Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 36
Fay kept pressure on Kent’s wound while the courtyard erupted around them. Guards shouted for an ambulance, but she ordered them to call the estate surgeon instead. A public emergency room would create records, witnesses, and a route for Ivan’s people to finish what the gunman had begun.
Kent tried to rise. Fay pushed him flat with one blood-slick hand and told him that for the next ten minutes, her medical judgment outranked his empire. His mouth almost curved despite the pain. Then his face drained of color, and the hint of humor disappeared.
David held Janeen behind the planter while Daniel ran from the house. One look at his father stopped him cold. Colin, pale beneath his bandage, caught Daniel’s shoulders and forced him to move—clear the hall, call the surgeon, bring the trauma kit.
The bullet had passed through, but the exit wound bled heavily. Fay packed it with gauze and monitored Kent’s breathing for signs of a collapsed lung. He remained conscious by stubbornness alone, answering her questions with clipped irritation whenever she checked his orientation.
“Who am I?” she asked. Kent’s gaze found hers through the chaos. “The woman ruining all my plans.” Relief struck so sharply that Fay nearly laughed. She told him sarcasm was an acceptable neurological sign and ordered him to keep talking.
They carried him into the infirmary on a rigid board. The surgeon arrived by helicopter, bringing blood and a portable imaging unit. Fay stepped aside only when professional credentials exceeded her training, then scrubbed in to assist because the understaffed team needed another steady pair of hands.
The procedure lasted less than an hour. The bullet had missed the liver and lung by a margin narrow enough to feel personal. Once the bleeding was controlled, the surgeon declared Kent fortunate. Fay looked at the blood soaking her clothes and thought fortune was an obscene word for inches between life and death. Her hands began trembling only after the final dressing was secured, as though her body had postponed terror until competence was no longer required.
Daniel waited outside with Colin and Fay’s parents. When she reported that Kent would recover, Daniel folded against Colin with a broken sound. David watched them, understood more than Fay had explained, and quietly positioned himself between the couple and the passing guards.
Janeen took Fay to change. In the guest room, she washed Kent’s blood from her daughter’s hands and said nothing until the water ran clear. Then she asked whether Fay could still pretend the attachment was harmless.
Fay admitted it was not harmless. When the bullets started, she had not thought about Daniel, the alliance, or the rules. She had thought only that Kent could not die before she understood what existed between them. The confession made the room feel smaller.
Janeen did not condemn her. She said desire became dangerous when secrecy stripped away accountability. If Fay chose any relationship with Kent, she needed an exit that did not depend on his permission and allies willing to stand beside her if he broke his promises.
The advice sounded remarkably like Fiona’s lessons about consent. Fay realized the women were not warning her away from wanting; they were warning her never to confuse wanting with surrender. The distinction gave shape to something she had been too frightened to name. Desire could be hers without becoming a debt, and love—if that was where this path led—could not be proven by how much freedom she abandoned.
Kent woke after sunset and immediately requested security reports. Fay confiscated the tablet from his bedside. She summarized the facts: the attacker was dead, her parents were safe, and Ivan’s involvement remained unconfirmed beyond the tattoo and card.
He objected to being managed. Fay replied that he managed everyone because uncertainty frightened him, and anesthesia did not make the pattern charming. Kent studied her clean clothes, then the faint blood beneath one fingernail she had missed.
“You saved me,” he said. Fay corrected him; the vest, guards, surgeon, and luck had all mattered. Kent insisted that her hands had held his life inside his body long enough for the rest to arrive. Gratitude softened his voice into something more dangerous than command.
Fay sat beside him and asked why he had crossed open ground instead of ordering a guard to protect her. He said there had been no time to calculate. His body had chosen before his mind could turn her into strategy.
The answer frightened him. Fay could see it in the way he looked toward the locked door, already searching for distance. She laid her hand beside his on the blanket without touching. “An impulse is not a command,” she reminded him, returning his own words.
Kent turned his palm upward. The invitation was silent and easily withdrawn. Fay placed her fingers in his, and the contact felt more intimate than every time he had trapped her against a wall.
He asked her to stay until he slept. Fay agreed on the condition that he would tell her about Ivan when he woke. Kent promised, though exhaustion blurred the word. Within minutes, his grip loosened and his breathing deepened.
Fay rose carefully, but a hidden panel beside the fireplace slid open before she reached the door. Fiona stepped through the secret passage, took in Fay’s hand still linked with Kent’s, and whispered, “If you stay tonight, Baby Fay, tomorrow nothing between you will be pretend.”