Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 16
Daniel’s question remained suspended over Kent’s desk. Outside the office windows, the taillights carrying David and Janeen away vanished beyond the gates, but Daniel continued staring after them as if Fay might still be inside the car. “Do I really have to marry her?” he asked again, no longer bothering to hide his dread.
Kent leaned back in his chair and studied his son. Daniel had inherited his height and dark coloring, yet none of the hard edges that command had carved into Kent. He was clever, educated, and capable of charm, but he still approached duty as a trap someone else had designed.
“You have been promised to Fay Alden since childhood,” Kent said. “Finding her restores an agreement both families thought impossible to honor.” The marriage would bring Alden money, territory, and political connections into the Lippert organization at a moment when rivals believed Kent’s imprisonment had weakened it.
Daniel crossed his arms. “That doesn’t answer me.” Kent’s mouth tightened. In his world, strategic necessity was an answer; personal preference came afterward, if at all. His son’s insistence on separating the two exposed how far Daniel remained from the life he had been born to inherit.
“Then answer a question of mine,” Kent replied. “Do you want her?” Daniel looked toward the window. His hesitation was too long and too careful, the same hesitation Fay had seen whenever intimacy entered their relationship. Kent noticed it now with a father’s sharpened suspicion.
Daniel described Fay as kind, funny, and intelligent. She was generous with people who had done nothing to deserve it, and stubborn whenever she believed someone was being mistreated. He spoke warmly, but not like a man consumed by the woman he intended to marry.
Kent’s fingers tapped once against the desk. “That sounds like a recommendation for a therapist, not a wife.” He asked whether Fay stirred any hunger in him, whether he had ever struggled to keep his hands away from her. Daniel flushed and told him to stop.
The reaction interested Kent more than an answer would have. He remembered Fay’s teeth catching her lower lip, the lavender at her wrist, and the heat that had moved through him before he learned her identity. Wanting her had been effortless. Daniel’s restraint seemed less like respect than absence.
“Is there another woman?” Kent asked. Daniel shoved both hands into his pockets and denied it. The lie was polished but incomplete, built around the technical truth that Colin was not a woman. Kent heard the evasion without yet seeing its shape.
“You kept Fay secret from me,” Kent continued. “You disappeared from family events, avoided every introduction I arranged, and still never brought her home. Why?” Daniel said he had wanted one relationship untouched by the Lippert name, an explanation containing enough sincerity to be useful.
Kent reminded him that secrecy had ended. Lorenzo Alden’s missing daughter could no longer return to an ordinary apartment or psychology office. Every criminal family in the city would soon know her face and calculate what harming, marrying, or kidnapping her might achieve.
“That is why she needs the Lippert name,” Kent said. Daniel challenged him at once. Fay needed protection, he argued, not another man deciding what she was permitted to do. For one instant, anger made him look like the heir Kent had been waiting to see.
Kent rose and crossed to the window. He admitted that Fay had agreed only because David and Janeen required protection from Dean and anyone who discovered the Alden connection. Her consent had been purchased under pressure, but the danger behind that pressure remained real.
Daniel stared at his father’s reflection in the glass. “You made her destroy her family to prove herself.” Kent corrected him: Fay had convinced them to leave so they could survive. The distinction sounded cold, yet Daniel knew enough about their world to understand the threat was not imaginary.
Guilt softened his anger. He had introduced Fay to the Lippert name before either of them understood what her blood meant, then betrayed her while asking her to protect his secret. Now she was alone in his family’s house because every man around her had taken something.
“Does she know you’re discussing her like an asset?” Daniel asked. Kent’s silence answered. Fay had been taken upstairs to recover, though grief was not something a locked guest suite could contain. Daniel imagined her believing he had helped arrange every cruel detail.
Kent returned to his desk and opened a folder bearing the Alden crest. Engagement announcements, security arrangements, and legal instruments were already being prepared. The machinery of alliance had begun moving before either intended spouse entered the conversation.
“If I agree,” Daniel said slowly, “David and Janeen remain protected. Fay gets her own money, her own rooms, and the freedom to continue her career when it is safe.” Kent’s brows lifted. His son was negotiating at last, and every term centered on Fay rather than himself.
Kent agreed in principle but warned that a public engagement required credibility. Daniel would escort Fay, defend her, and convince enemies that the Lippert heir valued his future wife. Any sign of deception would make her a target and expose whatever else Daniel was hiding.
Daniel accepted, though the word sounded like a sentence imposed on them both. As he turned toward the door, Kent delivered one final warning: “If there is someone else, end it tonight.” Daniel froze with Colin’s name burning behind his teeth, realizing the marriage meant choosing which person he was prepared to betray next.
