Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 31
Daniel’s gaze fixed on the diamond glittering beneath the surveillance monitors. For one terrible second, Fay could hear nothing but the blood pounding in her ears. She had no memory of removing the ring, yet there it was, proof that something had happened behind a locked door with the man she was supposed to call her future father-in-law.
Kent opened the door wider before suspicion could grow teeth. He told Daniel that Fay had wandered into a restricted room and that they had been discussing security. His voice was perfectly even, but he did not reach for the ring. The omission felt more intimate than if he had touched her.
Daniel stepped inside and looked from the frozen image of Fiona kissing Kent to Fay’s flushed face. Understanding arrived with startling speed. Instead of demanding an explanation, he laughed and complained that his father’s collection of private recordings was reason enough to burn the entire system.
Fay knew the joke was a rescue line. She crossed to the console, slipped the ring onto her finger, and said she had removed it because the new setting pinched. Daniel accepted the lie for the benefit of the guard stationed outside, though the hurt in his eyes told her the conversation was only postponed.
Kent erased the footage from the screen. He ordered the guard to replace the faulty lock on the pantry staircase and escorted them upstairs as if nothing unusual had occurred. At the landing, his hand hovered near Fay’s back without touching her, then fell before Daniel could notice.
Daniel waited until they reached his bedroom and locked the door. Colin was gone, the bed neatly made, but two coffee cups and a discarded textbook revealed how recently he had left. Fay stood beside the window, suddenly ashamed of bringing another secret into the one room built around Daniel’s own.
“Are you sleeping with my father?” Daniel asked. The bluntness stole every prepared denial from her. Fay told him no, because it was true, but the answer sounded weak even to her. Daniel asked whether she wanted to, and silence betrayed her more completely than words.
He paced once across the rug, dragging a hand through his hair. Fay expected anger or disgust. Instead, Daniel looked frightened. Their arrangement protected Colin, but it also protected Fay from Lorenzo and tied two families together. If she and Kent crossed the line, the alliance could collapse around everyone they loved.
Fay promised she would not endanger Colin. Daniel stopped pacing and said Colin was not the only person in danger. Kent did not fall gently, forgive easily, or surrender control once he considered something his. Daniel had spent his life watching people mistake his father’s attention for safety.
The warning should have cooled her attraction. Instead, Fay remembered Kent stepping back when she asked for space, admitting jealousy without turning it into an excuse, and offering her the choice to reveal herself behind the door. Those moments did not make him good, but they made him more complicated than Daniel’s fear allowed.
Daniel saw the argument forming and shook his head. He was not asking her to hate Kent. He was asking her to understand that his father’s rare tenderness could be more dangerous than his temper, because it made people volunteer for cages they would have resisted if the bars remained visible.
Fay touched the ring. She admitted she had watched the recording because she was jealous of Fiona. Saying it aloud filled her with shame, yet Daniel only sighed. He had suspected the attraction since the prison interview, when Kent had returned furious at everyone except the woman who challenged him.
“Then why agree to marry me?” Fay asked. Daniel answered that he had believed the tension would burn itself out. Kent had girlfriends; Fay wanted a normal medical career; and neither of them seemed foolish enough to detonate a family alliance. Now he was less certain about the final point.
A soft knock interrupted them. Colin entered carrying his coat, but the easy warmth in his face vanished when he saw Daniel’s expression. He began to leave until Daniel caught his wrist and pulled him inside. The instinctive gesture exposed a love far more honest than the diamond on Fay’s hand.
Fay apologized for making their protection more fragile. Colin said she was not responsible for carrying everyone’s secrets without wanting anything herself. Still, wanting Kent was not the same as trusting him, and trust was the only currency in the house more valuable than blood.
Before Fay could answer, Colin removed a folded note from his pocket. A man had slipped it beneath his windshield wiper outside the university library. The message contained no signature, only a photograph of Colin and Daniel kissing in a parked car and a time for a meeting the following evening.
Daniel went pale. Exposure would not merely humiliate him; it would weaken his claim as heir among captains who measured masculinity by violence and obedience. Worse, whoever possessed the photograph could destroy the engagement story before Lorenzo signed the revised alliance.
Fay wanted to take the threat directly to Kent. Daniel refused. His father might protect him, but Kent’s protection often began by deciding which freedoms the protected person no longer required. Daniel would not let Colin become another guarded guest who needed permission to breathe.
They agreed to investigate quietly. Fay would ask Fiona whether any rival family had been watching the estate, while Daniel traced the number printed on the note. Colin would stay inside until they identified the blackmailer. It was a fragile plan constructed by three people whose public lives were already lies.
Fay unfolded the note one more time and noticed a faint watermark beneath the meeting address. It was the crest of the Alden family. Before she could warn the others, her secure phone lit with a message from Lorenzo: *Bring Daniel’s secret to dinner tomorrow, daughter, or I will bring it to Kent myself.*