Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 40
The engagement reception continued beneath chandeliers and armed vigilance. Fay moved from donor to donor, discussing the clinic while Daniel performed devotion at her side. Only the tension in Lorenzo’s smile suggested the message on his phone had changed the evening.
Kent noticed too. He intercepted Lorenzo near the bar and asked whether the Alden guards had identified the photographer. Lorenzo replied that the trail was cold. The lie was polished, but Fay had learned to recognize the moment powerful men began arranging truth around an advantage. Lorenzo kept one thumb pressed against his silent phone, guarding the message even while pretending none had arrived.
She joined them before Kent could press harder. Lorenzo pocketed his phone and praised her speech, particularly the promise that chosen family deserved respect. The emphasis made Daniel stiffen. He knew, as Fay did, that his secret had become part of Lorenzo’s private calculation.
Fay asked directly whether Ivan had contacted him. Lorenzo denied it. Kent’s gaze turned lethal, but the ballroom contained too many witnesses for open confrontation. He told Lorenzo that betrayal would end more than the wedding agreement.
Lorenzo smiled. “Then give my daughter a reason not to feel imprisoned.” With that, he left the reception early, taking half the Alden delegation with him. The departing guests created a visible wound in the united front they had just presented to the press.
Kent ordered security to copy Lorenzo’s communications before his convoy reached the gate. Fay objected that spying on her father would provoke him. Kent said Lorenzo was already provoked and Ivan had offered him something valuable enough to consider treason.
Their argument followed them into Kent’s office. Fay accused him of answering every uncertainty with surveillance. Kent accused her of defending a man who had kidnapped Colin. Both spoke from fear until neither was listening. The closed door magnified every sharp word, making the office feel less like a command center than a room where two frightened people had forgotten how to ask for reassurance.
Kent caught himself first. He stepped away from the desk and asked what Fay proposed. The question disarmed her. She suggested approaching Lorenzo openly and offering a place in the clinic foundation, giving him public recognition that did not depend on Ivan or criminal territory.
Kent considered the idea. It would not neutralize greed, but it might expose whether Lorenzo wanted his daughter’s affection or merely the power attached to her. He agreed to delay the phone intrusion for one night.
Fay’s anger faded, leaving exhaustion and the lingering heat of their dance. She thanked him for including Colin in the photograph. Kent said Daniel had spent four years believing honesty would cost him his family. A single picture could not repair that failure, but it could begin.
The admission drew Fay closer. She stopped on the opposite side of the desk, aware of the promise separating them. Kent looked tired, wounded, and more human than the man who had first threatened her inside a prison interview room. His vulnerability did not erase that man, but it proved he was capable of becoming someone else.
He asked whether she regretted the engagement announcement. Fay said she regretted the lie but not the clinic or the protection it gave Colin. Choices in this world were rarely clean; she was learning to judge them by who retained the power to change course.
Kent came around the desk. He did not touch her. “And can you change course with me?” he asked. Fay answered that she had not chosen a course yet. She had chosen thirty days in which to learn whether desire could survive truth.
He accepted that answer, but the restraint cost him. Fay saw it in the tension of his hands and the deliberate space he maintained. Wanting him while he respected the boundary was entirely different from wanting him while he ignored it.
A burst of laughter sounded in the corridor as guests departed. Someone tried the office handle, then moved on. The near interruption reminded Fay that secrecy would turn every future moment into a risk shared by people who had not consented to it.
She said any relationship between them could not remain an affair conducted behind Daniel’s back. Kent agreed. When the engagement ended, he would face his son, Lorenzo, and every captain who called their attraction weakness. Until then, he would keep the promise.
Fay reached for his hand—not as part of a lesson, but because she wanted contact. Kent allowed her fingers to close around his and did nothing more. The simplicity of the gesture made her eyes sting.
She rose onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. It was not the kiss both of them wanted, yet it crossed the edge of Daniel’s rule. Kent turned his face instinctively, and their mouths came within a breath before he stopped.
“Go,” he said roughly. Fay left before either of them revised the meaning of restraint. In the corridor, she found Daniel standing motionless beside the door. His expression told her he had heard enough to know how close the promise had come to breaking.
Before Daniel could speak, every phone in the estate sounded with the same news alert. The library photograph had been released beside a headline accusing Fay of seducing her fiancé’s father—and the article named Ivan Kozlov as the anonymous source prepared to prove it.