Filed to story: Falling for My Ex's Mafia Dad Novel Free PDF (Fay Alden & Kent Lippert)
A long time later I hear footsteps behind me coming out of the bathroom.
“Fay?” Daniel asks. “Are you…all right?”
Silent, I shake my head no.
“What can we do?” Jerome asks.
“Nothing,” I murmur. And then I pause, considering it considering if there’s anything I want. But I just come up blank. “Can you just leave me alone?”
The boys are silent for a moment and I sigh, wishing they’d just go.
“Are you sure?” Daniel asks, hesitant. I can hear in his words that he desperately doesn’t want to leave me along right now, that he wants to be here for me. But…I just can’t. Not right now.
“Please,” I say, hunching my shoulders and wrapping my blankets tighter around me.
“Okay,” Daniel whispers, and a moment later I feel his lips press against my hair as he gives me a gentle kiss. “We’ll be right next door, okay? You call us when you want us?”
“Okay,” I reply, nodding and squeezing my eyes shut.
And then I hear their footsteps as they leave the room, the slight creaking of the door as they pull it closed behind us, though they don’t close it all the way so that they can hear me if I call.
I lay very still for a very long time. I lose track of it, eventually, working hard on clearing my mind and pushing all my thoughts away. Instead, I listen to my breathing, feel my heart beating, and seek deep within me some kind of…difference. Can I feel the baby growing in there? Is it…is it even a baby?
Do I want it to be?
Some time later I sit up in bed, groaning a little as my muscles unlock and bend after far too long in one position. I raise my hands to my temples, rubbing them in an attempt to clear the headache that pounds there.
Then, a little bleary, I turn towards my desk, noticing that the day has grown dark outside my window, already turning towards night. As I stand I wonder at it how much time did I lay there, denying my reality? But then I sigh and move towards my desk, pulling open the little drawer and reaching for my burner phone.
Because even though I know Daniel and Jerome are next door, and even though I’m grateful for it, I really just want my sister right now.
I pull up her contact information and quickly press her number, hoping she picks up. The phone rings, and rings. She doesn’t answer.
Sighing, I press the call button again, but she doesn’t pick up. I call again which I never do hoping that she understands that it’s an emergency. But nothing.
Frustrated, breathing out heavily through my nose, I open my messages and quickly send her a text letting her know that I need to talk, that she has to call me as soon as she gets this.
To my shock, a text comes through immediately.
My blood goes cold when I read it:
Fay, I can’t talk I’ll see you soon just do what they say
…what?
She’ll see me soon? Why does she think
Do what who says? Who is she
But then I jump, my eyes flashing towards the door as I hear the loud cracking noise echo through the house. And then it comes again, and again.
And I recognize it, immediately, from the noises I heard months ago at the country club, when I went running through the greens with Kent and Daniel, trying to get away from people trying to kill us.
Those are gunshots.
And they’re inside the house.
I’m still standing wide eyed, my mouth dropped open in shock, my little phone falling from my hands when Daniel and Jerome burst into my room. Jerome slams and locks the door behind him.
“Get down!” Daniel shouts, dashing directly for my wardrobe.
“What?” I gasp, a little stupidly but I’m just so shocked
“Down!” Jerome barks, running to my side and pressing on my shoulders, forcing me to my knees. He puts a hand protectively over my head, looking all around. The gunshots continue downstairs, as well as screams and yells everything growing louder and more frequent
“What the hell is going on!” I scream, frantic now with panic.
“I don’t know!” Daniel snaps back, bending over into the wardrobe and pulling up a piece of wood from the bottom, reaching down below it and coming out with
“Oh my god,” I exclaim, my eyes going if possible wider when I see Daniel emerge from the wardrobe with a silver gun in his hand. “Did you put that there!?”
“No,” he snaps, quickly snapping the pieces of the gun apart and back together in a way I don’t understand, checking the bullets or something. “Dad did. But obviously he didn’t tell you about it, because you’d probably kill yourself dropping it or something.”
“Jerk,” I breathe, glaring at him before spinning towards Jerome, completely freaked out now and totally confused about what the hell is going on.
“It’s a raid,” Jerome says, looking over towards the door. “I don’t know who is behind it a rival family?”
“Not the Russians,” Daniel says, moving over to us and glancing out the window, the gun held expertly at his side. “Maybe…Alden? But he wouldn’t not with Fay in the house -“
I blink as I stare at Daniel, shocked my mild-mannered bestie, who likes books and philosophy, looking like a god damn secret agent with a gun cocked and ready by his side. He actually looks, for once, like the son of a mafia don.
What what was happening to my life?
Was this even real?
I jump and shriek as more gunfire echoes from below, as if in answer to my question that yes, this is indeed real.
“What’s our next step,” Jerome asks, looking up at Daniel from his spot crouched down on the floor next to me. Daniel moves away from the window now, turning towards the door.
“We wait,” he growls, positioning himself in front of us and raising the gun to point it at the door, ready to shoot whoever comes through it next.
“Should we,” I start, thinking frantically and glancing to the wardrobe, “should we go through the wardrobe? Downstairs? Try to find your dad?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Dad says that if you’re in a place of safety and you don’t have a clear way out if you don’t know precisely how you’re going to get away you stay put and defend that space until you know what’s going on. We don’t know who is down there or what is happening. We don’t know how to get to a car. So, we entrench.”
I start to shake now with the fear and the adrenaline coursing through my body. Jerome puts an arm around my shoulders, I think for his comfort as much as his. “Okay,” Jerome says, nodding and agreeing to Daniel’s plan, letting him take lead on it.
And then we all…sit there. For way too long.
“Will your dad come up?” Jerome whispers, glancing again at the wardrobe.