Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 47
Fay allowed the gunman to guide her deeper into the narrow service corridor without resisting. Resistance in the ballroom would invite a shot among civilians. The moment the door closed, she drove her heel backward into his knee and twisted away as Kent’s security instructors had taught her.
The gun fired into the ceiling. Fay reached the fire alarm and pulled it, flooding the corridor with noise and white emergency lights. Her attacker recovered quickly, striking her shoulder and dragging her toward the loading dock.
Ivan appeared at the far end with blood on his lip and one wrist still cuffed. He tackled the gunman before the weapon aligned with Fay. They crashed into a laundry cart, fighting with the efficient brutality of men trained beyond ordinary criminal survival.
Fay kicked the fallen gun beneath a radiator. Ivan dislocated the attacker’s shoulder and demanded to know who authorized the extraction. The man laughed through the pain. “Grant sends his regards,” he said before biting down on a hidden capsule.
Ivan forced his jaw open too late. The attacker convulsed and died as alarms echoed through the building. Fay stared at the body, recognizing the same method used by the van gunman at Kent’s estate.
Kent reached them with Daniel and a team of guards. He pulled Fay against him, checked her head and shoulders, then stopped when she said she could breathe. His control returned one visible layer at a time.
He turned his weapon toward Ivan. Fay stepped between them and said Ivan had saved her. Kent answered that the entire event could have been staged. Ivan, still handcuffed, suggested Kent thank him before inventing motives.
Federal officers flooded the corridor and ordered everyone to lower their weapons. Their commander claimed the raid targeted financial crimes and that the dead attacker was not part of the authorized team. His badge was genuine, his tactical gear matched theirs, and his radio had received the official channel. No one explained why a supposed agent carried poison or who had inserted him into the operation.
Ivan presented diplomatic identification and demanded release. The commander obeyed after a tense phone call, confirming that Ivan possessed protection extending beyond ordinary cooperation. Kent lowered his gun only when Fay placed her hand over his wrist.
They left before agents could separate them for questioning. Inside the armored car, Kent examined the bruise forming on Fay’s shoulder. His touch remained careful, but anger radiated through every movement. Fay described her escape in exact sequence, forcing both of them to treat her as a participant who had acted rather than a victim who had merely been recovered.
He accused her of underestimating Ivan. Fay said Grant’s man had attacked both of them. Kent replied that Ivan’s rescue purchased trust more effectively than any clinic tour. A staged threat remained possible.
Fay heard jealousy disguising itself as analysis. She asked whether Kent doubted her judgment or feared that she might choose Ivan after seeing evidence against Lippert operations. He said he feared both, then looked ashamed of the first admission.
Daniel interrupted before the argument sharpened. The official raid paperwork listed the wrong floor plan, suggesting someone redirected the team after authorization. A tactical annotation had been added after judicial approval, routing two agents toward the service corridor while the main force searched financial offices. Grant had used a legitimate operation to conceal an unauthorized kidnapping. The dead attacker was designed to vanish inside official chaos.
Back at the estate, Fay demanded the records Ivan had mentioned. Kent refused to bargain with a man who orchestrated fear. She reminded him that Elise’s death shaped the prison he built around everyone. If Grant caused it, truth could remove one brick.
Kent said truth would not resurrect Elise. Fay answered that secrecy had not protected the living. Daniel and Colin hid for years; Fay’s parents became targets without understanding why; and Kent nearly died defending a woman he still did not fully trust with information.
The words wounded him because they were accurate. Kent told Daniel to leave, but Fay asked him to stay. Their conflict affected the household, and privacy could not become a shelter for manipulation. Daniel hesitated between loyalty to his father and loyalty to Fay, then closed the door and remained beside it as a witness neither could dismiss.
Daniel remained. In front of his son, Kent admitted he had destroyed evidence after Elise’s death to keep federal agents from dismantling the family. That evidence could have exposed Grant, but Kent chose survival over justice.
Fay stepped back. The confession did not make Kent responsible for the murders, yet it made him responsible for protecting the system that buried them. Attraction could not answer whether she was willing to live beside that choice.
She returned the gate key and said she would spend the night with her parents. Kent did not stop her. He ordered a driver, then cancelled the order when she chose to leave with Daniel instead. The fact that he let her walk away did not repair the secret, but it prevented his fear from creating another injury on top of the first.
As their car passed through the gates, Daniel received a message from Colin. Federal agents had entered the estate through a sealed warrant, and the first room they searched was Kent’s private basement.