Toxic Love: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance
Toxic Love: Chapter 2

When I step out of the Range Rover, my brow darkens into a scowl as I glare up at the looming stone New Jersey mansion belonging to Charles Black.

Mine’s bigger.

Yeah, it’s a childish place to go in my head, but at this point, I really don’t give a shit. Because despite everything I’ve built and everything I have despite coming from nothing, it still all boils down to this: do as you’re told, or it all gets taken away.

Sure, my place on Long Island might be bigger than Charles Black’s old-money, “my ancestors came over on the fucking Mayflower” sprawling Westchester, New York mansion of a home. My pockets may be deeper than his, and my reach and influence absolutely go further than his at this point.

But.

There’s still a massive difference between us. Charles is truly monarch of his kingdom. I, however, still can’t seem to get out from under the…influence of others.

Part of me hates myself for feeling angry about it. After all, I really did come from nothing, and though he might be pushing me toward something in which I currently have no interest, almost all of what I have now is thanks to Vito Barone.

My father once worked as the personal tailor to the don of the Barone family, truly living up to our last name of Sartorre. But that was decades ago, in another life. And when my parents were killed when my sisters and I were still kids, instead of shoving us out to fend for ourselves in a world that would have certainly devoured us, Vito took in Claudia, Bianca, and me.

Years later, it was Vito again who helped me lay the foundation and the first stones of my empire. It’s by Vito’s grace, and the grace of the other Italian families, that Club Venom is even allowed to exist, and I am able to run that empire I’ve built with almost total impunity.

But the thing is, the wheel of karma always comes back around. The pied piper always gets paid.

And my bill just came due. With interest.

Honestly, I’ve known for years that I was walking a fine line. Club Venom, my empire, provides neither a service nor an entertainment. It facilitates desires, fantasies, and hedonism. That’s a fancy way of saying “what happens at Venom, between two—or frequently more than two—consenting adults, stays at Venom.” The wealthy, powerful, typically connected and dangerous come to my house of ill repute to play how they like.

But always consensually, and without any money changing hands. There’s a membership fee, but that’s it.

This is important. One, because I’m not, nor have I ever once wanted to be, a pimp. Those who come to play at Venom are there because they one hundred per cent want to be—I know this because I personally and thoroughly vet every single member. Venom is not a place for escorts, sex-workers, or anyone else who’s only there because they have to be.

Because fuck. That.

Aside from my own abhorrence of any situation where someone has to participate in sex for money, the mob also shares that loathing. Or at least, a strong intolerance.

The Commission, which is sort of a council table of the five main Italian families in the United States, agreed almost twenty years ago to stop any involvement in the sex trade. As in, the Italians don’t pimp anymore. At all.

One, it’s morally reprehensible. But more than that, speaking in a pure business sense, it’s just not worth the bullshit involved. Drugs, guns, casinos, sports betting, construction rackets, and grifting city services… They all make way more money for a fraction of the headache involved.

But that’s where the ice has grown thin in places on the surface of my empire.

I of course knew that Marcia Greco, daughter of Angelo Greco, underboss to Don Cesare Marchetti, was a member of Club Venom, because all member applications run through me. Perhaps there were some red flags in the back of my mind, letting the daughter of the second-in-command of the entire Marchetti family join my house of sin.

But I’m not here to play arbiter. Marcia is a fully grown, twenty-three-year old woman. If she wants to spend her Saturday nights getting gang-banged by Bratva avtoritets or giving lap dances to Yakuza wakagashira, what the fuck do I care?

No, the problem isn’t so much that Angelo found out where his little princess was spending her weekend evenings—okay, yeah, that is a problem, given that Angelo now wants my balls on a plate, despite the fact that I personally never once touched her. The bigger problem is that Marcia wasn’t just screwing dangerous and powerful men at Venom.

She was charging them.

Obviously, I wasn’t aware that this was happening. I also haven’t the slightest clue if it was because Marcia wasn’t getting a big enough allowance from daddy dearest, or if the money thing was her kink. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.

But suddenly, The Commission’s not looking at Venom as my little fiefdom of hedonism for the wealthy and depraved. They’re looking at it as a brothel.

And that creates a problem.

Luckily, before I could get my favorite appendage removed by a bloodthirsty capo or have my entire empire yanked out from under me, Vito came up with an elegant solution. Elegant, that is, except I want nothing to do with it.

