Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 37
Fay withdrew her hand as if Fiona had caught her committing a crime. Kent did not wake. Without his gaze on her, the infirmary looked ordinary—white sheets, monitors, medication pumps—yet the secret passage behind Fiona turned the room into another chamber of the life he concealed.
Fiona closed the panel and explained that it connected Kent’s bedroom, office, infirmary, and two emergency exits. He had built private routes because visible corridors made powerful men predictable. Fay wondered how many times he had appeared where no one expected him and called it control rather than fear.
“What did you mean about tomorrow?” Fay asked. Fiona said Kent had allowed Fay to see him helpless, and Fay had stayed without being ordered. Men like him treated voluntary tenderness as a deeper contract than spoken promises. He might deny it in daylight, but he would remember.
Fay insisted she had stayed as a clinician. Fiona glanced at their separated hands and spared her the embarrassment of laughing. She warned that saving someone could create a false sense of destiny. Gratitude, adrenaline, and desire were powerful, but none of them guaranteed compatibility.
They moved into the adjoining sitting room so Kent could rest. Fay asked why Fiona had shown her the hidden passage. Fiona answered that every woman involved with a man like Kent needed to know how to leave a room he believed he controlled.
The words held no jealousy. Fay apologized for watching the private recording and for resenting Fiona afterward. Fiona accepted the apology but said envy was useful information. It showed Fay what she wanted; it did not grant permission to take what belonged to someone else. She also warned that shame could be as distorting as jealousy, driving people to deny a desire until it emerged as recklessness.
Fay asked whether Kent belonged to her. Fiona smiled sadly. She and Kent had never promised exclusivity. Their arrangement had already been fading because he was increasingly present in body and absent in attention. Fiona would not pretend not to see where that attention had gone.
Relief and guilt arrived together. Fay said she did not want to hurt her. Fiona replied that hurt was not always betrayal. Sometimes people changed, arrangements ended, and honesty made the grief clean enough to survive.
Before dawn, Kent woke and demanded breakfast in his office. The surgeon threatened restraints if he attempted the stairs, so the Mafia king conducted business from bed with several armed captains gathered around the monitors. Fay remained only long enough to confirm his vital signs.
He stopped her at the door and dismissed everyone else. Once they were alone, he kept his promise about Ivan. Ivan Kozlov had built influence through smuggling, blackmail, and strategic romances. Rumor claimed he worked with law enforcement when it suited him and betrayed them when it did not.
Lorenzo had considered a trade alliance with Ivan months earlier. Kent blocked it by securing key ports, which turned a commercial dispute into a personal feud. Fay’s engagement would unite the remaining routes under Lippert control, leaving Ivan shut out of the city.
“So he wants the alliance broken,” Fay said. Kent nodded. Seducing her, kidnapping her, or killing her would each accomplish that in different ways. Ivan preferred seduction because victims often defended the man using them.
Fay heard the unspoken comparison. She asked whether Kent believed he was different. He did not answer quickly. At last, he said he had also used her engagement to strengthen his family, restricted her movement, and expected gratitude for protection she had never requested.
The honesty removed her anger’s easiest foothold. Kent said the difference he wanted to build—not claim—was that Fay’s choices would become real before he asked for anything more. Wanting him had to remain safe to withdraw. If her parents, profession, or physical freedom became the price of refusing him, then any yes she gave afterward would be worthless.
Fay moved closer to the bed. She asked what “anything more” meant. Kent’s gaze darkened, but his injured body kept him still. He said she had seen the downstairs room and understood enough to know control could be negotiated rather than seized.
She admitted her curiosity. The confession no longer felt like defeat. She wanted to understand why surrender appealed to people who were otherwise strong and why Kent needed rules in intimacy when he resisted them everywhere else.
Kent said negotiated control created clarity. Every limit was named, every signal mattered, and trust transformed command from threat into choice. He had failed to offer Fay that clarity outside the room, which was why he had no right to invite her inside it yet.
“Yet?” she repeated. A faint smile touched his mouth. He told her curiosity required education before experience, and education required brutal honesty about desire, fear, pain, and power. Fay could leave the subject untouched and nothing would be taken from her.
She considered Daniel, her parents, and the alliance resting on a ring she wore for appearances. Then she removed the diamond and placed it on Kent’s bedside table. “Teach me the rules,” she said, “and I will decide what I want.”
Kent’s eyes moved from the ring to her face. Before he could answer, the infirmary door opened and Daniel entered, carrying coffee. He saw the diamond beside his father’s hand and said quietly, “Tell me I’m not too late to stop this.”