Fall For My Ex’s Mafia Dad
Chapter 159

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.

"I don't know," Daniel murmurs, glancing at him and then at me. And then down at my stomach. And I groan a little, almost able to read his mind on this: that Kent, if he can, will come up here. Because I'm here. And I'm pregnant. And his base instinct, in all of this, is going to be to protect his son and this new maybe-baby, even if he is pissed at me for getting knocked up.

Even if he doesn't know yet, for sure, that it's his baby? If Kent can get here. He will.

So I too stare between the door and the wardrobe, looking for him. Waiting.

Where is he?

The silence in the room grows, as the three of us wait.

And I thought that it would be better - that I'd get used to it, would calm down - but listening to the horrible noises below - gunfire, screaming, shouted commands to move here or go there - All that noise winds me tighter and tighter until I think I might pop.

And throughout all of it - I know that I'm listening for him. For the sound of Kent's voice, the echo of his own commands -

But I don't hear it anywhere.

And I go cold as I realize that that might mean...

Oh my god.

I slap a hand over my mouth, shaking my head in horror.

Is he already dead?

Daniel stands steady, staring at the door, his hands tight around his gun as my mind absolutely whirls in panic.

Did the father of my child fucking die hours after I found out I was pregnant?

What on earth was I going to -

But before I can get any further in my thoughts, the sound of something hard banging against glass makes us all spin towards the windows.

We all go rigid with fright and Daniel shouts something wordless as he raises the gun towards my windows, towards the darkness outside that makes it impossible to see anything -

But suddenly, of all things, a voice echoes from the darkness outside.

"Don't you fucking shoot me, Lippert!"

Daniel hesitates now, dropping the muzzle of the gun just a little in confusion. Because we - we know that voice -

I know that voice -

I jump to my feet, heading impetuously for the window, acting on pure instinct rather than logical thought.

"Fay!" Daniel shouts. "Don't open that -"

But it's too late. My hands are already at the top of the window, flicking the lock, and then my palms are flat against the pane pushing up so that I can see...

Ivan.

Crouched there, on the little roof outside of my bedroom window, glaring in at me, a gun in his hands pointing in at us.

And then a horrified gasp escapes my mouth and I slap my palm over my lips, staring at him and shaking my head.

But not at his gun.

"Oh, Ivan," I breathe between my fingers, lifting my eyes up to meet his. "What did you do?"

"What I had to, Fay," he growls, flicking his eyes to me even as he points his gun at Daniel, who has his own gun aimed at him. "Drop the gun, Daniel!" he shouts. "That's the only way you're getting out of this alive! This is your last warning! Drop it!" Daniel hesitates but Jerome croaks out his name and, glancing at his boyfriend, Daniel curses and tosses the gun aside so that it lands on the bed.

But I barely see any of this, my eyes trained on Ivan who finally looks back at me.

"All right, Fay," he says, his voice grim. "It's all over. Let's end this."

But I have no response. I can't say anything. Instead, my eyes just drift lower on Ivan's body to take in the blue shirt that covers all of his beautiful tattoos.

And over it, the bulletproof vest.

That reads, in four bright yellow block letters:

NYPD.