Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 28
Fiona led Fay through the kitchen and out a narrow side door concealed behind the pantry. Beyond it lay a private garden enclosed by tall hedges, with grapevines curling over a cedar pergola. After days of armed corridors and locked gates, the pocket of green felt almost illicit.
They settled at a wooden table while Fiona opened a bottle from Kent’s vineyard. The wine was dry, bright, and expensive without announcing its price. Fay accepted half a glass, determined to keep her judgment clear while Fiona decided which truths were safe enough to share.
Fiona confirmed that she and Kent had been lovers for years. They were not exclusive, engaged, or secretly waiting for the right moment to marry. Their arrangement offered affection and pleasure without promises Kent could weaponize against himself.
Fay tried to sound neutral when she asked whether Fiona loved him. Fiona studied the wine in her glass and said loving Kent was easy; expecting him to behave like an ordinary man was how women got broken. He offered protection more readily than tenderness and dominion more readily than trust.
The word echoed Fay’s morning negotiation. She asked why Fiona tolerated being one of several women. Fiona corrected her gently: tolerance implied powerlessness. She stayed because the arrangement suited her, and she left whenever it did not. Choice was the difference between surrender and consent.
Fay looked toward the mansion. She had been confusing the visible chains of the Mafia with the invisible boundaries people built inside it. Daniel protected Colin through deception. Fiona protected herself through rules. Kent protected everyone by controlling them until protection became another form of harm.
“And what protects Kent?” she asked. Fiona’s expression lost its playfulness. She said Kent believed being feared was protection enough. Anyone who saw beneath that armor either became precious to him or dangerous, and sometimes he could not tell the difference.
Fay remembered blood on crystal and the grip around her wrist. She said nothing. Fiona watched her too closely, then changed the subject by asking whether Fay had ever wanted something that frightened her precisely because she wanted it.
Before Fay could answer, her phone vibrated. Janeen’s name glowed on the screen, but the secure-call application failed before connecting. Fay rose, frustrated, and said she needed to find a stronger signal. Fiona pointed toward the kitchen and warned her not to use the west staircase.
Naturally, the warning made Fay notice the staircase for the first time. A narrow door near the wine racks stood slightly open, revealing stone steps descending beneath the house. She intended only to close it until she heard a man’s strained voice rise from below.
Fay paused. The clinician in her recognized fear; the prisoner in her recognized secrecy. Kent’s empire had put people in danger long before she arrived, but walking away would make ignorance a choice. She slipped through the doorway and descended far enough for the garden light to disappear.
The basement corridor was unexpectedly elegant, paneled in dark wood and lit by low amber lamps. Several doors carried electronic locks. At the far end, one remained ajar, and Kent’s voice emerged from it—calm, measured, and colder than anything Fay had heard upstairs.
He questioned a man who had sold information about the estate’s security rotations. Through the narrow opening, Fay saw the traitor seated beneath a bright light with his wrists restrained. Two guards stood nearby, but neither touched him. Kent needed only words to make the man shake.
Fay should have left. Instead, she listened as Kent described the families who could have died if the information reached Dean’s allies. His menace was real, yet so was the fury beneath it. Every threat he issued seemed built around preventing another loss he refused to name.
The captive insisted he had acted for money and begged for mercy. Kent offered a choice: permanent exile with nothing, or continued life under Lippert supervision after providing every contact involved. It was not justice, but it was less brutal than Fay had feared—and more absolute than any court.
One guard removed the man through another exit. Kent remained in the room, staring at the empty chair. On the wall behind him hung restraints, masks, and polished instruments whose purpose Fay could not fully identify. The setting mixed interrogation with something more intimate, organized around control rather than chaos.
Fiona entered through a second door. She did not appear surprised by the room. Instead, she touched Kent’s shoulder and asked whether he needed help coming down from the anger. Their familiarity shifted the atmosphere, revealing that the space held consensual secrets as well as criminal ones.
Heat climbed Fay’s throat. She understood enough to know she had crossed into private territory unrelated to the captive. Kent’s control was not confined to business; it was a language he shared with people who entered willingly and understood its rules.
Fay backed away, but her heel struck the metal edge of a discarded tray. The crash rang through the corridor. Fiona turned toward the door, and Kent’s entire body became still.
Fay fled up the stairs before either could reach her. She crossed the kitchen with her pulse roaring and ducked into the first unoccupied room, only realizing after the hidden door closed behind her that she had entered a surveillance chamber. Dozens of live screens covered the wall—and on the central monitor, Kent was already looking directly into the basement camera as if he could see her watching.
