Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 339 -

*Giovani*

After a long day of strategizing with Gabriele and going over every possible outcome of what could happen, it was finally time for us to head out and make the exchange. Although I was too experienced to feel truly nervous, I had to admit it never got any easier to purposefully put myself in danger. But it was the right call. No matter which way I looked at the situation, the right thing to do was to exchange myself for Alessandro. This was part of my duty as the Don. I would always protect my men and my family, even if it meant putting myself in danger.

Everyone was standing in the kitchen to say our goodbyes and silence had fallen on us. The joking and laughter from breakfast were gone; the seriousness of what we were about to do had taken it away. Olivia's eyes were red and puffy and I could tell she had been crying all day. I felt horrible that she was so anguished over me, and I felt even worse that I had been forced to spend the day strategizing instead of comforting her. I wished that I could somehow take her pain away, but I didn't want to lie to her anymore. As much as I hated to admit it and would never outright tell her, she was right to be worried. There were a lot of variables going into what I was about to do, and Gabriele and I had discussed several different ways in which this whole operation could end up with me dead.

I grabbed Olivia's hand and pulled her a little ways away from the group so that I could properly say goodbye to her. I wished we had more privacy, but I was glad that at least we didn't have to hide how hard this was from everyone else. I desperately hoped that these weren't our last moments together, but in case they were, I wanted to lay everything out there. She needed to know exactly how I felt about her. "Carino," I murmured.

She kept looking at the ground, her sweet face screwed up as if she was trying not to cry. I held her face gently between my hands and tilted her chin slightly so that she would look into my eyes. "I love you. It's going to be okay."

She took a deep, shaky breath and wrapped her arms around my waist. Finally, she was making eye contact, but she was blinking hard and fast, as if she was trying to force her tears not to come. I was touched by how brave she was trying to be. I knew she didn't want to add any further stress to the situation by making me worry about her.

"I love you too, Gio," she said in a small voice. "Please come back to me. Promise me you'll come back."

If everything did go wrong, I didn't want my last words to her to be a lie. Instead of promising to come back, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to hers. I let my kiss say everything for me. She leaned into me, parting her lips so that I could deepen the kiss. I tangled my fingers into her hair and tilted her head toward me to gain even more access. Her kiss was everything. The world fell away as her kiss lit a fire of determination inside of me. This would not be the last time I held my sweet Olivia. I would not let the Russians take me from her.

I knew we needed to get going, so I forced myself to pull away from our kiss and pressed my lips to her forehead one last time before gazing into her eyes. I wanted to memorize those eyes so that every time I closed my own, I could see her. She forced herself to smile at me, but it didn't reach her eyes. Even in sadness, they were beautiful.

She was holding a brave face, but I could see that she was about to crumble. As we walked away, she turned to Dahlia and let out a loud sob onto her shoulder. I itched to run over and pull her to my chest so that I could stop her tears, but I knew there wasn't any time for that. Instead, Dahlia patted Olivia's back and made soothing sounds. I was so glad they at least had each other.

With one last glance behind us, Tallon, Gabriele, and I made our way to the cars. I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus. I couldn't let myself be distracted by Olivia anymore.

"I'm glad that your secret's out," Tallon interrupted my thoughts.

"Me too," I told him earnestly. I couldn't imagine how difficult that goodbye would have been if Olivia and I had been pretending we were just friends. When we got into the car, Gabriele turned to Tallon to go over the strategy we had worked on one last time.

"We're taking you to our men at the warehouse," Gabrielle explained to Tallon. "You're going to be in charge of them so that I can focus fully on Giovani and Alessandro. I'll be covering both of them during the exchange. I know you know how important it is to keep everyone focused on our primary mission first-get Alessandro out. Once Alessandro is safe, we can then discuss tracking Gio and infiltrating their safe house. It's important that nobody gets wrapped up in emotion and tries to save Gio too soon. If anybody fucks that up, we could end up getting Gio killed."

