Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 378 -

*Olivia*

We trekked all over the house to try to replace Maria to no avail until Dahlia suddenly remembered her mentioning she had to go grocery shopping today, and we both decided it wasn't worth the effort of making drinks for ourselves. Instead, we tucked ourselves away in her room to sulk. I nestled myself under her blankets against her huge mountain of pillows, and she'd settled next to me.

After we burned out our first blush of rage ranting back and forth at each about how unreasonable Gio was being, and how unfair this was, and how we deserved to be able to make our dreams come true, a moment of quiet fell over us. "What do you want to do, Olive?" Dahlia asked softly. I looked at her, and while she didn't look scared like she had in the limo, I noticed deep bags under her eyes for the first time. I'd never seen her look so tired.

I sighed. I'd been spinning that question around in my mind for weeks, and I wasn't any closer to having a concrete answer than I had been on the first day I'd found the note in class. Even as furious as I was with Gio, I still loved him. I couldn't stop factoring him into my decision.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

Dahlia leaned up on her elbow. "You don't want to leave him." She didn't ask it like a question, but there was no judgment in her voice either.

I dropped my head back against the pile of pillows and stared up at her gilded ceiling. Every time I started getting used to the luxury of this lifestyle, I found another thing that surprised me. "Of course not, but I think it's a little more complicated than that now."

Dahlia laughed ruefully. "You can say that again."

"I feel like I keep getting asked what I want, but nobody else is offering opinions." I sat back up and looked at my tired, scared best friend. "What do you want to do, Dolly?"

She put her hands up, collapsing against her side of pillow mountain. "Hey, I was just trying to give you space to figure things out cause I'm more used to this life. You know I'll back you up, whatever you decide. But-" She bit her lip, clearly wrestling with the end of her sentence.

"But what?" I prompted. "We've been threatened and forced to drop out of college today. How much worse can it get?"

She sighed. "But I think it might be smart to go home, both of us. We came here to get the whole college abroad experience, and we're not exactly gonna get that cooped up in your boyfriend's militarized compound." Dahlia shrugged. "I definitely don't want to give up, but I do really miss feeling normal."

Those bags under her eyes jumped out at me again, and I laid down next to her. "You might be right."

That quiet fell again after we both admitted to wanting to leave. Having it all out in the open, not just shouted at me in the middle of an argument, felt peaceful. I could think about leaving, about wanting to leave, without my heart pounding in my throat and making me feel a little sick. Whatever ended up happening, I knew Dahlia would be by my side. Hadn't that been the whole point of going to Italy together in the first place?

I turned my head to look at her and found her already looking at me. "I love you, Dolly. I couldn't do this with anyone else."

She screwed up her face and shoved my shoulder. "You're such a sap."

Which, of course, I knew meant she loved me too.

At that moment, somebody knocked on her door, and she hopped out of bed to answer it. I sat up and crossed my arms, ready to face down Gio or Gabriele or whatever other asshole was here to tell me what to do. I wasn't going to let him talk down to me like he had in the dining room again.

'Or,' a small voice in the back of my mind nagged, 'you could hear him out if he's come to apologize.'

Dahlia swung open the door to reveal Gio and Alessandro. Behind them, I could just see Gabriele leaving out the main door. He waved as he went, and in his hand seemed to be the notebook paper in a plastic bag for safekeeping. Gio nodded sharply at him.

Dahlia positioned herself in the middle of the doorway with her arms crossed, not letting them in. "Have you come to apologize, or are you here to yell more?"

Gio sighed, and his eyes flickered to me. Certainly, the anger in them had dimmed, but I couldn't quite parse the emotion that had taken its place. "Neither," he said. "We're here with answers."

Dahlia glanced at me, and I nodded. Whatever answers they had, I certainly wanted to hear. She stepped out of the doorway and rejoined me on the bed. Gio stepped in and, after a moment's hesitation, Alessandro followed. The two of them stopped in the middle of the room.

"What's going on? What do you know? Can we go back to school?" I demanded.

