Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 442 -

*Giovani*

Olivia and I looked at each other in frozen silence as my phone rang. Anyone could be on the other end of the line, with any news about Elena and our baby. My stomach swooped. I had received endless calls describing death and torture over my years as Don of the Valentino family, and no ringtone scared me as much as that one at that moment.

She twisted and stared into my eyes. I saw my own worry reflected back at me, but with an edge of determination. She pressed a hand to my cheek and nodded, and suddenly, I was vaulting out of bed and scrambling to reach the phone before it stopped ringing. I didn't even check the display before hitting 'answer' and pressing the phone to my ear.

"What?" I barked. Nerves sharpened my voice, and I hoped I hadn't yelled at someone who didn't deserve it or wouldn't understand.

Olivia scrambled to the end of the bed and perched there, straining to hear over my cell phone's tiny speakers.

"I got something," Alessandro said. "I found her."

My eyes flew wide, and Olivia clapped a hand over her mouth. I sat down on the edge of the bed with her. She rested her head against my shoulder, likely to get closer to the phone, but the ease of sitting naked with her stole over me and settled my nerves. I wanted our baby back, but in the process, it seemed I might have gotten my wife back instead.

"Where?" I demanded.

"She's still in Florence." Alessandro sounded faintly surprised, and I couldn't help but agree. "At a friend's place." He rattled off an address.

"A friend?" Olivia said. "So she's got someone with her? Can we reach them?"

He hadn't heard her, so I repeated her questions into the phone.

"Well," Alessandro hedged, "not exactly. He's out of town, so she's got the place to herself, a whole house, and she's all alone in there."

I blew out a long breath. I'd seen this before, more than I liked. She was reacting like her man had been killed, even though I had simply rejected her, and of course, I was never hers to begin with. But all the women I knew who did stuff like this went in with an endgame, and that endgame usually had a body count.

"What do we know about the friend?" I asked. "Gun cabinet? Illegal weapons trade? Faulty fucking boiler?"

Olivia blanched and sat up as she followed my train of thought. "She wouldn't...."

I shrugged. I didn't think Elena would do any of the shit she did. I wanted to be prepared.

Alessandro sighed. "I haven't had a chance to do much background. He's a friend of a friend of mine, and all my friends are clean, but I didn't check acquaintances. All seems quiet in there for now, though."

"Noted." I pressed the phone to my shoulder and twisted to face Olivia. "What do you want to do?"

Olivia pressed a shaking hand to her cheek and shook her head. "I don't know. I think... I think we need to give her a chance, just talk to her, and let her explain. She's not part of your world, Gio. I don't think her brain would go where yours does."

I scrubbed a hand across my face. In this, the worst of all situations, Olivia still found a way to see the silver lining, to believe in people. It was what I loved best about her, and after everything, I couldn't deny that belief now.

I took her hand off her cheek and kissed it. "Alright, carina. We'll do this your way."

I put the phone back to my ear. "Here's what we're gonna do: you stay there for now. Don't go in, just watch. If she spots you and approaches, you can engage, but don't freak her out." I glanced at Olivia, who mouthed the word 'comfort.' I sighed. "Be reassuring if you can, but only if she approaches you first."

"Gotcha," Alessandro said. "Then what?"

Olivia took my free hand, and I felt her fingers shake in mine.

"We'll be there as soon as we can," I said. "We're going to talk to her. No one is to approach until we arrive."

"No one?" asked Alessandro and Olivia in unison.

I swallowed. "I'm sending a back-up team with the same instructions, just in case." We'd need to watch every exit in the house. We couldn't let her slip away.

"Consider it done," Alessandro said.

I hung up the phone.

Olivia quirked an eyebrow. "A back-up team?"

I shrugged helplessly. "This is a delicate situation, and I trust your judgment. We will do this your way. But if I'm right, I want people already in place to handle things."

"Handle things?" she repeated, her voice ticking up an octave. "Gio, do you mean you're planning to kill our surrogate? Kill our baby?"

Her eyes grew enormous, and her whole body began trembling. I folded her into my arms.

"That is not the plan, carina, I promise." I kissed the top of her head. "It's just security. It makes me feel better."

She took a deep, shaky breath. Her breasts pressed into me, and I realized we were both still naked. We had to get dressed, get moving. Elena seemed quiet for now, but I couldn't trust that would last.

I stood and held out my hand to Olivia. "How do you want to handle this?"

A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "No men with guns."

"Can we compromise on a few men with guns you can't see, and I will go in believing to the best of my ability that we can handle this by talking?"

She put her hand in mine. "I guess I can compromise. But you really have to believe it, Gio, or it's not gonna work."

I pulled her to standing, and we headed for the closet, hand-in-hand.

