Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi -
Chapter 388 -
*Olivia*
After a couple of minutes of banging on Dahlia's door, she finally yanked it open. "What?" she demanded.
I burst into helpless giggles at the sight of my best friend. She'd clearly been asleep, but it seemed she'd passed out before getting all her makeup off, so black lines smeared down from her eyes, and that soft mauve lip color she'd found at an Italian boutique before we got locked inside smeared up to meet it. Her hair was a rat's nest, tangled so aggressively it stuck all the way up from her head in places.
"Did Tuscany wipe you out, Dolly?" I asked through laughter.
She patted her hair, wiped at her face, and winced. "Did you wake me up in the middle of the night to make fun of me for being tired?"
I bounced on my toes as I remembered why I was here. "Absolutely not! Let's get you cleaned up and I'll tell you."
She huffed and opened the door a little wider. "This better be good, Olive. I need my beauty sleep."
I laughed again, near giddy with relief at how soon this was going to be over. "I promise it is."
Dahlia let me lead her into the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom, sit her down on the edge of the tub, and begin working a comb through her hair while she scrubbed off the remnants of her makeup. For a moment, we worked in companionable silence. I stared around at the sleek white and silver of the bathroom and thought back to all the times we helped each other get ready or clean up across childhood. At this point, I knew her face as well as my own. So much of our time here in Italy had been spent in chaos, or worse, with me lying to her. I savored this moment of peace, where I had only good news to share and knots to untangle.
"I'm so glad I came here with you," I said quietly.
Dahlia twisted in my grip to smile at me. "Wouldn't have it any other way. Now can you please tell me why I'm awake at three in the morning?"
"Gabriele woke Gio and me up, and I was feeling vindictive." I shrugged, trying and failing to maintain my poker face.
She swatted my leg and moved back into position so I could finish her hair. "Liar. You said you had something good."
"Alright, alright," I said. "So you know Dmitri?"
"Olive, you're a goddamn tease, and if you don't tell me what you know now, I'm gonna... gonna...." Dahlia cast around the bathroom for some worthwhile threat. "I'm gonna wax your legs while you're asleep!"
I held up my hands. "No need to resort to violence! I'm just excited."
She turned to face me so I could see her pout. "Then let me be excited with you."
I put the comb down for a moment and sat next to her. "They know where Dmitri's gonna be. Gio and Gabriele are upstairs planning an attack right now." I took a deep, shivery breath. "They're gonna wipe them all out at once, and this is going to be over."
Dahlia whooped and leaped up from the edge of the bathtub. "For real? For real, actual real?"
I nodded, and a smile stretched tightly across my face. In the office with Gio and Gabriele, the news had felt violent, like a threat we finally got to carry out. In the late-night quiet of Dahlia's bathroom, the safety it promised finally crashed over me, and tears pressed against the backs of my eyes.
We could go back to school. We could live our lives. I could go to sleep at night without dreaming of my eventual kidnapping.
As the tears threatened to well over, I looked at Dahlia, doing the cabbage patch in the middle of her enormous bathroom, a bit of mascara still smudged under one eye and her hair still sticking up in places, and broke into a choked laugh. "Just a few more days, and we'll have survived," I said.
She quickly sat down next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. "Yeah, we will. And I've been really scared. I'm not gonna say I haven't been. But now you get to experience the best-well, only good part of having your life threatened."
I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at her. "There's a good part?"
She squeezed me. "Yup. The good part only comes once it's over, but now we get to go back out into the world and really appreciate the lives we have."
I laughed. "Now who's the sap?"
"Still you!" she declared. "I'm going to appreciate my life by sleeping with half the guys in Italy!"
We giggled together, and then a moment of quiet fell.
"You know," she said slowly, "getting Dmitri out of the way doesn't mean you have to stay-doesn't mean we have to stay, I guess."
I stood and grabbed the comb. I hadn't thought of that. For weeks, it felt like the only thing was stopping Dmitri. I had no time to think about what I might want my life to look like after he was stopped. Threats like this would come again. They'd plagued Dahlia's childhood, and now I had to decide if I wanted that for myself.
Or for my children, someday.
"No." I began untangling her hair once more. "I guess it doesn't."
Another moment of quiet passed as Dahlia scrubbed the remainder of the makeup from her face.
"Do you want to?" she asked finally.