"Do either of you know a student named Joey Mancini?" Gio asked, completely ignoring me. He'd barely even looked at me, and now he wasn't listening either? I took a deep breath, trying not to snap at him when he was finally offering me some information, and racked my memory.

"I definitely don't, but you're better acquainted with the male population, Dolly," I said.

Dahlia stuck her tongue out at me. "I've been out with a heaping handful of Joeys already, but I don't think any of them have the last name Mancinni."

Gio nodded, but Alessandro looked a little disappointed. I waited a moment, but even though Alessandro looked at Gio like he expected him to say something, neither explained any further. God, I hated feeling like getting a single answer required teeth-pulling, but clearly, I wasn't going to get anything if I didn't. Gio would just stand there with a distant look in his eye and nothing to say.

"Why?" I prompted.

Gio shook his head as if leaving a reverie and crossed his arms. "Our lab techs found that Joey Mancini left the first note. We're getting the second tested, but we were able to access his bank account information, and he received two ten- thousand Euro payments, one on the day you got your note," he nodded to me, "and the other today. It's quite likely he was responsible for both threats."

I swallowed. Joey Mancini-I had a name to put to the feeling of unsafety that chased me around my college campus at least. I wish I had a face. More than that, I wish we had the puppet master.

"So he's just some rando student they paid off?" Dahlia asked.

Alessandro shrugged. "I mean, not random. He shares classes with both of you, and he was going to have to drop out because he couldn't pay for next semester before this. I'd have picked him, too."

Dahlia launched a pillow at his head. "Don't congratulate our enemies like that."

Alessandro tried to catch the pillow but only succeeded in flailing his arms before it bounced off his nose. "I wasn't congratulating them! It was a lucky break."

"They've gotten a few too many lucky breaks," Gio muttered. He still stood in the middle of the room, unamused by the sibling antics, staring off into the distance like he was on another planet.

"He was in my class?" I ran through my memory again furiously. All of my general education classes were in big lecture halls, so I barely recognized half my classmates, much less knew their names. It would be so easy for somebody to sneak by me unnoticed.

I shivered. I didn't want to admit it, but perhaps Gio was onto something, taking us out of school.

Gio nodded. "Gabriele is going to replace him. If he is, as you put it, a random student, it shouldn't be hard."

I winced. I knew certain things had to happen, but I didn't want to think about what would happen when Joey got found. I still had nightmares sometimes about a few off-handed comments Gabriele had made about fingernails. I wanted Joey to stop threatening me, but I would be perfectly fine with him keeping all of his nails intact.

Dahlia grabbed another pillow, clearly preparing to launch it. "Okay, you've got the culprit. Does that mean we get to go back to school now?"

I was about to grab a pillow myself when Gio turned the full force of his attention to me for the first time since he stepped into the room. I could have drowned in his eyes. Love and attention and apology poured out of them, and I felt like I was floating over to him on a cloud..

"I've already called the school. You'll be able to resume classes next semester with no consequences."

I thudded back down to Earth. "Why? If you have the guy, why can't we go?"

I hated how whiny I sounded, but I didn't know what else to do.

Gio glanced at Alessandro and Dahlia, then back at me. I could tell he didn't want to answer me with an audience, but I wasn't much in the mood to concede to his whims.

"Carina, it's not safe," he murmured, voice pitched only for me.

Alessandro looked away, but Dahlia only put down her pillow, tucked her knees into her chest, and waited like we were her favorite TV show.

"But you know who did it," I insisted.

He took a faltering step closer. "They can replace someone else. And when we close this avenue, they're likely to get frustrated and try something more drastic. There's just no way I can keep you safe in a place with that many unknowns."

"I liked having a life of my own." I tried to keep my voice steady, to sound like a reasonable person making a reasonable argument, but I sounded like I was on the verge of tears.

"And I will figure out a way that you can have that again, just not right now. But please, carina." He extended a hand to me. "Come with me to our room so we can talk this over in a little more privacy."

I looked at his hand, hovering in the air. Dahlia thought we should go back to America. I thought that more days than not. Gio looked at me with eyes that overflowed with love and begged me for one more chance.

I just didn't know if it was safe to give it to him.