Tallon nodded seriously. I trusted him to be able to lead our men well. He was incredibly mature for his age and had already proven himself to be a strong asset to our organization. I was glad he was one of the people who had my back. Before long, we had arrived at the warehouse where our crews were already waiting. Everyone was dressed in black combat gear and looked ready to go to war. I supposed in a lot of ways, this was a war.

I handed over the tracking device that Tallon would need to locate me. It was a simplistic geo tracker that would go unnoticed if the Russians thought to do any scans of me, but it had military-grade accuracy. Tallon would know where I was within less than an inch.

"Alright, this is where we leave you," I told Tallon, shaking his hand and patting him on the back.

Tallon nodded and gave a small salute as I walked away with Gabriele.

On our way to the shipping yard, Gabriele and I were mostly silent. We had done countless dangerous operations, but this was one of the only times that I was going to purposefully put myself in danger without anyone there with me. It required total trust in Gabriele's competence.

"Look, if anything goes wrong-" I started to say before Gabriele cut me off.

"Don't talk like that, Gio. Not right before. We've planned it all out. It's going to be fine."

"No, let me say this. If anything goes wrong, you need to at least make sure the Russians don't make it out alive."

"You know they won't," he said, a hard glint in his eyes. "If anything goes wrong, those bastards will pay with their lives."

"Good." I nodded. "And promise that you'll take care of Olivia."

"Of course. She'll always be safe under my watch," he promised.

I sighed, hoping it would be me taking care of her but relieved to know that Gabriele wouldn't let anything bad happen to her if I wasn't around. We continued the rest of the drive in silence, too tense for conversation. It was foggy as we got closer to the docks. I didn't like how low the visibility was, but Gabriele and I had prepared for this. We had prepared for everything. It was time to put our plans into motion.

At first, we didn't see any other cars in the shipping yard. The lack of vehicles only made me more tense. I didn't like that the Russians could be anywhere. There was a lot of open space interspersed with shipping containers and small buildings that were perfect for people to hide behind. Gabriele and I were like fish in a barrel at this point. Knowing that I was about to willingly hand myself over to the Russians was starting to make me feel like an animal on the verge of being caged. 'You're not going to be caged forever,' I reminded myself. 'Tallon will come for you.'

Gabriele slowly made his way around the car until he was standing behind me, looking all around and ready to cover me if needed. I walked toward the docks. There was a shipping container that could easily be hiding a few dozen men only fifty feet away from us, but I ignored it. I doubted that the Russians would ambush us. Something about Enzo made me think that he wanted the satisfaction of seeing me hand myself over by choice.

Finally, we crept past the shipping container and could see that there wasn't anybody on the other side. We looked around, still waiting and wondering where the fuck Enzo was.

Just as I was about to circle back toward the car, Enzo came walking around a small building by the docks, dragging Alessandro with him. Alessandro's eyes were wide, and Enzo had a gun shoved roughly against the back of his head. I wished I had some way to communicate to Alessandro that it was all going to be okay; I could tell that he was confused and concerned about the fact that I was here.

When he was roughly twenty feet in front of us, Enzo swiftly kicked the back of Alessandro's knee, forcing him to kneel on the ground. Gabriele let out a small gasp behind me. It was extremely unsettling to see Alessandro kneeling with Enzo pressing a gun executioner-style to the back of his head, but I forced my face to remain emotionless.

'This is all a big show,' I thought. 'He's just trying to see how far he can push you before you snap.'

I knew that Enzo was hoping Gabriele and I would lose our minds and try to pull off some sort of rescue mission right here and now. He probably had several of his guys hidden around the area, just waiting to start shooting. Unfortunately for him, he miscalculated how well we had planned this out. We had been prepared for the fact that he might try to rough up Alessandro right in front of us. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting Alessandro out and getting me in. I made eye contact with Alessandro and tried to communicate to him that he needed to remain calm. His face was twisted in fury, and I could tell that he was on the verge of losing it, but in order for our plan to work, he just needed to do what he was told.

Once Enzo seemed satisfied with his shitty treatment of Alessandro, he looked up at Gabriele and me.

"Well, well, well," he said slowly, as though he had practiced this moment. "Hello, Giovani, so nice of you to join us."