Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 327 -

*Olivia*

'Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit,' was all I could think as I stood leaning against my closed door and trying to listen for any talking in the hallway.

Tallon must have seen Gio leave my room. Oh fuck... there was no way we could possibly explain that away. There was no reasonable explanation for why Giovani had been in here with me. Now Tallon AND Alessandro were going to know about us.

I suspected Tallon wouldn't stoop so low as to try to pull the blackmail bullshit that Alessandro had been doing, but at the same time, I had never expected Alessandro to do something like that either. People could be surprising, no matter how many years you had known them.

I had a knot in my throat and butterflies in my stomach. That was why I fucking hated this sneaking around shit. Instead of being able to just relax and enjoy the fact that my incredibly sexy boyfriend had told me that he was in love with me the night before, I now had to stress out about whether or not the whole house was about to replace out about our relationship.

As usual, I wished that I could just turn to Dahlia and ask for her advice about all of this. It was starting to feel inevitable that she would replace out, but I still wanted it to be on my terms, not just because someone else decided to blab to her. Fuck, I just wanted to go back to sleep and pretend this wasn't happening. But I knew that would only make things look even weirder. Maybe Tallon wouldn't know why Gio had been leaving my room early in the morning. Maybe Gio had come up with a good excuse... oh, who was I kidding? There was only one possible reason why Giovani would be leaving my room half naked, and Tallon wasn't an idiot.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to get dressed for breakfast. I looked through my closet, wondering which outfit gave off "I didn't just fuck Giovani last night" vibes. I settled on a plain T-shirt dress, which was boring, just like I wished my life was right about now. Lately, I had been having way too much excitement.

'It could be worse,' I thought to myself. 'It could have been ME that he saw leaving Gio's room half naked... now that would have been embarrassing.'

But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't replace a way to make myself feel better about the situation. All I could really do was go to breakfast and face the music. I hoped that at least Alessandro might be elsewhere.

I had no such luck. When I got to the kitchen, it seemed like the whole damn house was there, and for some reason, the only empty seat left was between Tallon and Alessandro. It took everything in me to not just make an excuse and go back to my room, but I knew if I did that then Dahlia would probably come after me and ask why I was acting so goddamn weird.

Resigned to my fate, I sat between the two men who knew my secret and hoped that neither of them would bring it up. Not wanting to look at them or at Giovani, I took a huge swig of coffee and hoped the conversation would continue without me.

As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Gio turned to Tallon and asked if he had seen the soccer game yesterday. Without missing a beat, Tallon went into a long diatribe about how the game had clearly been rigged and how the referees were damn near playing for the other team. As he ranted, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge if he felt weird toward me. It felt like nothing had changed between us. Maybe I had been wrong to assume he would make a big deal about me and Gio being together. I started to feel a little bit better. Maybe everything would be okay after all.

"No, that's bullshit!" Gio slammed the table with an open palm, and I jumped at the unexpected noise.

He glanced toward me apologetically when he saw that he had frightened me, but continued to argue with Tallon.

"You know just as well as I do that their center back sucks ass. You can't sit there and blame everything on the refs, and you know that."

"See, I knew you were going to say that," Tallon responded, irritation tightening his voice. "You always hate it when I point out the obvious, but you can't ignore the truth: those refs threw three red cards. When's the last time you saw something like that? That's fucking nuts!"

"Boys, boys," Dahlia said in an amazing imitation of her mother. "No arguing about anything involving balls at the table."

Gio chuckled at her ridiculous statement, but Tallon looked like he wanted to keep arguing. He was very passionate about his soccer team. I didn't really understand soccer, but I knew that Tallon had been a fan of the sport since he was tiny, so I was sure he took it pretty seriously.

"Alright, you're right, Tallon," Gio conceded, although I suspected it was just to placate Tallon. "Three red flags is pretty terrible."

"That's what I'm saying!" Tallon responded before taking a massive bite of his croissant. Little croissant flakes tumbled onto his chin.

