CHAPTER TWELVE

Dante's POV

May 2012

"Are you sure it's tight enough?" I questioned, glancing in the rearview mirror to verify that the car seat I had installed that morning was secure. The car had only been moving for three minutes at school zone speeds, but I was not above taking any precautions now that my daughter was finally able to come home. "I might have missed a latch or buckle or something. Maybe I should pull over again just to check."

"Don't you dare," Lulu warned me from the back seat. "The nurses said that she's going to need a bottle in an hour, and it might take me forty-five minutes to make it the right way. We can't afford any more stops if you're only going to drive thirteen miles per hour."

"I'm holding steady at 15, baby," I teased, grinning at her in the mirror before returning my attention to the road. "I just think there is validity in taking things slowly with our baby in the car. We've had enough mishaps this year."

Gabriella was now just over a month old, and we had spent every night of that month in General Hospital. In a lot of ways, this was the beginning of parenting. We had yet to change a diaper, make a bottle or pull an all-nighter without a team of nurses and doctors available to walk us through it. My mother insisted that the nerves I was feeling were normal for a new parent, but I was unaccustomed to feeling so out of my element. And without any new leads on Theo, I was going to have to master fatherhood under my father's roof.

Watching my father arrange security for my daughter made me realize how lucky I had been that my mother had kept me out of his life while I was growing up. Even as I was driving my new family home from the hospital, there was a car right behind us being driven by none other than Jason Morgan. That was not how I had imagined that moment to be. I was glad to have his assistance in keeping Gabriella safe, but since the moment she was born, there was always someone there guarding her. I was starting to feel smothered, and I could only imagine how Lulu felt. She had been dealing with guards throughout the entire pregnancy.

"It's strange having her out in the open like this without an incubator around her," Lulu commented with a yawn. "Is it horrible that this whole parenthood thing is just starting to hit me now? I have been so in love with her all this time, but it seems bizarre to me that we're in charge of this little person now."

"Are you intimidated, Lulu Spencer?" I questioned with a chuckle. "I never thought I would see the day…"

"As if you're not," she quipped.

"No, I own up to my incompetence. It took Lucky an hour to teach me how to put that car seat in the car. Poor guy is probably off somewhere hiring a team of nannies to help me figure this out."

I pulled into Sonny's driveway and heard a small groan coming from the backseat. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I realized that Lulu was slouched in the seat like a suspect who had just been arrested. "You alright?"

"Do we have to go inside?" she sighed. "I should have let you drive slower. I am not mentally prepared for this."

"Hey, at least Gabi is sleeping. We'll take her inside and get a nap before we have to deal with Brenda and Sonny."

As soon as the words came out of my mouth and I put the car in park, our daughter started crying, as if she knew where we were and hated it as much as her parents did. Lulu leaned over her car seat and tried to soothe her, but the cries only got louder.

"What do I do?" Lulu asked me nervously. Her faith in me was surprising, because I had no idea how to stop Gabriella's crying. "Should we drive around more?"

"We're parked in," I reported, looking back at Jason's now vacated car. "We'll just take her inside and figure it out."

I got out of the car and opened the door to get Gabi out of the car when Jason approached. He didn't say anything, but the look on his face demonstrated that he knew we were in over our heads. I had to ignore him, so turned my attention back to Lulu and Gabriella. I said a silent prayer that she would successfully remove the car seat without undoing all of my hard work from earlier that day.

"Can you please take the diaper bag inside and make her a bottle?" Lulu requested as she struggled with the seat.

I obliged and followed Jason inside, diaper bag in tow. When he opened the door, a huge banner reading 'Welcome Home Gabriella' greeted us. Underneath stood my father, Brenda and all of my siblings. "Surprise!"

"Where's the baby?" Morgan questioned.

"Lulu is bringing her in momentarily," I answered, hoping that the surprise party would not overwhelm her anymore than it did me. "She's a little fussy."

"There's an understatement..." Jason mumbled.

"Oh, well I should go out and help Lulu," Brenda offered, stepping forward.

While I knew that Brenda helping out was only going to aggravate Lulu, I didn't want to have everybody in the family to see just how unsure we were with our daughter. I let Brenda go outside and set the diaper bag down to locate the formula.

"How can I help?" Kristina asked.

"Are you an experienced bottle maker?" I questioned.

"Definitely," she replied quickly, grabbing the diaper bag out of my hands and bringing it straight to the kitchen.

"How are you holding up?" Michael questioned as the rest of the group headed into the living room for what appeared to be an extravagant surprise party. "I know this is not how you pictured bringing her home."

"No it's not, but I have to make sacrifices to keep my family safe," I answered robotically. It was my new mantra. Most of the people in our lives were vocal in the opposition to our post-hospital living arrangements. Lulu and I were not any happier about it than they were, but we didn't see any other option.

"It's only temporary. We are getting closer to finding the Balkan. I can feel it," Michael reassured as the front door opened and Brenda flew in with Gabriella in her arms. Lulu trailed behind with the empty car seat in her hands and irritation on her face. Our daughter was still exercising her vocal chords with enthusiasm.

