Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 524 -

*Natalia*

"I'll call you tonight, okay?" he whispered to me sweetly, gently tucking my hair behind my ear. He left me with a kiss, and I could still taste him on my lips even as I fled up my driveway, pushing my back against the door until I heard the hum of his car drive away.

I didn't know for sure where he was going, why he had come back in a rush, or why he had such a serious and dark look in his eyes when he had answered that phone call.

But I had a pretty good guess.

My uncles were ruthless, and revenge was their love language.

The two and a half hours of driving and flying back had been a whirlwind, gone by so fast and so slowly at the same time. Half of me was suffocating from the tense atmosphere and the suspicious looks his men gave me as they loaded up the luggage.

I didn't blame them. I was a stranger, after all. And by now, they had probably guessed that someone had been feeding information.

The guilt had been slowly devouring me bit by bit, creeping from the pit of my stomach to the middle of my chest. Even breathing felt like a betrayal, and half of me had almost confessed to him in that car. I'd wanted to tell him who I was and why bad things were happening to him.

I had wanted to beg him to forgive me, to explain myself, but the better half of my judgment had left me a stranglehold.

Forgive me? I'd have been lucky if he didn't shoot me on sight with what I'd done. I pressed my head against the front door, wishing I could just leave all of this behind and start over, to meet Tallon as a normal college student who was new to town, and as if he was just an ordinary guy sweeping me off my feet.

But the blood running through my veins couldn't be erased.

He and I were standing at polar ends of the earth, locked in a war neither of us had asked for. And I loved him.

"Fuck." I bit my bottom lip as heat welled up in my eyes, and I struggled to hold back the tears as I slid down the door to the ground. I pulled my knees to my chest, kicking off my shoes in the process as I tried not to have a mental breakdown on the floor of my apartment.

I didn't have long to pity myself though, for a familiar ringtone burst through my eardrums-one I knew I couldn't ignore.

"Shit. Not now," I groaned, fishing into my jeans pockets for my phone.

I glanced at the number on the screen, and to no surprise, it was an unknown number. I tapped my fingernails against the hard case for a second, debating whether I really wanted to deal with this right now.

But my uncles were not patient men.

I sniffed, brushing my tears away as I hardened myself like my mother taught me. Emotions made you weak, her father would tell her, and she passed that lesson on to me. Weakness could not be tolerated in a family like ours, not if you wanted to be safe and alive.

"Hello?" I answered with a low tone, hoping he didn't hear the slight tremble in my voice.

"Good job, Natalia," my uncle said with an unusually pleasant note in his voice. "We have dealt quite a great blow to the Valentinos, all thanks to you."

His words hit like salt pouring into an open wound. I struggled to keep my voice calm and steady, not to give away how much I wanted to scream and beg him to stop all of this madness.

"I'm-" I swallowed, uncomfortable from the lies in my throat. "I'm glad to have helped the family."

"And help you have, plemyannitsa." He purred the foreign word, and as a child, hearing him call me his niece, to recognize that I was his family and I belonged, would've made me happier than anything. But now all I felt was bitter.

"If there's nothing else you need, Uncle, I'm kinda tired." I tried to excuse myself without drawing his attention, hopeful I could sleep this nightmare away but of course, things could never be that easy for me.

"That intel you got before was good, Natalia, but we need more. When are you seeing him next? I imagine he'll be preoccupied with the damage we caused, but you need to distract him and keep him off our trail. He'll have no doubt figured out there is a mole-"

My breath hitched without warning. "He knows? Does that mean he suspects me? Am I in danger? Is Mother safe?"

He knew? Did that mean he suspected me?

"Calm yourself, Natalia!" my uncle scolded me for the outburst. "Your mother is safe and so are you. He may be aware of a mole, but I doubt he'll have figured out it is you. That is where you come in."

"Me?" I muttered, terrified of what he was going to suggest next.

"Yes, you will plant the seeds of doubt in his head," my uncle said.

I could almost hear him grinning through the phone.

"Make him think his men are turning against him, that it is they not you who is working to bring him down. The sweet words from the lips of a woman should be enough to convince any man."

The very image painted in my mind of me whispering such horrible things into his ear, of turning his anger and rage upon the men he trusted while he unknowingly played right into the hands of his enemy-all because of me. It sickened me to my core.

I couldn't. No, I wouldn't do it.

"But Uncle... I-" I struggled to get the words out but finally, I took a deep breath and said clearly and firmly, "I can't."

I winced at the dead silence that met my words, and despite the absolute fear I felt for going against my family's wishes, for disappointing them in this way, I couldn't destroy my own morals and my own soul for this. Not anymore.

Or so I thought. "What?"

The harsh response was something I had been expecting, but the sheer fury hiding underneath still shook me to my core. I swallowed uncomfortably, folding my limbs together and hanging my head like he was here in front of me, staring me down with those horrible judging eyes.

"I can't do it anymore, Uncle. I'm not cut out for this and I want-" I tried to reason with him, but I should've known that reason was not within a single bone of that man's body.

"What you want?" he snarled through the phone. "You selfish stupid girl! Did you think about what they have done to us, how they have killed our bloodline and hunted us down like animals? Your grandfather was slaughtered like livestock because of them, and you want to show mercy now?"

"No, I know that, Uncle, but-"

"And your poor mother-did you think about what she has suffered? She would be ashamed to hear you throw her sacrifices away for your selfish desires? You finally have use to this family, to be more than a burden and help us regain our glory and restore our family name, and you throw it all away because you are weak?!"

I kept silent, staring at the pattern on the floor as he cruelly berated me just like he had always done. Once he was finished, I felt numb down to my very core.

Maybe he was right. I was being selfish.

My mother... she deserved a better daughter than me.

"You will continue to see that asshole, Natalia," my Uncle said very firmly, leaving no room for argument. "And you will report new intel on me by the end of the week or you will regret it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Uncle," I responded blankly, my mouth agreeing without any sort of thought. It had been so ingrained in me at this point that it was all I could do. Fighting back and choosing my own path-they had never been real choices in the first place.

"Good."

The call ended with a decisive click, leaving me alone in my empty and silent apartment. My mind whirled around in an endless loop, all circling back to one word.

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.