The solution is this: The Commission families have, thankfully, agreed that Marcia acted on her own. But the image problem with Club Venom remains—that I, a single, unmarried man am running what is effectively a “house of ill repute”, minus the monetary transactions.

It’s that “single and unmarried” part that creates the real issue, apparently. Now they’re worried that it looks like I’m operating as some kind of pimp. So it’s come down to this: get married, and quickly, and this whole problem goes away. The drinks keep flowing, the lights stay on, and the rich, powerful, and kinky of New York City can continue to fuck and suck to their filthy little hearts’ content at my club.

But now we come back to the million-dollar question: why do I want to marry Maeve Black? A girl half my age whose father is a poisonous fucking spider with his fingers in every single pie in New York?

Simple answer: I fucking don’t.

Charles Black is an embarrassing, disgusting stain on this city. And I have zero interest in marrying a child. But I’ve also been playing this game long enough to understand how to maneuver around while staying just inside the lines. In that sense, Maeve Black is the perfect match.

She’s mafia-adjacent enough, from her father’s connections, that The Commission is okay with it. Yet she’s not actually mafia, which saves me from getting stuck with some needy, clingy little mafia princess with a don of a father breathing down my neck.

Also, it puts Charles squarely in the palm of my fucking hand.

I know all sorts of shit about all sorts of people in this city. That, honestly, is what I truly trade in with Club Venom. Not sex. Not fantasies. Not hedonism.

Information.

By that metric, I’m richer than fucking Elon.

Charles has no idea that I know this, but he’s in trouble. As he’s gotten older, he’s failed to secure new relationships with the younger generations as they come up through the ranks of this city. Which means his little kingdom built on nothing but handshakes and understandings and favors is starting to crumble at the foundations.

Charles needs his daughter to marry someone like me. And I plan on leveraging that need to the fullest.

Now, he has no idea that I need Maeve to marry me as much as he needs me to marry her. I mean—he’ll probably figure it out at some point. But I’ve seen no need to put all the cards on the table just yet.

Anyway, for all those reasons, marrying Maeve Black is a perfect plan.

…Perfect, except for the fact that Gabriel and Alistair Black and I hate each other.

The details don’t matter. I know what they think I did to their family.

I, however, know the truth.

And now here we are.

Carmy—as in Carmine Barone, Vito’s eldest son and one of my closest friends—snickers from behind me. I turn away from the facade of the Black residence to glare at him, still sitting there in the passenger seat with his fucking feet up on the dash.

“Well?” I mutter, glancing at my watch.

He lifts an amused brow. “Well, what?”

“Well, I’m not giving you a fucking piggyback, so let’s go.”

He chuckles, his white teeth flashing as he runs a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah, no, I’m fine right here, actually.”

I glare at him, my jaw clenching. Carmy grins wider.

“Sorry, Dante… Did you think I was coming along for emotional support?” He laughs, sprawling back in his seat. “No way, bud. I’m here because this is highly amusing to me.”

I give him the finger as I turn to glare up at the house again.

“By the way, were you aware that Charles once tried to use his influence to ban all strip clubs in New York?” Carmy clicks his tongue against his teeth. “You and your new father-in-law are going to have so much fun together.”

I turn to level a withering looking at the friend who’s been more like a brother to me since even before his family took me in. “Venom is not a strip club, dickhead.”

“Just a masked sex club that regularly hosts voyeuristic orgies and kink nights. My deepest apologies for confusing the two.”

“Are you done?”

“For now.”

I glare at him once more. “So, you’re staying here.”

“Yep. Can you leave the radio on and crack a window⁠—”

“Don’t fucking smoke in my car.”

I slam the door shut to the sound of Carmy’s snickering, turning to groan at the Black family mansion once more.

Goddammit.

Alistair, Gabriel and I were never “friends” per se. But once upon a time, when we were all at Knightsblood University together, we were at least…cordial. Knightsblood has four student clubs, and the three of us happened to be the presidents of three of them at the same time: Alistair was head of The Reckless, Gabriel ran Para Bellum, and I was at the top of the Ouroboros Society.

Then Layla died, and it all went to shit.