I thought back to the dream Gabriele had woken me up from, little Enzo and the twins. I didn't want that right now, but my heart ached at even the thought of one of those little dream children being hurt or scared. And then I thought of Gio, the way he'd led me into his office with all the surety in the world, the way he looked at me when I told him I was coming with him. I wanted more of that. I didn't know how I could ever let it go. "Do you?" I countered.
Dahlia sighed. "I've always dreamed of living in Italy. Not just for college, but for my whole life. Find some handsome Italian man, settle down." She laughed. "I guess you've got me beat on that front." "I'm not exactly settled down," I protested.
"You've got a handsome Italian in your bed every night. What more settling could you want?"
The conversation Gio and I'd had after Tuscany sprang to mind, the future we'd laid out together. But that wasn't for now. If I wanted that, I had to be patient.
"Fine, fine. Have your plans changed?" I worked through a particularly difficult knot, and she let out a hiss of pain.
"I don't know. I got kind of used to not receiving death threats and having my brother kidnapped, but...."
I finished the last tangle and laid the comb down. "Done!"
She smiled at me, and I thought about sitting down beside her, but I still had too much restless energy. I began straightening the perfume bottle next to her sink for something to do with my hands. "But what?" I prompted.
"But running away feels like letting them win-not just Dmitri, but everyone who wants to take the Valentinos down, everyone who ever said I was too silly to achieve my dreams." She braced her hands against the tub and dropped her head back to look at the ceiling. "I hate letting other people win."
I nodded. "I get that. But at a certain point, is safety more important than other people's opinions?"
She picked her head back up, and I met her eyes in the vanity mirror. "Do you think it is?"
I hummed as a moved the bottles into color order. Purples over here, blues over there. I was stalling, and we both knew it.
"Olive?" she prompted.
I turned to face her properly, leaning on the counter. "I don't know anymore. A week ago, I would have said absolutely. But I learned about the Dmitri stuff because Gio let me into a briefing with Gabriele."
Dahlia's mouth dropped open. "A full briefing? In the office?" I nodded.
"That's big, Olive. The Don's office is, like, sacred. People are barely allowed in there to talk to him, much less be a part of meetings." She took a deep breath. "He really loves you."
"I know," I groaned. "And I love him, too. That's why I can't just leave."
She jumped up off the edge of the tub and pointed at me. "There it is! You can't leave. That's the first straight answer you've given me."
I buried my head in my hands. Dahlia was right, of course. I'd said it without thinking, but I never could have left, not really. Being away from Gio would have meant leaving a piece of my heart behind, and I didn't know how I would have ever survived without it. Through all the ups and downs, fights and scares, I couldn't imagine my life without him at my side anymore.
I peeked out through my fingers. "What about you? Are you going to stay?"
Dahlia laughed, loud and long. "If you're staying, Olive, how could I possibly leave? We're on this Italian adventure together, aren't we?"
I dropped my hands from my face and grinned at her. "We absolutely are."
A door thudded shut upstairs, and both of us looked up.
"I'd guess that's the office," Dahlia said.
"Could be Gabriele leaving," I offered.
She shook her head. "Only Gio slams that door, and Alessandro during his rough patch. Sounds to me like you're wanted back upstairs. Your husband's going to be lonely in bed otherwise." She waggled her eyebrows. I shoved her shoulder. "He's not my husband."
"Sure, you just share a room and a bed and secret mafia meetings in the dead of night. You're in a super casual relationship." Dahlia rolled her eyes.
"I didn't say we were casual, just not... that." I shrugged and looked away. I was nineteen, far too young to be married. I wasn't even thinking about being married. If someone had asked me before I moved here, I would have said that I wouldn't be married until thirty. I intended to have all the fun I could.
Dahlia scoffed. "You can't even say it. Go, crawl into bed with your totally regular boyfriend and be totally regular about the whole thing. I'll see you tomorrow."
I drifted out of her room and up the stairs. Gio and I hadn't been together nearly long enough to think about marriage yet, right? But these scant few months held more passion and romance than anything else I had ever experienced in my life before. I loved waking up next to him in the morning, slipping into the shower beside him, eating across from him. I loved him, enough to stay in Italy and get shot at for the rest of my life.
And I knew he loved me, too. He said it often enough, but if I had ever doubted him, the meeting tonight proved it. He was letting me into his life, letting me have a say if I wanted one. Sure, I was still learning the memory of my yell brought color to my cheeks-but he let me learn.
I trailed my hand up the banister and remembered the way he'd stroked my cheek when I left, the fire in his eyes. How could I possibly pass up an opportunity to have that forever?
But would he ask me?
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