Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“Alright, you better get some sleep,” I told her firmly. I grasped the remote for the TV, turning it off, and then grabbed the remote for her bed.
“Nah, I wanna party still,” Dahlia slurred, her eyes falling shut.
I lowered her bed, leaving it a bit high like she liked before turning to Tallon.
“Get her another pillow will you?” I asked him, and he nodded, heading straight for the closet. We were lucky she had been placed in one of the high-end, private rooms they had, probably due to Giovani pulling some strings, I supposed.
Tallon handed me the pillow, and I fluffed it out before sticking it under her head. She sighed in relief, her eyes barely opening as she glanced at me softly.
“You’ll leave me?” she asked, gently squeezing my hand.
“We’ll come back to check on you soon, I promise,” I told her. “So just–”
Her head fell to the side before I finished. She was completely out. I laughed quietly, glancing at Tallon, who smirked.
I held her hand a little longer, brushing my hands down her cast.
She was okay. We got her back.
*Giovani*
It was cute the way Olivia appeared reluctant to leave us alone. She kept sending me glances, the worry in her eyes sweet but unnecessary. I could tell what she was thinking.
But there was no need for it. Alessandro wouldn’t do anything if he knew what was good for him. And if he was stupid enough to try, there was no way he could even land a punch on me.
I wasn’t the Don for nothing.
Gabriele nodded at her to leave, and she sent me one last glance before she exited through the doors. As soon as Olivia disappeared from sight, Alessandro whirled on me with a dark glare.
“What did you need, Alessandro?” I asked distantly as he once again directed his misplaced anger at me. He really needed to get a handle on his temper.
I blamed his birth father.
“What the fuck happened here? Tell me everything and leave nothing out,” he demanded with all the tact of a bull in a red textile shop.
I glanced at Gabriele, and we shared the same look. This was a conversation that was best had in private.
Gabriele motioned to one of our men who stood by, and he nodded in response. They would keep the civilians away from us and the conversation quiet.
This was going to be messy after all.
“Fine, what do you want to know?” I sighed, taking a seat.
“Start from the beginning,” he demanded.
“Okay, God created man–”
“You know what I mean, asshole,” Alessandro scowled in reponse, sending me a dirty look.
It was funny to me.
I shrugged and thought back. “There’s been some unusual activity around the city–Russians. We didn’t expect them to be back, but they were giving us all kinds of hell. I’d had no intell to signal they’d arrived until about the same time that Olivia and Dahlia moved to Florence.”
“Should’ve known they were targeting her the entire time,” Gabriele scoffed.
“We only knew Dahlia became involved once she started seeing someone, a boy named Lorenzo,” I told him, leaning back in my seat casually. “So I investigated him like any good cousin would. There was some activity near the boy’s apartment, so I warned her to be careful and not see him anymore. But she didn’t listen.”
“Where were her guards?” Alessandro growled. “Are you so incompetent that you just let her sneak out of the compound unattended?”
“Of course not.” I rolled my eyes. “I had three men on her at all times. The night she was taken, Gabriele and two other men were watching her, but there was a problem over in the Piazza.”
“We got a tip from one of our men that they’d spotted the Russians,” Gabriele explained. “We now believe it was an insider trying to lure our men away. Two of them went to investigate, and only one came back alive.”
“So you just left her there? With only one guard?” Alessandro crossed his arms over his chest, looking highly like he wanted to punch both of us out. Too bad for him that he needed a lot more training to be able to take either of us.
“Gabriele was left alone to protect Dahlia due to the distress signal. Any active threat is to be dealt with immediately. Surely you remember that?” I raised my eyebrow at him.
He fell quiet, but I could see the steam coming out of his ears. He had no leg to stand on here, and he knew it. We did exactly what we could. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel bad about it, but I’d handle the situation by following protocol, and the Russians had taken us by surprise.
“Once the two left, Three men came in and took her,” Gabriele said slowly. “I notified anyone in the vicinity to follow them and confirmed her absence in the hotel room. The boy she had been seeing and his friend were both missing. Lorenzo is still missing, but his friend was found.”
“Let me guess,” Alessandro scoffed. “He was dead?”
“Floating in the river–accidental drowning, they said,” I confirmed.
“So why did it take two days before you finally found her?” Alessandro snapped. “With how many resources you have, it should have been easy to track her down.”
“We didn’t take two days. We were led to a dead end and then found her location the next day. They chose a very risky spot. If we had made any kind of move sooner, we would’ve been putting all of us in danger. These weren’t novices, Alessandro,” I said, still a bit annoyed at how much they made us run around.
The feeling of helplessness as we found the warehouse empty was something I wouldn’t be forgetting. And when I caught these bastards, they would pay for it dearly.
“You still should’ve–” Alessandro raised his voice as he rounded on me angrily, but I raised my hand, stopping him in his tracks.
I pinned him with a glare. “Stop. Passing around blame isn’t going to do anything. We got her back. She’s okay, and she’s getting the best treatment possible. There’s no point in thinking of what you would’ve done instead or what you think I should’ve done. Focus your anger on where it belongs–the Zaytsevs.”
“Zaytsevs?” Alessandro frowned, confused as he took a step forward. “I thought they were all dead.”
“Not quite,” I said, “The family was huge back in the day. While the original head of the family is dead, and he had no children who survived, there are still a lot of people running around with the name. We believe a man named Dimitri Zaytsev is involved and possibly pulling the strings, but it’s impossible to know who the mastermind behind it all is now.”
“We also know they’ve got connections, a lot of them. This wasn’t a rush job or just an opportunity for them. This was planned,” Gabriele said slowly. “They will attack again.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said calmly.
We knew their game now, and we would be ready for it. I was never letting this happen to anyone else again. Those bastards had breathed their last breath.
Alessandro sighedt, leaning against the wall as he took all of it in. There was more, but he would have to deal with the Cliffs Notes version.
Silence fell upon us, and my eyes naturally traveled to the families going in and out of the waiting room. We’d been here for hours now. Some families had left while different families had entered. It was like a revolving door.
A group of kids were playing with the wooden blocks building a tower, and a smile crept up my face. I missed the days when the three kids were younger like that, when they’d play like there was nothing bad in the world.
I glanced at the curly-haired brat in front of me, lost in his thoughts. Even Alessandro had been innocent once upon a time, if a bit spoiled. But this life corrupted everybody.
Except Olivia, it seemed. But she’d never really been part of it like the Valentino kids.
