Fall For My Ex's Mafia Father novel Chapter 167

Kent leans against the wall outside of Fay’s room for a moment after he leaves, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath through his nose.

That girl…

She’s going to be the death of me, that girl, Kent thinks as he clenches his jaw, grinding his teeth. It had been…so fucking difficult. So damn hard to turn away from her in there, as she pulled every piece of her clothing off and tossed them carelessly to her floor.

It had taken a level of self-restraint that, frankly – after yesterday, in the barn – he had thought he’d lost. But he’d done it. He’d refused to look at her as she had walked naked past him, as she climbed into her shower and let the water run all over her body, through her hair, telling him all about her ridiculous night with that boy.

But even as Kent thinks of it now, pushing himself up from the wall and opening his eyes so he can resume his day, he has to admit that Ivan is not ridiculous.

Kent knows that Ivan’s romantic relationship with Fay is…inconvenient. He doesn’t like, at all, that they seem to have a real affinity for each other. But Ivan, despite the fact that he might actually be drawn to Fay, has figured out that Fay is Kent’s Achilles heel. That she is precisely where he needs to strike to get to Kent.

Kent sets his shoulders and walks quickly down the stairs towards his office. If he’s going to survive this, he needs to convince everyone outside of this house – and perhaps many of the people within it – that Fay is…less important to him than they currently think she is.

As Kent enters his office, he considers that Ivan, despite his youth, has been playing his cards well. Even if Fay is ignorant of the fact, Kent is well aware that everything that Ivan said to Fay the previous night was designed to be repeated to Kent. It’s obvious to Kent that Ivan uses Fay, deliberately and efficiently, to prod Kent, to attempt to get him to move in whatever way Ivan feels will best benefit his organization.

Kent is thus not surprised, as he closes his office door behind him and heads to the desk, that Ivan told Fay – in as genuine a way as he could – that he thinks Kent is on the wrong side of things, that he’s going down. But what does surprise Kent is Ivan’s offer – twice, apparently – to take Fay away. To protect her.

It is…uncommon - unheard of, really - for one boss to take a woman from another family under his protection without an official tie to her, like an engagement or a marriage. That sort of exchange usually unites those families, not further divides them. But Ivan is clearly continuing to mark Kent as his enemy – he wasn’t offering to take Fay as a way to draw himself closer to the Lippert family, to which Fay is clearly showing her allegiance by still living in Kent’s house despite the end of her engagement to Daniel. And if Ivan is on good enough terms with Alden that Alden is loaning him vacation properties…why offer to take Fay into his own care? Why not let her father do it?

And Ivan hadn’t offered to marry her – Kent knows this, Fay would have told him. So, what the hell was Ivan playing at, offering to protect her but…not reaching out to those who were already doing that job?

Kent grits his teeth harder, staring down at the wood of his desk, trying to figure it out.