We haven’t spoken or seen each other face to face since. Though they’re both members of Venom, which means they haven’t considered the fact that I vet every single member. Or else they have and they just don’t care.

Gabriel and the lovely and formidable Taylor Crown, the third founding partner of Crown and Black, mostly come to Venom for business reasons: to show prospective clients a good time, or to assure the dangerous people they’ve been representing these days that they can “hang” with the bad guys.

Alistair comes for business reasons, too. But he also comes to play.

Hey, no judgement.

Still, today will be interesting, to say the least. Not only is it the first time we’ll be seeing each other live and in person since what happened all those years ago. But also I’ll be casually letting them know that, oh, by the way, I’m going to be marrying their eighteen-year-old aunt.

Yeah, this should certainly be an interesting experience for everyone involved.

Two guards at the top of the front steps of the house pat me down and then let me through. Inside, a butler bows silently, then ushers me through the lavish foyer toward a closed set of wooden double doors.

“Does she know!?”

I tense, stopping cold at the shrill scream coming from the other side of the doors. It’s a woman’s voice, but it’s too old to be Maeve, and I know for a fact that Charles’ gold-digging wife, Caroline, is in Rio right now spending her husband’s money on a butt lift.

She’s probably also fucking every cabana boy on Ipanema, given that back home, she’s chained to Charles’ wrinkly old dick. But I digress.

“Maeve is well aware of what her duty to this family entails—Tempest!”

Aaah. Yes. So it’s the fourth Black sibling, Tempest, who’s raging like…well, a tempest.

She’s also the member of the Black family about whom I know the least.

Gabriel and Alistair I’ve studied like a scientist. I know Alistair isn’t really as dark-hearted as he’d like the world to think, and about his adoption when he was three. And I know Gabriel isn’t as good as he’d like the world to think, as well as all about his political aspirations that he won’t admit to anyone.

And of course, I knew Layla.

Probably too well.

Too well to save her, anyway.

But Tempest? She’s an unknown to me. All I know is, she’s eleven years younger than her brothers, doesn’t work, and by all accounts is just sort of a trust fund kid living off Gabriel and Alistair’s dime. She’s probably in Charles’ pocket, too⁠—

“You can go to hell, Charles!”

My brow cocks.

Okay, maybe NOT on Team Charles…

“You and that sick psychopath Dante!”

I scowl, and just as I’m about to open the door and make my entrance, they fly open in my face. Something small, soft, freckled, wearing thick black eyeliner and with her dark hair piled up on her head, dressed in a vaguely gothy all-black ensemble consisting of a turtleneck, shiny black leggings, and heeled black ankle boots with buckles and pointy toes, comes barreling into my chest.

She gasps sharply, stumbling back from me. As if on instinct, my hands shoot out, my strong fingers curling around her too-thin wrists and latching on tightly. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m yanking her up to stop her from falling, and right into my chest.

Her breath catches. Her big greenish-hazel eyes with the too-thick eyeliner drag up to mine. When they reach their destination, she doesn’t quail. She doesn’t flinch or look scared.

She looks angry. Wrathful. Indignant that I’ve had the gall to stop her from falling on her fucking ass.

Tempest is indeed well named.

She glares at me, her glowing hazel-green eyes set deep in the sea of black around them. Her face is very pale, and it’s not just her wrists that seem too thin. All of her seems too thin.

“Speak of the devil…” I growl quietly.

Tempest glares venomously at me and moves as if to yank her arms back. But I just grip her soft wrists a bit tighter.

“And he shall appear.”

Her chin juts defiantly. Her mouth purses.

“Now: I do hope I haven’t missed the surprise?”

I’m neither an idiot, nor a hothead. The wise move here would be to defuse the tensions of the room as quickly as possible and tackle this like rational adults. Except I’m not thinking rationally. One, because I don’t like being called a “sick psychopath”, especially behind my back. Two, because I really don’t appreciate the way Gabriel and Alistair seem to be barely holding themselves back from physically attacking me.

But the third and biggest reason for the implosion of my rational thinking is the one I never saw coming.

It’s her.

And I don’t know why.

I mean the girl is looking at me like she’s trying to decide if she’d get more pleasure from stabbing me in the eye or in the dick-hole. She’s also dressed like she’s about to go on stage and sing backups for The Cure or Morrissey. She’s too short and too thin for my tastes. