Filed to story: Falling for My Ex's Mafia Dad Novel Free PDF (Fay Alden & Kent Lippert)
“Yes,” Kent snaps, clearly eager for him to go.
“Although, messy, yes?” Alessi continues, and I curse again mentally when I hear his footsteps turn back towards us. “We will have to have some discussions about the fallout, and how you Americans handle this trade. In fact, it might be better if you were to send some men home with us so that they can teach us some methods for distribution and…well, clean up. From the inevitable cost to human life.”
My eyes go wide as I listen to his words. What? What the hell were they getting into?
“You’ll have them,” Kent says quickly, apparently willing to promise anything to get Alessi out of here. “I’ll arrange it tonight and dedicate the men this morning. All right?”
“Of course, of course!” Alessi says, and I hear his footsteps move leisurely towards the door. “You will let me know, eh?”
Kent doesn’t say anything, but I presume he nods, because Alessi says his goodnights and then, apparently, passes through the door. When I hear the door creak closed and then click shut, I let out a huge sigh of relief, echoed by Kent’s own.
He pushes back in his chair, making a little more space for me, but to my surprise he doesn’t get up.
“You can come out now, Fay,” Kent murmurs, and I crawl out from beneath the desk, looking up at him from the floor on my hands and knees.
“Are you all right?” I ask, a little breathless. “Did he did he know?”
“I don’t know,” Kent replies, sighing. “I don’t think he did but then why did he speak in English the whole time…?”
I awkwardly stand up, not knowing what to say, my mind whirring over everything that I heard. “Kent…” I say quietly as I lean down and grab my pants off the floor, leaning back against the desk as I start to pull them back on. The mood’s dead, anyway I might as well be warm. “What was Alessi saying? About a deal?”
Kent sighs again, harder this time, and pushes himself to his feet, pulling up his own pants and hastily buckling his belt. “Don’t worry about it, Fay.”
“What?” I ask, a little shocked. Honestly after everything we just said to each other about trusting each other and how he doesn’t want me to just sit back and look pretty
“Seriously, Kent?” I ask, standing up straight and fastening the button at the top of my jeans. “You’re just…not going to tell me?”
“You don’t need to know, Fay,” he growls, turning to glare at me.
“It sounded serious!”
“It is serious!” he counters, taking a step closer, trying to intimidate me into shutting up.
I clench my jaw, glaring up at him, slowly shaking my head back and forth. “What’s going on, Kent?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. “Methods of distribution? The inevitable cost to human life? What the hell are you getting into?”
Kent stands close to me now, glowering fiercely down into my eyes. But I don’t budge.
“Is it heroin, Kent?” I ask quietly. “Are you trying to get in on Ivan’s game? Take it from him?”
“Seriously?” Kent hisses. “This is about Ivan now? You’re worried I’m going to take his livelihood from him?”
“No, Kent!” I almost shout, and he grabs my arm, glancing towards the door and hissing at me to lower my voice. I do lower it, but I keep going. “No, this is about you being involved in a business that kills people!”
Kent snaps his gaze back to me then and drops my arm, laughing a little as he takes a step back, giving me a nasty little smirk. “Fay…how, precisely, do you think I afforded all of this? The clothes you wear, the horse you ride? Your sister’s beach house? What do you think I do?”
My mouth drops a little at the blunt way that Kent basically admits that…that he kills people. Maybe every day. For money.
I think back, suddenly, to the day after I met Kent when I sat on my couch with my little laptop perched on my knees, googling him, seeing all of the legitimate businesses he had started and invested in…
And as I stare at him I realize that…
I mean, I know that Kent is the Mafia King, I know that that’s his reputation. But honestly…I’ve never really seen any of it except that one time I saw him punch a man in the basement. But I have no idea what that was about and I have no idea what he really does all day.
And I think…well, I think I didn’t ask a lot of questions because I don’t want to know. But also, when I imagined the work Kent was doing, it was more…legitimate work than the shooting and stabbing and murder that you see in Mafia movies.
And maybe…maybe that’s all he wanted me to see.
I stare at him, starting to piece it together that Kent, even though he told me his days of back-alley brawls are done, is still very much in that world. That even if he is himself not getting his hands dirty…that doesn’t mean he’s not paying others to do it for him.
Kent watches me as I go a little pale. As I step away from him.
“Seriously?” I whisper. “Is that is that really what you do?”
“I never hid it, Fay,” Kent says evenly, his entire face stern and cold. “I never asked you to think I was a good man.”
And I stare back at him, wondering if…wondering if that’s something I can handle. Something I’m okay with.
But I definitely need more details before I can make that decision.
“Tell me, Kent,” I say, my voice starting to waver a little as I raise my chin and make my demand. “I need to know. I need to know everything.”
“You don’t need to know anything ” he scoffs, crossing his arms in frustration.
“I do!” I snap, looking at him hard. “I need to know, Kent, whether I can do this. I need to know who I’m ” I hesitate now, because well, because I’m not in a relationship with him, am I? “Who I’m sleeping with,” I finish, working hard to hold his eye.
“Fay,” Kent says, taking a few steps closer to me. “You don’t need to know the details nothing has changed. You’ll be safer if you don’t ”
“Why don’t you trust me?” I break in, shaking my head at him, suddenly realizing that we’re back where we started that everything that passed between us before Alessi came into the room it was all bullshit.
Just Kent telling me what I wanted to hear so he could…so he could get into my pants. And he did, immediately.
I look down, suddenly ashamed. There is no trust not really between us. And I fall for it every time.
“It’s not about trust, Fay,” Kent sighs, closing the distance between us so that he stands very close, so that I can hear his words even though they’re barely a whisper. “It’s about…what you need to know. These details they are better kept between a very small group of people ”
“And I can’t be part of that group?” I ask bitterly, anger starting to burn in my chest.
“You don’t need to be part of that group,” Kent insists.
But I just look up and shake my head at him, unable to accept it. “This is it, Kent,” I say quietly, determined. “Either you tell me or…” I breathe out sharply, realizing that I need the ultimatum as it falls from my mouth. “Or I…I have to make changes.”
Kent just glares at me, not liking being backed into a corner, but also I don’t think really understanding what I mean.
“I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me,” I say as simply as I can, keeping my expression as cold as his. “Either you tell me what you’re getting up to with Alessi, or…I have to go.”
Kent stares at me quietly for a second and then starts to slowly shake his head. “You know, Fay,” he growls, anger clearly coiling in him as well. “That’s precisely what a spy would say. A really sloppy, naive spy.”
It takes a moment for his words to hit me, for me to understand what the hell he just said. And then my eyes narrow in rage, and disappointment, and the desire to honestly rip him to shreds. “If I was a spy Kent,” I hiss, letting that rage burn coldly within me, “Trust me. You’d never see it coming.”
And then I spin away from him, striding towards the door. When my fingers brush the handle Kent barks out my name and I turn to glare at him.