"Kristina is making a bottle. She really wanted to help," Michael explained. I appreciated my brother's attempt to stand up for me, but I knew that Lulu's irritation was not with me. The worst part about living in my father's house was going to be Lulu's annoyance with Brenda.

"I'll take her to the kitchen and get that bottle," I offered, reaching for my daughter from Brenda. Before I could get her, Lulu intercepted the infant.

"No, Dante, I'll do it," she sighed before carrying Gabriella out of the hallway. I realized that maybe she was irritated with me.

"Trouble in paradise?" Brenda remarked.

Up until that point, I had tried to give my father's wife the benefit of the doubt, but at that moment, I was seeing why Lulu was so annoyed with her. Instead of giving her an answer, I shook my head and followed Michael into the living room.

Lulu's POV

While I was incredibly grateful to Kristina for making a bottle for Gabriella, I was even more excited when she decided to leave me in the kitchen alone with my daughter for the feeding. I didn't want to be annoyed with Dante and his family, but I was so overwhelmed. I had hoped to come home with Gabriella and having a little time to pretend that everything was okay. But now, we were thrown into a Corinthos family gathering. When my phone started vibrating in my pocket, I was reminded of the other reason for all of my anxiety.

I struggled to maneuver my hands so that I could reach for the phone and set it on the table. But in that process, the bottle slipped, causing Gabriella's calm to be shattered. She started to cry again, and I found it much more important to soothe her than retrieve my phone off of the floor. I was impressed with my ability to quiet the baby in a few moments, but not quickly enough. I heard somebody walking towards the kitchen and groaned. Apparently everybody knew that I was incapable as a mother.

"We're fine!" I called. "No need to check on us."

"It's just me," Abby announced as she entered the kitchen. "And I'll leave if you want me to, but I thought you could use a friendly face."

"Thanks," I grinned, feeling my frustration subsiding for a moment. "Are they all out there consoling Dante that he's stuck raising a baby with someone as inept as me?"

"You're doing great," she encouraged. "And it looks like Gabi is too."

"Olivia keeps telling us all about how babies are perceptive, how they can feel our stress," I argued. "So she's probably going to grow up a mess because the first month of her life has been nothing but drama."

Before Abby could come up with an appropriate lie to appease me, my phone started buzzing against the floor again. I had been successfully concealing the constant text messages, e-mails and phone calls from Dillon. While he had not come back to visit me in person since our last encounter in the hospital, he found a way to interrupt every moment of my day.

At first, his messages were short. He'd send short notes about how he missed me or asking about Gabriella. But as time passed and I refused to answer, he started to send longer correspondences full of promises for the future. What I thought was a crush was becoming a full-fledged delusion. So when Abby reached down to the ground and picked up my phone, my breath caught in my throat.

I watched in silence as she read the latest message. I definitely would have prevented Dante or Lucky from reading them to spare the waste of time going after Dillon would cause, but part of me wanted Abby to be involved. I needed somebody to help me figure out how to get Dillon to back off.

"How many unread messages are on there?" I asked in a whisper.

"More than I get in a day," she answered. "Mind telling me what all of this is about?"

I finished feeding Gabriella, filling Abby in on every interaction Dillon and I had in the past months and rocking my daughter to sleep in the next forty minutes. Abby was fairly silent through the entire explanation. She did not seem the least bit surprised, which shocked me. With all of the chaos surrounding Theo Hoffman, I didn't think that anybody would have noticed Dillon's crush on me.

"Why am I getting the feeling that you are already aware of everything I've been telling you?" I asked after I completed my rendition of the events.

"To be honest," she started, reaching forward to take Gabriella from my arms, "It wasn't hard to figure out that Dillon is in love with you. I just didn't realize he had been so up front with you about it."

"I've been trying to let him down easily, but he won't hear it. And the baby just compounds it. He sees Gabriella as a second chance for us to raise a child together."

Abby took a deep breath before she continued. I could tell that she was trying to phrase her next question carefully.

"Do you think it's merely a coincidence that Dillon is back in Port Charles trying to make a family with you at the same time that you had Dante's baby? Not to mention the fact that Theo Hoffman is out to hurt Sonny in the worst way possible."

"You think Dillon is working with Theo Hoffman? No, that's not possible…"

"Think about it, Lulu. The night you went into labor, who was holding us hostage? None other than Dillon's crew from his so-called documentary. Who's to say that Dillon hasn't been giving Theo all of the information he needs to get close to you and the baby on a silver platter this entire time?"

I did not want to accuse Dillon of terrorizing me, even if his come-ons were borderline harassment. He had always been good to me. But everything that Abby was saying made sense. There was too much there to be considered a coincidence.

"If Dillon is involved, it has to be blindly. He would never do anything to intentionally hurt me or my family."

"Even so, don't you think it's worth telling Michael and Dante everything you just told me? We should let them look into it."

"Absolutely not!" I argued, my voice rising a little higher than I had intended. "Dante is driving himself crazy with worry about money and keeping me and Gabi safe. He already doesn't trust Dillon, but if we tell him that there's a chance he's connected to Theo, he'll kill him. Michael has the same temper, and you know it."

"So what exactly are we supposed to do about it? We can't just let this continue."

I leaned down to kiss my daughter's forehead before picking up my phone.

"I have a plan to make all of this go away. I just need your help."