Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 66 -

James.

The moment I landed in Miami, I was bombarded with messages from Allison, Tally, and even Becca. Even others messaged me, questioning me about a mystery woman I had been seen with. Of course, Alison pointed out that it was clearly Becca.

I was confused about what they were talking about, but as soon as I opened my phone, I saw the picture of Becca and I at the Convention in New York. We weren't alone, of course, we were with Neal and two other people that were in the background.

The photo wasn't intimate, but we were very close, and we were talking. The photo must have been taken right after I had kissed her, but it was still enough to make people question who she was and if we were more. That wasn't what mattered, though.

Allison had assumed that Becca had not heeded her warning, and it didn't matter how many times that I told her to back off and leave Becca alone. She refused.

This was the last thing I needed right now while I was trying to fix my relationship with the girl. She was everything to me, and slowly, I realized I had fallen in love with her. But how was I supposed to be able to make this work if I couldn't control my own problems?

Letting a sigh of irritation escape me, I quickly climbed into the back of the black sedan and told the driver to take me home.

I had no doubt Tally would be there, waiting to scold me over everything that was going on. However, she was going to learn tonight that her place was not to interfere with my personal relationships.

I was her father, and the last thing that I was going to allow her to do was dictate to me who I could and could not see. I didn't allow my parents to do that to me when I was younger.

So it wasn't going to happen now with my own daughter.

As the car sped down the breezeway, I called Becca, replaceing her phone going straight to voicemail. It had been an hour and a half since she had tried to call me, more or less.

I'd hoped that she had preoccupied her time with setting up her apartment, so I quickly sent a text to her, letting her know I would call her once I got situated at home.

I had to constantly remind myself, even though I didn't like the idea of long distance, this was going to be important because if we could survive this, it meant that we could survive anything being thrown at us.

Even if the thought of her being alone on campus surrounded by tons of very eligible young bachelors was constant competition. I had to know that she would do nothing to betray my trust.

At least I hoped she wouldn't.

When I got home, I noticed Talley's car parked in the driveway and was mentally preparing myself for the situation I was about to walk into with Tally.

I had been gone a week, and during that week that I had been gone, I had knowledge that she had had that boy Chad in my house, a boy that I specifically told her before I left I did not want to see anywhere around the property, let alone her. Tally felt she was able to dictate what she wanted for her own future. She may have been an adult, but no way was she mature enough to decide what it is that she wanted. She even tried to explain to me she was going to drop out of school. Which was not going to happen. She had been there this long, so I wouldn't allow her to throw her future away, no matter how meaningless she found it.

I loved her to death, and she was beautiful as hell, but when it came to common sense, that was something that my daughter lacked, a trait that she had procured from her mother.

As I was stepping out of the car, the front door flew open, and Tally stood on the other side with an angry scowl across her face and her hands upon her hips, as if she was a housewife irritated because her husband had come home late from work.

"Where have you been, and why did it take so long? I can't believe that you were up there with that whore after I told you I didn't want you to see her because of how uncomfortable it made me."

Stopping in my tracks, I tried to control my anger. My fists clenched at my sides as I stared at her. "Get your ass in the house, and we will talk about this in a moment."

I wouldn't allow my neighbors to hear the conversation I was about to have with Tally. She had no idea how much more she pissed me off by acting the way that she did. Confronting me while I was walking inside my home, out in the open for anybody who was going by to see... who the f*ck did she think she was?

What pissed me off the most was that she knew that, but yet she did what she wanted. Just like her f*cking piece of shit mother.

I was already pissed that she was with that ignorant f*ck and pregnant by him, to say the least. But to sit here and act the way she was, trying to contradict everything that I had ever taught her while raising her, after everything I'd done to make sure she had a better life.... This is how she decided she was going to repay me?

As soon as the door closed, I made my way to the kitchen, setting down my stuff on the dining table before grabbing the bottle of whiskey at my bar and pouring myself a drink. "Well, are you going to say anything?" she snapped from behind

me.

Tight-lipped and incredibly pissed off, I turned to face her. With narrowed brows, I stared at her with absolute disgust at her behavior. "We are going to have a very serious conversation, Tally, because you seem to think that you are able to dictate to me what it is that I do, and that's not going to fly."

Shock crossed her face before it quickly filled with anger. "You were screwing my best friend, and then, on top of that, you've made me look like a complete fool by your actions."

"Fool?!" I scoffed. "You made yourself look like a fool, and how dare you sit there and make such a big fuss about me being with Becca, when for over a year, you were sleeping with her boyfriend behind her back, and now you're knocked up by him."

Her mouth parted as her eyes went wide. "He is going to be your future son-in-law. How dare you say something like that about him? I'm your daughter. Don't you care how I feel? Won't you take my own desires into consideration?" I had had enough of her shit. Slamming my fist upon the counter, I had to rein my anger back in. This girl had absolutely lost her mind, thinking that she could speak to me the way she was, and I would be damned if I was going to tolerate it any longer.

