Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“No more sneaking around, no more looking over our shoulders–we’re going to tell everyone.” He smiled, pressing a kiss to my palm. “I promise.”
Happiness burst around me like confetti falling from the sky. This is what I wanted, who I wanted to be with. To be able to go out there, to hold his hand and call him mine in front of everyone, that was what I wanted.
But I couldn’t deny the apprehension, either. What would Dahlia think? What would my mom think?
But as I gazed into the warm eyes of the man I loved, I realized none of that mattered. If they couldn’t understand how I felt, how happy he made me, then that was on them. It would hurt to lose their respect, love, and care after so many years of being together, but if I knew them as well as I thought I did, my happiness would matter more to them than any age difference or being the leader of the Italian mafia.
Though, I certainly could see their worries.
But my mom, Dahlia, Tallon, and even Alessandro–they were my family. I loved them just as much as I loved Giovani. Didn’t I?
He was my family too now. He held my fragile heart in his large hands, and he treated it like a precious treasure to be worshipped. I loved him more than I could ever put into words, more than I love you could ever mean.
Even if it was selfish, I didn’t want to let any of them go. I wanted to hold my loved ones close until my dying breath, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop me.
Or so I thought.
But said reason came knocking upon my door at five o’clock in the morning.
I paled as I heard the frantic knocking.
“Giovani.” It was Gabriele who called through the door, sounding more irritated than I’d ever heard him.
Giovani got to his feet, slid his pants on, and leaned down to throw me my T-shirt. I slipped it on and headed for the door as Giovani found his shirt and threw it on. It didn’t hide much without being buttoned, but it was good enough.
I opened the door just a crack, hiding most of my body behind the door. Gabriele stood there, breathing hard, as if he had just run a marathon.
“I need to see Giovani,” he said urgently. “It’s about Alessandro.”
*Olivia*
Giovani’s hand grabbed the door, blocking me from seeing Gabriele as he gently bumped me away from the entryway. He took over so easily that I didn’t even realize I had let go of the door and left it to him until I had backed away.
“We’ll talk outside,” Giovani said firmly, but I grasped his arm, shaking my head at the very idea.
“No, I need to hear this too,” I set my jaw, staring at him determinedly. I was not going to let him keep anything from me anymore. “No more secrets.”
He frowned, his eyes flickering to my bare legs and just the T-shirt I was wearing–no bra, no underwear. I rolled my eyes.
“I’ll cover up under the blankets,” I scoffed, heading for the bed.
Giovani watched as I crawled under the covers and pulled them up to my chest so I was completely safe from anything Gabriele might see.
“There,” I said, smugly. “Now, you can let him in.”
He sighed, opening the door and stepping to the side as he said, “Come in.”
Gabriele stepped inside, a stressed look about him with how his hair was tousled and clothes were ruffled. It looked like he had been grabbed and shaken by someone, but I had no clue who would even do that to him.
“Now, what’s so important that you had to burst into our room at five in the morning?” Giovani started, his arms crossed as he stared at Gabriele demandingly.
My heart fluttered as he called it ‘our room.’ I smiled to myself at the thought. Maybe one day, we could have our own room to ourselves.
But all those thoughts faded as Gabriele glanced at me with an apologetic look like he didn’t want me to hear the next part of what he had to say, and my heart dropped to my feet.
“Alessandro was taken,” Gabriele said bluntly.
Oh. I stared blankly at Gabriele, my whole body frozen as I tried to comprehend what he was telling me. Alessandro was taken?
It didn’t make any sense to me.
“What happened?” Giovani demanded, buttoning up his shirt in a hurry. He grabbed his jacket, getting dressed quicker than I had ever seen before.
I could only stare at the two of them, unable to say or do anything. It was like I had been frozen in time as the world around me kept turning, only I was left behind.
Gabriele ran a hand through his hair, sighing as he replied, “After we all left the meeting, Alessandro went to the bar downtown. He had a bodyguard with him, so I thought he’d be fine. He thought he’d be fine.”
“Dammit,” Giovani cursed, his hands gripped together. “How’d you find out he was taken?”
“I got a call from the phone of the guy he took with him,” Gabriele sighed. “I thought it was the bodyguard, but it was actually a man called Enzo, Russian accent. He works for Dmitri and was quite proud of sharing that fact.”
“Of course he was,” Giovani spat. “No doubt he had some kind of message for me?”
Gabriele nodded. “He said to tell you that he had Alessandro in his custody but that he’d give him back if….” Gabriele hesitated, glancing at me with uncertainity and then at Giovani like he didn’t want to say the last part.
“Just say it, Gabe,” Giovani demanded.
He sighed, clearly reluctant to share this part. But he’d always been loyal to Giovani. Even I knew that.
“I think it’s a huge mistake, and you’d be an idiot to listen to it,” Gabriele warned him firmly, then said, “But he said he’d release Alessandro if you gave yourself up as a replacement.”
“No!”
A scream tore from out of my throat before I could stop it, and the fear grew to a full-blown terror, infecting me until there wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t shaking, not from the cold but from the sheer thought of losing more of my loved ones.
Tears rushed down my cheeks like a never-ending river, and all my words bubbled up in my throat, choking me until I couldn’t breathe.
“Not again,” I whimpered, my voice hoarse and wet with tears as I gripped the comforter tightly in my hands.
First Dahlia and now Alessandro?
Were we going to have to keep going through this, with someone new taken each time until they killed all my friends? Would they take my entire family?
Last time, Dahlia had come back with a bullet in her stomach and years of trauma to overcome, but now with Alessandro, what if it was worse? What if they learned from Dahlia and just killed him now to be done with him?
Silence reigned around me, and though my vision was blurry through the tears, I could tell by his clenched fists that Giovani was one second from burying me in his arms.
A sudden terrible fear struck me. What if next time it wasn’t Alessandro, but Giovani, who was taken? Or what if he went through with this trade?
I buried my face in my palms, sobbing relentlessly, and it was Gabriele who cut through the chaos that was my mind.
“If you can’t handle it, cry somewhere else.”
His cold voice was hard and unrelenting, with not an ounce of pity or sympathy. I could feel his eyes on me, his annoyance.