My heart stirred as the image made me think of when he was a boy. He had been such a cute kid, and such a messy eater. It was hard to believe how fast the time had flown by. We never would have imagined the things that we would be doing as adults.

When I turned back to my plate, I could feel Alessandro looking at me. I glanced in his direction, but he looked back down at his plate before we made eye contact. I wanted to roll my eyes. His antics had been so childish lately, and I was sick of it.

I turned to Giovani, not wanting to bring it up but needing to know if they had found out anything more about the guy who had attacked Dahlia and me.

"Did you hear anything more about yesterday?" I asked him, not sure what I wanted to hear. On the one hand, if they found out more about the guy, then maybe they could figure out who had been targeting us and make sure it didn't happen again. On the other hand, the less I knew about him, the easier it was to pretend none of it had even happened.

Instead of answering me, Gio turned to Alessandro and looked at him expectantly. I followed his lead and turned to Alessandro as well. Alessandro looked surprised and pleased that Giovani was deferring to him. He cleared his throat and took a drink of water before speaking.

"The guy didn't have any kind of identification on him, but we did manage to get a couple of fingerprints off of his body and took a picture of his face. My team's been asking around, making use of their connections, but we haven't found anything. It's like the guy's a damn ghost."

"That's impossible," Dahlia said. I could tell she was just as freaked out as I was.

"It's definitely difficult, but not impossible," Giovani responded.

"Not impossible at all, unfortunately," Alessandro continued. "But I don't want you girls to worry about this. Someone, somewhere knows who this guy was and where he came from, and my team will figure it out. No matter what, we'll get to the bottom of these repeated attacks. You will be safe."

He patted my arm, but I didn't feel particularly reassured. Alessandro might care about Dahlia and want to keep her safe, but he seemed to have it out for me at the moment, what with the blackmail and all. As long as it was the both of us being targeted, I was sure that he would try his best to stop it, but if it was ever just me in the line of fire... well, I wasn't so sure if he would be as gung ho about saving me. I looked at Giovani and could tell that he had clocked Alessandro's touch. He clearly didn't like it any more than I did. I smiled slightly to myself. It was cute to see Gio getting a little bit jealous.

"Your safety is our top priority," Giovani said, and I felt better. Alessandro might not care what happened to me, but Gio did.

"We appreciate it," Dahlia said. "I know you're both trying your best."

We all finished our breakfast in silence, nobody seeming to know exactly what to say. As I began to stand up from the table, Gabrielle wandered in.

"Giovani, I need to speak with you. Alessandro, you might as well come too," Gabrielle said.

The three of them wandered off to Giovani's office. I felt nervous about Gio and Alessandro being together without me there, but there was nothing I could do about it. Either Alessandro would behave himself or he wouldn't. I had to remind myself that Giovani could handle Alessandro's bullshit.

"I'm tired," Dahlia announced. "I'm going to go lay down for a little bit."

"Are you feeling okay?" I asked, I was worried about her. She couldn't have been awake for more than an hour or so. How was she tired enough for a nap already?

"Yeah, I'm fine. The doctor told me it's normal to be extra sleepy while I recover. And although I normally just ignore it so I can spend more time doing fun things with you all, today seems like a good day to just sleep."

"Okay, just let me know if you need anything." She was such a ball of energy, it was easy to forget how recently she had been seriously wounded.

"I will, I promise," she smiled before hobbling off to her room.

When I realized that only Tallon and I were left at the table, all of the awkwardness I had felt when breakfast began came crashing back. I avoided looking at him and began to gather up everyone's dishes, even though I knew the house staff would do that. The table was completely cleared, but he still hadn't left, so I decided to just start washing dishes.

One of the maids came in and looked horrified when she saw what I was up to. Without uttering a single word, she shooed me away from the sink. I took a deep breath. I had no choice but to turn toward Tallon and face whatever it was that he wanted to say to me.

Our eyes met, and he smiled. Was he going to blackmail me the way Alessandro was blackmailing Giovani?