Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 52
Fay closed her fingers around Grant’s badge without looking down. Fresh blood marked one edge, but Ivan showed no sign of injury beneath his immaculate suit. Across the table, Lorenzo continued arguing about the destroyed appendix, unaware that a second crisis had entered the room.
Daniel requested a private conversation with Fay. Lorenzo objected until Ivan reminded him that forcing the appearance of a courtship would damage their public value. The calculation worked where respect did not.
Inside the museum’s chapel, Fay showed Daniel the badge. Its identification number matched the task-force memo, but a scratch across the photograph suggested someone had tried to destroy it. Dried blood had collected inside the clasp, too much for a superficial cut and too little to reveal whether Grant remained alive. Daniel transmitted images to Kent’s command unit while Fay photographed the serial number through an offline camera in case the physical badge vanished.
Kent ordered immediate extraction. Fay refused. Ivan had handed her evidence in a room full of his own allies, which meant either he needed help or wanted to lead them somewhere. Leaving without learning which would waste the risk already taken.
Daniel sided with Kent. Fay invoked the agreed rule: she controlled the meeting unless physical danger emerged. A bloodstained badge suggested danger, Daniel argued. It did not prove the danger belonged to Fay.
They compromised on ten more minutes. Fay returned alone while Daniel positioned guards near the exits. Lorenzo had moved to the gallery, taking a call about the ports. Ivan waited beside an icon of a woman holding a sword.
He said Grant vanished after the failed raid. The badge arrived in Ivan’s hotel room wrapped around a bullet. Someone wanted him blamed for the agent’s disappearance or warned that federal protection had ended. Ivan had contacted three supervisors and received three contradictory instructions: surrender, remain undercover, and flee the country. The confusion suggested Grant had built private authority inside the task force that no official chain of command could safely untangle.
Fay asked why he trusted her. Ivan answered that he did not. He trusted the tension between her and Kent. She wanted truth badly enough to resist both families, while Kent possessed enough power to keep the evidence alive.
The observation felt invasive and accurate. Fay offered the marked drive, saying it contained Lorenzo’s current port proposal and proof that her father viewed her as part of the transaction. Ivan could authenticate it through his federal contacts.
He accepted the drive but warned that every federal system connected to Grant might be compromised. Fay said the choice was his. She had not concealed the marker’s existence because doing so would reproduce the manipulation she condemned, but she did not reveal its precise function either. Ivan studied the casing, recognized that it had been altered, and accepted the calculated risk. For the first time, he looked at her as a partner rather than a target—one capable of strategy without surrendering every advantage.
Lorenzo returned and proposed a toast to new beginnings. Fay asked whether Grant had ever worked for the Aldens. Her father’s glass paused halfway to his mouth before he denied recognizing the name. He recovered by asking why federal gossip belonged at a family dinner, then redirected attention toward the clinic. The effort was smooth enough to fool guests who had not spent weeks studying the small fractures beneath his charm.
Ivan watched him lie. The men had known each other far longer than their supposed introduction at the clinic. Fay realized their alliance might include a shared history neither intended to reveal.
The dinner ended without signatures. Outside, snow had begun falling in thin, sharp flakes. Daniel escorted Lorenzo toward one car while Ivan draped his formal jacket around Fay’s shoulders.
She almost refused, remembering how gifts could become claims. The night was genuinely cold, and the jacket contained no visible pocket large enough for a weapon. She accepted it for the walk to the car.
Ivan bent close and told her the Elise ledger had a missing final page. Grant kept it as insurance because it identified the person who ordered the safe-house leak. Ivan would trade that page only after Fay met him without Kent listening.
Fay said secrecy was exactly how men had manipulated her. Ivan replied that Kent would kill the source before allowing the truth to threaten his family. “Ask him whether he has ever murdered a federal officer,” he whispered.
Kent’s voice sounded through Fay’s earpiece, ordering her away. She stepped back from Ivan and returned his jacket. He did not resist, but his expression suggested the refusal disappointed him for reasons beyond strategy.
Inside the car, Daniel asked whether she believed Ivan. Fay said belief was premature, yet Kent’s immediate silence over the channel mattered. A simple false accusation should have produced anger, not absence. Daniel reminded her that silence could also mean strategy, but neither of them believed Kent would calmly allow another man to accuse him of murder unless some part of the accusation had already found its target.
They reached the mobile command unit. Kent stood beside a wall of screens, Grant’s badge sealed in an evidence bag. Fay asked the question exactly as Ivan had framed it.
Kent looked at Daniel, then at Fay. “Yes,” he said. “I killed a federal officer—and if Ivan is who I think he is, the man I killed was his father.”