Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
I bit down on my bottom lip, swallowing the bitterness that threatened to come pouring out. I peeked through my arms, glaring at my own reflection in the window.
The brown eyes that stared back at me were covered in an ugly green haze, and I turned away, shutting my eyes tightly as I set my socked feet on the carpet. I gripped the floral-patterned blanket I’d placed under me, digging my fingers into the fabric.
This was all because I couldn’t keep my stupid heart under control—couldn’t keep it from leaping at the sight of the love I’d been deprived of for so long, even if it wasn’t directed at me.
I signed up to be a surrogate because I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to give families the gift that I never had—that I never would. And if it could help pay off my student loans in the meantime, well, that was just a bonus.
I had taken this chance to give good people the most precious gift in the world, good people like Olivia and Giovani.
And now I was ruining it.
I tenderly laid a hand over my belly where inside of me a baby—their baby, I reminded myself with a grimace—could be growing. All I had to do was my job. Carry the baby for nine months, hand it off, and get paid. That had always been my intention, after all, when I’d decided to make some extra money as a surrogate.
But all I could see was myself in that beautiful dress, that mansion with the chandelier glittering on my skin—his hands wrapped around my waist, his lips pressed to mine, and the baby… a baby who looked like me… held in my arms.
I choked on my own spit, slamming my teeth shut as a sob threatened to rise out of my throat, but I was used to holding back emotions when they had become too entangled.
I wanted that—I wanted a man who loved me, a family, and a baby of my own, a big house with a garden for them to play with all day long… people who loved me, who stood by me no matter what happened, and no stress about whether I could afford to eat that week.
But it wasn’t mine.
And I couldn’t take it from her.
The hopelessness settled over me, and I felt like a little girl again, hiding behind my mother’s door as I listened to her cry herself to sleep night after night, whispering the name of a man I never knew.
She’d driven herself mad begging for love from a man who would never give it to her. She’d spent her entire life trying to overcome the shadow he had left behind in her heart, and I was sure that eventually, that was what had killed her.
I knew better than anyone not to reach for things that weren’t mine. It was why I could never have a child of my own—could never start a family and bring a child into this world, not when I could barely afford to feed myself. I would end up just like my mother, sinking lower and lower into depression while that poor child had to watch me fade away.
I couldn’t do that, not when I knew how devastating it was.
Although….
I got to my feet, silently padding my way across the small bedroom as I headed for the closet. I fell to my knees, shoving into the one storage box I had kept. My fingers flew by through the few pictures and folders, notebooks from when I was young, and artwork my poor mother had hung onto. Eventually, I found it, pulling it from the mess of keepsakes–a school project I had made once when I was young and hadn’t learned how the world worked. It was a big mansion cut from a magazine, some celebrity I could hardly remember the name of, and stick figure drawings over the cutout.
I brushed my fingers softly over each figure–a daddy, strong and powerful, who worked to keep us safe, and a mommy, kind and loving, who was always there.
And a baby.
The longing overwhelmed me and in my mind, I didn’t see the dream I had given up any longer. No, I saw Giovani, so charming and kind, and I saw me, pressed to his side.
A shaky but hopeful smile made its way to my lips as I pressed a hand to my stomach.
And our baby.
My thoughts whirled at a hundred miles per hour, ideas and fantasies turning to cement. Who said I had to leave after the baby was born?
My admiration had morphed, and I couldn’t tell what was right or wrong anymore as a flare of new life burst into my chest.
They’d invited me into their lives–they needed me. I was the one pregnant with the baby, not Olivia. And even if he looked at her like that now, who was to say his mind couldn’t be changed?
He’d smiled at me and told me about the magnolia tree. He liked me well enough. He just needed a little push to see I was just as wonderful as she was.
And Olivia… as kind as she had been to me, she would be fine. She had everything, after all. What was one little thing taken from her when she had the world at her feet? She was young, and she still had college to go to, she’d told me. Once the baby was a little older.
She wanted to travel the world, to see art from Tokyo to Greece, she’d said. I was just helping to nudge her to what she really wanted. She couldn’t go to school or go see the world with a baby on her hip and a husband trailing behind her.
She could be happy without Giovani, without the baby. She could go see the world, and I could replace the void left in his heart… and we could all be happy.
I smiled shakily, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes as I stared at my childhood artwork. A little part of my mind was nagging me, a ringing bell trying to tell me something, but I ignored it.
My convictions held firmly, sealing away any more doubts or fears as I realized the solution would be so easy.
I would just have to pay a little more attention to the routines and dynamics of the household, find opportunities to slip in between them and solidify myself as a presence they couldn’t ignore, one they couldn’t live without. I had the baby after all.
And little by little, bit by bit, I could have everything I’d ever wanted.
They just needed a little nudging to realize it was what they wanted too.
*Giovani*
The smell of ink had soaked into every inch of the room as the leaning towers of paperwork surrounded my desk. Gabriele lay halfway on the chair, his legs propped up on one of the armrests as he lazily folded yet another paper plane.
It shot off into the air, immediately nosediving straight onto the desk.
I sent him a dirty look, brushing it onto the floor as I flipped my way through the intricate and detailed folder before me. A hundred more were waiting in the wings.
“Can I go home yet?” The complaint slipped out of his lips with an exhausted groan.
“No,” I snapped, automatically for the fourth time that night as I reached for the next file from the pyramid-shaped tower on my desk. Apparently, I wasn’t careful enough because as soon as I touched it, the entire tower collapsed to the floor, papers flying everywhere.
I growled, slamming my palms on the desk as I struggled not to lose my ever-weaning temper.
“Timber,” Gabriele said, delayed in a bored-like tone. He wasn’t even trying to read through the dozens and hundreds of files and research materials surrounding us anymore.
Instead of an office, it was more like we were swimming in a lake of paperwork—the worst kind of hell that could befall any person. Even with the two of us, we had barely made a dent, and it would take even longer to sort through the mess.
And I couldn’t assign something this important as grunt work. I had to personally go over every inch of this so nothing could escape my scrutiny. But even I had to admit, I wasn’t as young as I used to be. I was getting tired.
I sighed, a headache forming as I felt like somebody was jackhammering between my temples. I rubbed my blurry eyes, not even sure what I was reading anymore or if it was even in English or Italian. It could have been Latin for all I knew at this point.
“Can’t we just call it a night? Please?” Gabriele nearly begged, his arm dragging on the floor as he stared at me pleadingly. “We don’t need to be this extensive on one woman, Gio. If we haven’t found anything suspicious by now, I doubt we ever will!”
“Shut up,” I shot back, not willing to admit defeat quite yet.
Everything we could possibly want to know about Elena Greco was here within these four walls. Her whole life was summed up in black ink, and I was determined to find every little secret and every skeleton she’d hidden away in her closet, even if it killed me.
Even if they might actually not exist.
I sighed, groaning as I leaned back into my chair.
I’d rarely ever done such an extensive background on a person, especially a civilian, and though I kept trying to justify it, I knew I had gone overboard this time. Just weeks ago, I had promised not to go too far and risk upsetting my wife with the invasion of her privacy.
And here I was now….
