Filed to story: Falling for My Ex's Mafia Dad Novel Free PDF (Fay Alden & Kent Lippert)
“You were eavesdropping, Fay,” he shoots back, frowning at me. “There’s a reason they were waiting to talk about it until we left.”
“Yah,” I say, looking up at him as if it’s obvious. “Which is why I wanted to hear what they were saying!”
“Dad doesn’t like that,” Daniel says, putting an arm around my shoulders and guiding me through the now-empty kitchen towards the door so we can go upstairs.
“Just because he doesn’t want us to know isn’t a reason for us to let him keep it secret,” I snap, getting angry now. “Daniel,” I say, stopping in my tracks and making him turn to me. “We’re in bad shape. This is not the time to be willingly ignorant about the goings-on of this family.”
And then I take a minute to give him the short version of what Ivan told me this afternoon that there’s only about a week, maybe less, before something big is coming our way. That our lives are at stake.
“Fay,” Daniel says, sighing and running an anxious hand through his hair as he looks back at the door. “I hear that you’re anxious about this but honestly, this is stuff that’s all best left to my dad he knows what he’s doing ”
“Daniel!” I protest, shocked and a little appalled. “I have as much faith in Kent as you do! But clearly, clearly this is getting out of even his hands! We need to know more!”
“Don’t let him hear you say that, Fay,” Daniel says, looking down at me with a worried expression. “He will…not take it well, if you suggest that this is somehow out of his hands. Because of something fucking Ivan told you.”
Something about this about Daniel coming at Ivan when he is too scared to tell his daddy that he doesn’t like his process really gets under my skin. “What,” I say, crossing my arms and glaring at him. “Ivan’s as much of a boss as Kent is. And now suddenly he’s full of shit, just because he’s your rival? My intel is good, Daniel. We need to know what’s going on I’m not just going to sit alone in my room while my life is at stake, hoping that everything is going to be okay!”
“Well!” Daniel says, spreading his hands out like there’s nothing he can do. “I, for one, am going to have faith in my dad! And trust that he’ll handle it, as he’s asked me to, and as he’s always done!”
“Cool!” I say, sarcasm obvious in my harsh tones. “Then I guess you can go and do that! Alone! In your own room tonight!”
“Great,” Daniel says nastily, leaning close to my face now. “Not like I’m not alone every night in your room anyway,” he whispers, bringing his face close to mine so I can hear him, apparently so used to this life that he whispers his secrets even when he’s pissed as hell and we’re alone in a big room.
I press my lips shut though, angry and a little cowed by his words. Because he’s right. My threat doesn’t have much substance to it, does it?
Seeing that I have nothing else to say, Daniel turns on his heel with a big sigh and stalks towards the kitchen door, leaving me alone.
And as the kitchen empties, the last thing I want is to follow after him like a lost little duckling.
But then, as I stand alone in the dark kitchen a little creeped out by the large empty space I realize that I also very much do not want to hang out alone in here.
I spin, looking for a solution, my eyes falling on the door to the back patio.
But I know they’ll clam up the moment I go out there, and Natalia will use the opportunity to pick me to pieces like a little dead crab.
So I spin again and suddenly find my eyes falling on the little door to the basement the level where Kent once chained me to a table, where before that I watched him punch the hell out of someone he was interrogating, and even before that where Fiona brought me to a little room full of archives…
And suddenly, I know exactly what I want to do.
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A few minutes later, I’m settled in the leather armchair that Fiona placed down here, a little book of photographs on my lap, another glass of wine that I claimed from the bottle in the fridge sitting on the table next to me. After all, I’m not going to look through teenage photos of Kent and Natalia sober.
Hell no.
I had to go through a whole pile of dusty albums until I came across this one almost a flipbook, really, in its simplicity just plastic sleeves holding maybe twenty-five photographs? But even one glance told me it was precisely what I was looking for.
I hold it in my lap now, staring down at it, not…not really sure if I want to know.
Because…this is Lenai’s book.
I brush my fingers over her name written on the front in her own, looping handwriting, my heart starting to beat a little bit faster. Because Natalia honestly, Natalia I think I can handle. I didn’t like seeing her throw herself at Kent tonight, but all I have to do is close my eyes and think of some of the things Kent does to me when we’re alone to be reassured that…yeah. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
But this…
Lenai’s book. Lenai’s memories.
Am I ready to see pictures of Kent and the only woman he ever loved?
I stare at the photo album for a few more moments, taking deep breaths in and out.
But then, I think…fuck it.
And I grab my wine, take a big gulp, and open to the first photo.
To my chagrin, the first photograph in the book is one of Kent with his arm wrapped around Natalia’s shoulders, grinning at the camera while Natalia crosses her arms and gives the camera saucy look.
But as I look closer at it, I can’t help but smile and laugh a little. Because Kent looks so much like Daniel so much so that if you hadn’t told me any better, I’d have said that that was Daniel in the photograph wearing a flannel shirt with very 90’s floppy hair.
My eyes run over Kent’s face, his figure, and I have to bite my lip a little at the sight of him. He just looks so…young, so happy. I mean honestly, it’s not like I really think of Kent as old now he’s still crazy hot and in incredible shape. But in this picture he’s what…sixteen? Christ, he’s younger than I am now.
I begin to flip through the album, smiling more at the vintage fashions, the shots of Kent and Natalia in the Italian countryside, then lounging around in someone’s bedroom, even eating gelato in a city somewhere maybe Rome? I linger particularly on the few close-up shots of Kent’s face, clearly taken by an admirer, when I realize that this album actually doesn’t have any pictures of Lenai in it. And that’s when I realize that it’s her album because…she took the pictures.
And I go still, a little bit, realizing that this is so much more of a glimpse into her life into Daniel’s mother’s life, than it is to Kent’s or Natalia’s. And that feels just so…incredibly intimate, to be seeing Kent through his wife’s eyes before she was even his wife…that I have to close the book.
I let it rest a moment on my lap and then, on impulse, I set it quickly aside. Like it will burn me, or curse me, or something I don’t know.
I pick up my glass of wine and sit quietly in the chair for a long time, trying to parse through my emotions.
And I’m shocked, and a little scared, to find that the one that keeps rising to the top is…jealousy.
Jealous. I’m jealous of Lenai. I want to be the one who watched Kent grow up, who got to go on his first adventures with him, who took photos of him falling asleep on a train in the Italian countryside. I want to be the one who wondered what kind of man he’d turn out to be.
And quite suddenly I’m horribly, bitterly jealous of this woman. Which I know is ridiculous because she’s dead she’s been dead for a long time, and I know Kent has moved on from her.
But she got so many wonderful moments with him moments I’ll never have.
And I get what…a few stolen nights tucked away in his bedroom in secret? I mean, has he ever even touched me outside, in the light of day?
I curl up then, in my chair, tucking my face into my hands, completely overwhelmed by the realization that the best I’m ever going to get in Kent’s heart is second place.
And I’m absolutely terrified by the realization that I want to be first. I want to mean more to him I want to mean the most.
Because maybe that’s what he is to…
But no. I shut down the thought, making my mind turn to other things. My brain trips over itself in its attempt to find something new to mull over, and cruelly it turns to Ivan. To what he said yesterday that he offered me everything, and I’d picked an old, dead man over him. Someone who will never, ever love me.
And suddenly I feel just…horribly stupid.
God, what had I done?