose to yell. If he was going to get loud, then I could sure as fuck get louder.

"Fuck you, Alessandro! I will NOT accept this fucking little boy behavior any longer. You think I was babysitting you today? I wasn't! I would have preferred to go alone, but I brought you along because I thought it would fucking show you that I was willing to work with you. Instead, this is the thanks I get. Once again, you're acting like a goddamn child who thinks he should always get his way."

He tried to lift his body, but I shoved him back down hard. His head hit the floor with a loud thud. I hoped he would have a goose egg in the morning. I hoped it gave him a headache as bad as the one I had right now. Hell, I hoped it gave him a concussion and kept him in his fucking room and away from me for a few days. It would be nice to get a few days of peace.

"Ow, fuck, man," he moaned.

The fight had started to go out of him when he realized how easily I could keep his ass on the floor. He could tell himself I was a feeble old man all he wanted, but the truth was I had years of experience on him and would win in a fight every single fucking time.

He might be able to sneak around and do his little blackmail scheming in the shadows, but at the end of the day, he could never come close to beating me face to face. At this point, the only thing that even kept me from just kicking his ass out on the street was knowing that it would upset Dahlia.

After hitting his head, Alessandro had stopped struggling. I decided to let him up. It seemed like he was done fighting for the night. I stood up then reached down and lifted him up by his armpits. It gave me pleasure to show him how easy it was for me to throw his weight around. Once he was up, I condescendingly brushed his shoulders off as if he was a child who had fallen in the dirt.

"So we're on the same page. You want more shit to do. I fucking get it. I'll call you if anything comes up," I told him.

Without answering, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him. As soon as he was gone, my satisfaction at having shown him who was the boss of this organization disappeared, and I started to worry about Olivia again. It felt like all I did these days was worry about Olivia. I hoped I hadn't pushed Alessandro so far that he would just say fuck it and go straight to Dahlia. Olivia would never forgive me if she knew that I had blown everything just because I had lost control of my stupid temper.

I rubbed my head as my headache spread from the center of my forehead to my temples. I wasn't the old man that Alessandro loved to call me, but dealing with all this shit was definitely starting to make me feel my age. All I wanted to do was curl up in bed with Olivia.

Who was I kidding-that was all I ever wanted to do these days. She had already changed me. Instead of my days being filled with getting shit done and focusing on being the Don, I spent my days wondering about what she was up to and thinking about how I could make her happy.

I sighed and poured myself a drink before settling behind my desk to balance a few accounts. Just a little bit more work, and then I could finally go see my sweet Olivia. I would endure all the headaches in the world if it meant I could spend the night with her.