"I will do my best," I promised as I texted Gabriele to bring a discreet, five-man team to the address Alessandro had given me.

She shook her head. "I'm not joking. If you keep looking out the window, she's gonna know. She's been here. She's seen the armed security."

I put my hands up as she reached for a set of pale purple underwear.

"The windows are dead to me," I said. I wanted to keep joking around, wanted to see her smile, but I couldn't deny her argument made good sense. If Elena was twitchy or trigger-happy, any indication of backup could set her off.

I slipped into a pair of boxers, then a pair of jeans. Casual clothes seemed better for such a situation.

Olivia nodded and grabbed a pair of jean shorts.

"But it's more than that, Gio. I don't think I was wrong in the beginning. I think she's a genuinely good person who wanted to help people, and something happened. I don't know what that something was, and I want to replace out. Once we know that, we can figure out what to do next. I actually want to hear what she has to say, and I need you to want that, too."

Olivia turned to face me in nothing but shorts and a bra, and part of me wanted to sweep her up and kiss her, take her back to bed. I couldn't help but love her when she talked like this. When she talked to me like this.

"I want to hear her," I said, and was surprised to replace the words felt honest. "I should have been trusting your instincts all along. You were right about her falling for me more than I could control, so maybe you are right about her now, too." She crossed her arms and nodded. "Okay. Good."

I plucked one of my T-shirts off the shelf and wrapped an arm around her waist. "But I need you to keep me focused on us and our baby. She deserves to be heard, but I don't want to put her concerns above our family."

Olivia smiled shakily up at me. "I'm having a hard time thinking of anything else," she admitted. "I'm trying to believe in Elena, in that feeling I got in the office that first day, but part of me wants to say we should do absolutely anything to make sure our baby is safe."

I dropped a kiss on her lips. "That's why we're the perfect people to handle this. You believe enough for the both of us, and I have the ability to do anything we need. Between the two of us, Elena doesn't stand a chance."

She swatted me and pushed away. "Don't say that. We all stand a chance of resolving this without violence."

I nodded and swallowed down a smile as I shrugged my T-shirt on over my head. "Of course."

She grabbed a plain black T-shirt of her own, and as it settled over her shoulders, we looked at each other and burst out laughing. We'd picked the exact same outfit, except she wore shorts where I had on jeans, and my T-shirt fit a little looser than hers.

"Should I change?" I asked.

She bit her lip and shook her head. "I think it's a good sign. We're in this together, and we can face anything together."

She looped her arm through mine, and we marched through the halls of the compound. Dahlia caught up to us in the hallway.

"Alessandro called," she said breathlessly. "Are you going now? Should I come? Can I do anything?"

Tallon raced in from another room. "Ditto! Seconded!"

Olivia released me to lay a hand on Dahlia's arm. "You guys are sweet, but this is ours to handle. We made this mess. It's time to see if we can clean it up."

Neither of them argued, and something deep in my heart warmed to see just how easily the people who loved Olivia listened to her. Her face had taken on the sort of steady determination I saw from her only rarely but led inevitably to her getting what she wanted. As Dahlia squeezed her hand and looped back to the kitchen with promises of comfort food when we got home, I realized suddenly that I believed just as deeply that we could fix this problem with Elena without violence.

If anyone could do it, my wife could.

I sent one of the men at the door to pull the armored SUV around. The day outside was still stormy in the way of late summer in Italy, and a warm rain pelted the driveway. I stared out at the gray sky and took a deep breath. Olivia reappeared behind me and stuck her hand in my back pocket as the SUV pulled up.

Another moment of stillness passed between us, brimming with nerves and hopes and the desperate desire to get our baby back safely. Then, we moved to the car as one. I gave the address quietly, and the short drive passed in near silence. The rainy day whisked by outside, and the sound of the windshield wipers provided all the audio.

Finally, we reached the house, a low bungalow in old Tuscan style. Olivia took my hand and squeezed. Our wedding rings clacked together in a familiar, homey way.

"I love you," she said.

I squeezed her hand back. "I love you, too,"

The driver offered us an umbrella, which I took gratefully. I opened the door and the umbrella for us, then cuddled Olivia close to keep her dry. She fit so neatly under my arm as we picked our way up the front path. One glance behind us told me Alessandro was parked across the street, and I could just barely see him nod through the quickly picking up rain. A light shone on the left side of the house, and a figure moved back and forth in front of the window.

We approached the door, a heavy, dark-wood affair with no windows, and Olivia knocked with a shaking hand.

A moment passed, then another. My heartbeat began to pick up speed.

"Elena?" I called. "It's us."

Olivia squeezed my arm.

Another long moment passed before the door swung open.