Fall For My Ex's Mafia Father novel Chapter 23

And yet here I was, in the place she’d so desperately left. Why did I let myself get so wrapped up in this world? I cower away from my father.

“Enough,” Kent’s voice rings out behind me, cool and calm.

Alden turns angry eyes to him but Kent holds his ground.

“I’m pleased to announce,” Kent says, his teeth gritted, making clear that his pleasure is only a formality. He nods pointedly at the ring on my hand, “that our agreement, years ago, to unite our families through marriage is holding strong. Your daughter is engaged to my son. I anticipate that the wedding will be swift, in the next few months, if it can be arranged.”

My father’s growl is low in his throat. “This is a trick,” he says. “How can they be engaged, when you just found her yesterday?”

Daniel is quick to answer. “We met before, by some miracle,” he says, giving Alden a small but earnest smile. “We were already dating, actually.”

No mention, conveniently, of the fact that we broke up.

I look between Daniel and his father, and then over at mine, and suddenly realize that Daniel is in on this. He and his father carefully planned this meeting, this conversation. In one swoop, they gave Alden back his daughter and claimed me as their own.

Now they have the one thing Alden wants more than anything: the last remaining piece of his lost love.

I am suddenly angry again. It doesn’t matter what I want at all, whether or not I want to marry Daniel. Because Daniel, too, is a player in this game, moving me around like the pawn that I am.

I open my mouth to protest, but Alden interrupts me.

“Good,” he says, looking between the three of us, perhaps realizing that he has no real leverage in this game. “This is the best arrangement. A uniting of the families.”