Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
Was this the price?
To get my son back, would I really have to sacrifice my husband?
“No,” I snapped, tears flooding the corner of my eyes. I bit down on my bottom lip, unable to say anymore without bursting into another round of sobs. I was so exhausted, too tired to continue my life like this.
The peaceful life I wanted was nothing more than an unattainable dream.
“Carina,” I heard Gio whisper, heading straight for me.
I saw the edge of his shoes, the nice Italian ones he liked, but my eyes latched onto the tiny spots of red on top of them. Who it belonged to, I didn’t know, but I had a pretty good guess.
Like a glass bridge over a cliff, the fragile cracks finally broke through.
“I can’t,” I sobbed, hiding my face in my hands. “I can’t lose you too! I want my son but I don’t want to lose you to get him back! I just want him here, home! There has to be another way.”
Silence answered me and I sobbed even harder, knowing how utterly selfish I sounded, but when it came to the safety of my husband and my son, I would bear that badge with pride. I wanted us to be together, to be happy and safe and not have to worry about all this bullshit of mafias and death and war and terror.
“I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” I heard Dahlia remark quietly.
I vaguely registered the sound of her shoes on the ground and the screen door shutting behind her. Gio heaved a sigh, sounding as exhausted as I felt. He knelt on one knee before me.
“Carina,” he called out, that sweet lift in his voice he always had. He gently pried my hand from my face, giving me a sad smile as he cupped my teary face.
“I’m not giving up just yet, carina,” he told me. “Salvatore is going to try to get him back. Tallon and Alessandro are going with him to make sure he won’t betray us a second time. We’re going to get Elio back no matter what, and if all else fails–”
“No!” I shook my head, reaching out for his shirt and clutching it in my fists. “I won’t lose you! Not like this.”
His arms brushed against my shoulders, pulling me into his chest, and our foreheads collided gently. Gio’s dark eyes stared into mine, the depth of his love for me breaking through all of the stress and misery I’d been feeling. I took a deep shuddering breath, focusing on him as he used his thumb to rub along the inside of my wrist.
“If all goes to plan, you won’t,” Gio told me softly. “But I love you and I love our son more than my own life. I would give up my own life to make sure the two of you are safe, Olivia. There is no hesitation in my mind.”
“But–” I protested.
He shushed me, giving me a wry smile as he used his thumb to brush away my stray tears.
“But I will do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen. If all goes well, Elio will be back in your arms tomorrow night and we can forget this nightmare. We’ll all be safe and together.”
“And if it doesn’t?” I stared deep into his eyes, but we both already knew the answer. Gio just smiled, sad but loving as he gently brought my wrist to his lips and laid a tender kiss.
He didn’t say anything more, but he didn’t need to. I already knew everything he wanted to say.
“I’m going to meet Lorenz in two days,” Gio informed me quietly. “That’s when he won’t be there. Salvatore will lead Tallon and Alessandro to their base, and they will find Elio and bring him back safely.”
I shut my eyes tightly, breathing in the presence of my husband. His hands were freezing against mine when normally he ran warm. I could feel his fluctuating emotions in tune with mine like they were my own.
For a brief moment, I wished everything could go back to Elio’s birthday, to when Salvatore first showed up on my doorstep, claiming to be my father. If I had known then what I knew now, would I have made a different choice?
Would I have thrown him out of the gates, telling me to never come back? Would I have never let him in, to never give him the chance to rip my family apart?
Or maybe this all went much farther back than this, back to when I was a little girl, reading fairytales and dreaming of my father coming back on the back of a white horse.
Real life didn’t have such neat endings, packaged with a perfect bow. Happy endings were for storybooks. But I didn’t get a white horse or a knight in shining armor.
All I got was disappointment and more scars than I could count.
I don’t know what I would’ve told that little girl if I could go back in time, or what I would tell myself a year ago before I let Salvatore into our lives. The only thing I knew was that if we had another option, I would never let Salvatore anywhere near my Elio.
I could never trust him, not after all he’d done.
But right now, he was the only one who stood a chance at getting my son back, at least not without sacrificing my husband like a pawn on a chessboard. It was still hard to believe what my life had come to.
An impossible choice meets with an unthinkable decision.
There was no good answer here, just like it had been since the first moment I touched down on Italian soil. It was always one chaos after another, one crisis leading to another string of bad decisions.
I laid my head on my husband’s shoulders, feeling my heart cracking like porcelain as I struggled to hold myself together.
Was this ever going to stop?
*Olivia*
I stared blankly at the kitchen wall, rotating my wrist constantly as I stirred the frying pan I’d placed on the stove. I didn’t even remember what I had thrown in there, much less whether it was done or not.
Dazed, I was on the verge of dissociating as I waited for the food to cook. Half my mind knew that Maria always made breakfast, and the other half was certain I had to do this myself. In the middle were a bunch of thoughts my exhausted mind couldn’t even piece together.
The sunshine pouring through the window was mocking me, warning me how late it had gotten in the day. Elio was hungry, I was sure of it. I blinked, slowly, like I was trying to swim through molasses. Everything around me was running at different speeds, faster and slower than I’d like.
I swayed back and forth, humming one of the catchy tunes from Elio’s toy. I didn’t know why but it kept playing on repeat in my head, singing over and over like one of those repetitive tunes on the radio.
I blinked to keep myself awake, struggling to keep my balance as I swayed dangerously into the stove. Luckily, the heat wasn’t that hot and I didn’t feel even the slightest bit of warmth.
“Uh, Olive?”
I jolted, dropping the utensil in my hand. It rattled along the pan and I spat out, “Fiddlesticks,” as I stared at the wooden spoon in disappointment. What was I going to stir breakfast with now?
“You made me drop my spoon,” I pouted, glancing over my shoulder at Dahlia. “How am I going to finish breakfast?”
“Are you okay?” Dahlia asked, concerned, approaching me and leaning over my shoulder. She stared down at the pan of breakfast with an odd look on her face and then glanced at me, worriedly. “Did you even sleep?”
“Can’t remember. Why?” I yawned, reaching for the spoon. My palm hit something soft, cold, and gooey and I grimaced, glancing down to see what it was.
Oh, I’d put my hand on the frying pan.
“You’re trying to cook an unbroken egg… and is that one of Elio’s slime toys?” Dahlia raised an eyebrow, giving me a weird look. “Plus, the stove’s not even on, Olive.”
“Oh,” I said, glancing down at the supposed breakfast.
Sure enough, inside of the frying pan was an unbroken egg just sitting there and gooey green slime covering my hand. With my palm side to the bottom of the pan, if it had been on, I’d be suffering from third-degree burns.
“Sit down before you hurt yourself,” Dahlia sighed, shaking her head.
She grabbed the frying pan, plucking my hand out and pulling it from the stove. She put the egg back into the fridge and threw away the slime.
“But Elio’s hungry,” I said, watching her dazedly. “I’ve got to make breakfast for him. He’s probably crying right now–”