"You need to learn your place, Taliana. I am sick and tired of you thinking that you can do whatever it is you want to do. You get that trait from your mother, and there is a reason why I left her. Now, you are pregnant, and you still have to finish school. You're in your last year. What are you going to do? How are you going to support this child? Because I will never give that boy permission to marry you."

"You don't have a right to dictate to me what I can do! I'm an adult!" she screamed at me as she clenched her fist in anger, her face turning red and her brows narrowed.

"An adult? Since when the f*ck did you ever start acting like an adult? All you do is blow through money. All you do is want, want, want, and you do nothing to earn anything that you have. Everything you have is because I have sponsored your way of living."

"That's not true," she snapped, rolling her eyes. "I am quite capable of taking care of myself. I can work, I can take care of children, and I will make a great wife for Chad."

"A great wife, Tally? You have no idea how to take care of yourself. You don't clean up after yourself; you don't cook. You don't even wash your own laundry. So how in the hell are you going to take care of yourself, let alone someone else?" I asked her in absolute shock that she believed she was mature enough to raise a child.

"Stop it! Just stop it!" she cried out.

I could tell that the conversation was weighing on her because she knew full well that what I was saying was the truth. How was she ever going to be able to raise this child and be a housewife or whatever else she thought she was going to be if she couldn't do simple tasks by herself?

"Stop what, Tally? Explaining to you the truth, a truth that you refuse to see."

"No!" She screamed. "I want you to stop thinking that you can do things so much better than everybody else. Chad is a good man, and he comes from a good family. I don't understand what you think is wrong with him when you're so willing to sleep with someone like Becca."

Her reply was one that I had expected. She would defend this boy to no end, and little did she understand that he was not the kind of man looking to settle down with someone like her. Her being pregnant was probably more than an inconvenience and knowing the family that he had come from, I highly doubted that his parents would be accepting of her.

Regardless of the money that she came from. We were considered new money. His parents came from a long generation of old money, and people like that didn't mix with people like us.

"It isn't that, Tally. You will not be able to be with him. His family will never accept you and you have school to finish. You need to set your own path and stop relying on a man," I snapped at her.

I was fed up with the bullshit, and she needed to know that.

"His family will love me just as he does. He asked me to marry him. How much more proof do you need?" Tears filled her eyes as she shook her head.

I knew I shouldn't be stressing her out because she was pregnant, but this was a conversation we had to have. She had to know that this could not go on, that her behaviors could not keep going on. "And if they don't accept you, and he does leave you, then what are you going to do?"

"He won't leave me, even if his parents don't accept me. He will still marry me, and we will still be together. We will figure it out," she replied, as if it was the only obvious thing in the world.

"According to his academic records, he will be lucky to graduate. The only way he will be able to move forward in life is with the money his family has set up for him in a trust." A trust I had no doubt they would end if he didn't do as they said. Honestly, perhaps that's what Tally needed to hear as well.

She was shaking her head, so I could tell that she was going to refuse to believe anything that I said. She was such an ignorant girl, and through all of it, I could only imagine the things that her mother had been filling her mind with. "That isn't true. He may get money from them, but we'll make it. I still have my money."

There it was. She thought that I was going to support both of them. The trust fund that I had set up for her was money that I was giving to her while she went to school and also to help her after she got out of school while she got set up in her

career.

If she thought that I was going to support them living forever, she was sadly mistaken.

"If you marry that boy, your trust fund money is gone. I told you the day you turned eighteen, I would continue to pay you a monthly allowance while you went to school and after you graduated while you got set-up in your career until you could support yourself."

"So you're going to cut me off?" she yelled in anger, as if taking away her money was the most horrible thing that had ever happened to her.

"Yes, Tally. If you marry that boy, you are cut off from my money. Of course, I will set something up for my grandkids, so that way they have money when they turn eighteen, but I'm not giving you another penny if you marry that boy." Stomping her foot, she snatched her purse off of the side table, and glared at me.

"You are not my father. That's stupid bitch has changed you, and I will make her pay for everything bad that happens to me."

The threat was there, but before I could get another word out, she turned and stormed from the house, slamming the front door behind her.

This was not how I expected things to go, but then again, I wasn't surprised either. Running my hand through my hair, I looked back down at my phone and contemplated calling Becca. I knew I had promised her I would do so. It was just that things had gotten a lot more difficult than I had expected.

Tally and Allison were both threatening to extinguish her existence, and I was suddenly concerned the distance between us would not keep her safe.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but as much as I didn't want to admit it, perhaps having someone closer to her would be more beneficial.

I should have let her go when I had the chance. I could have let Neal step in to be with her.

Because, the way things were going, loving me was only going to do one thing to Becca. Destroy her.