Page 26 of Take Me (Dark Odyssey 5)

Inside Pa stands over his desk, talking to Georgiou. Both stop talking when I enter the room and close the door.

Georgiou gives me a withered stare. A sign that I really am going to have to stand my ground. My father doesn’t like the fact that I can’t be controlled. We’re like two forces pushing against each other and I have to bow to his control to get what I want. I hate it.

“Morning,” I say.

Pa releases a deep sigh and has that look in his eye that tells me if I was a kid, he’d knock my lights out. The same way he did when I was sixteen. That was the first time I defied him, and I didn’t even do anything big to make him lose his shit the way he did.

“Take a seat,” he says cutting past the pleasantries.

I take the seat in front of him and avoid Georgiou’s stare. The secret messages we used to send each other when we were kids still continued into adulthood. I’m not looking at him now though because anything he’s going to tell me with a look or with words is going to be shit I don’t want to hear.

“For a start, the shit you pulled yesterday is not gonna happen again,” Pa says glaring at me. he’s remained standing on purpose to show me he’s higher than me. “I call you; you answer the fucking phone. You hear me?”

He wants me to answer, but I’m not gonna be a pussy and do so. Instead I grit my teeth and I can see Georgiou across from me trying to keep his cool so he doesn’t strangle me himself.

Pa shakes his head as the silence makes its way between us.

“Christian, this is serious. What happened is serious and there’s shit happening that you don’t know about or seem to care about. It’s always the same with you,” Pa seethes.

“Always? Pa, one mistake.” I lash back.

“One mistake that could cost us. Angelo is furious that this happened. he’s already talked to some of the VIP clients and they’ve called for assurance that their shipments will be safe. It’s bad enough I had to tell people everything is delayed because we have a fuck load of new staff, but assurance is another thing. We have not handled this well and the situation has gotten out of control.”

I bite the inside of my lip, unable to respond. When you’re in the wrong, you’re in the wrong.

The worst-case scenario I figured is clients may still use us because we’re the only ones they know who can still get a job done, but we’ll lose big time if our VIP’s leave. those are people who can leave because they have connections.

“I’m trying to fix the situation,” I promise. I told him the same when we spoke earlier. He just wanted to see me though to do this. rip into me. “Getting to a man like Falcone is hard Pa.”

“that’s why it should never have happened. It shouldn’t have and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and allow you to make our family look bad. the problem is not what you did, its’ who you are.”

Bastard.This is what he’s like. Normally I can give as much as I get but not this trip. Not when it truly is my fault.

“Because ofwhoyou are, Christian, which is why you took the easy way out and trusted Jonny,” he continues, and I just stare back at him. “That’s why this shit is happening to us. If you weren’t my son, I would have ended you before you got the chance to explain yourself.”

“My apologies for that pesky little biological fact,” I sneer.

He grabs the paperweight from the stack of documents and lunges it into the wall.

It smashes and by the time I look back to him the man has his guns pulled on me.

Georgiou jumps in front of me to shield me, an act that’s thrown me for a loop. I push to my feet, standing behind him.

“Pa what the fuck! Fucking drop your guns,” he orders. I try to move from behind him to stand my ground, but he clamps a hand on me, holding me back like he did when we were kids and anyone dared picked on me. “Stand down Christian,” he says glowering at me.

“Both of you stand down,” Pa snarls. “Or the two of you are out.”

On that threat, of course Georgiou drops his hands.

Pa lowers his guns and fixes his stare on me again.

“You… you fucker, you better get those guns back. I don’t care what you do, or whether you come back to me in a box with a fucking tag on your foot, get them back.” He shouts. “You are the fucking black sheep of this family. Everybody else pulls their weight but you drag us down. I’m not going to allow you to destroy an empire we worked so hard to build. You fix the problem, or you’ll have me to deal with and believe me you don’t want that to happen. I will make sure you lose every fucking thing.”

He’s never threatened me like this before. I actually believe he would really kill me, or he’s hoping I’ll die so he won’t have to do it.

“Do you hear me Christian!” He roars,

“I got it,” I answer and walk out.

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