Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 25
Kent stood behind his desk with one palm braced against the wood, each breath short and useless. His pupils were wide, his shoulders rigid, and blood dripped from his other hand onto a field of broken crystal. When Fay stepped inside, his gaze found her without truly recognizing who she was.
“Kent.” She kept her voice low and closed the door without locking it. He ordered her out, but the words fractured between breaths. Fay ignored the command and moved slowly into his line of sight, careful not to touch him while his body interpreted every movement as a threat.
She told him to look at the green stone in her pendant. His eyes resisted, darting toward the windows and the dark corners of the office. Fay repeated the instruction, giving his mind one fixed detail to choose over the danger it had invented. At last, his stare caught on the emerald at her throat.
“Tell me five things you can see.” Kent swore at her. Fay accepted the insult and asked again. His jaw clenched, but he named the pendant, the desk, the lamp, the door, and the blood. The final word pulled his attention to his injured hand, and shame flashed across his face.
Fay guided him through four things he could feel and three he could hear. Rain. The clock. Her voice. With every answer, his breathing lengthened by a fraction. The ruthless composure he wore for the world did not return all at once; it rebuilt itself painfully, piece by piece.
When he could stand without gripping the desk, Kent reached for a handkerchief. The cut was too deep for linen alone. Fay retrieved the medical kit from a cabinet she remembered seeing earlier, then waited for permission before approaching. He gave a curt nod that looked harder than commanding an execution.
She cleaned the wound in silence. A shard had opened the heel of his palm but missed the tendon. Kent watched her fingers rather than her face. The intimacy of tending him unsettled Fay more than the blood, because there was no seduction in it—only trust he had not meant to grant.
“Panic attack,” she said when the bandage was secure. Kent’s head snapped up. He rejected the phrase as if diagnosis were an accusation. Men like him did not panic. They assessed danger, acted, and survived.
Fay said the body did not care about rank. Chronic threat could trap a nervous system in combat long after a particular danger passed. The attack was not cowardice, but it was real, and pretending otherwise would give it more power. Kent’s expression hardened with every clinical truth.
He demanded to know why she had been wandering outside her room. Fay told him she heard the crash. He accused her of hunting secrets for Lorenzo, and the timing struck too close to dismiss. She wondered whether he knew about the private request or merely expected betrayal from everyone.
“If I wanted a useful secret, I would have brought a camera instead of bandages.” Fay met his suspicion directly. “Your hand is injured. Your mind is exhausted. Neither fact makes you weak, but refusing help might make you dangerous to yourself.”
Kent gave a humorless laugh. Help, in his experience, arrived carrying a price or a listening device. Fay offered professional referrals outside both families, discreet treatment, even remote sessions under false records. He rejected each possibility before she finished describing it.
For one raw moment, anger left his face. He said he could not disappear into therapy, a hospital, or a retreat. If the world believed Kent Lippert had become unstable, his enemies would put him in a lake before sunrise and divide his empire before Daniel identified the body.
The brutality of the image silenced Fay. Kent did not sound grandiose; he sounded informed. His authority was not simply privilege but a structure that required him to appear invulnerable every waking second. The crown Fiona had mocked as “Big Boy” was also a locked iron collar.
Fay asked when the episodes began. Kent turned away and said the interrogation was over. She recognized the shift: the king had returned, furious with the witness who had seen the man underneath. He straightened his cuffs, hiding the bandage beneath his sleeve.
Then he crossed the distance between them. “You tell no one.” His voice was quiet again, which made the command more dangerous. Not Daniel, not Fiona, not the guards—and certainly not Lorenzo. If a whisper escaped the room, Kent would know exactly where it began.
Fay refused to be threatened for helping him. Kent planted both hands on the desk behind her, trapping her without contact. He said secrecy was not punishment; it was the condition that kept everyone in the estate alive. His closeness sent heat through her even while his words warned of death.
She made him meet her terms. She would preserve confidentiality unless she believed he posed an immediate danger to himself or someone else. In return, he would stop treating her clinical judgment as an enemy operation. Kent said she did not possess the authority to negotiate with him.
“Then bleed alone next time,” Fay replied, stepping beneath his arm and walking toward the door. His uninjured hand closed gently around her wrist. The touch lacked force, yet it stopped her more completely than violence. He agreed to her terms—and made her promise once more that Daniel would never know.
Back in her bedroom, Fay understood why Lorenzo had wanted a secret and why she could never give him this one. Kent’s vulnerability was not gossip; in their world, it could become a death sentence. But it was also the first piece of power no man had handed her or written into a contract, and at dawn she carried it straight toward Kent’s office to bargain for her freedom.
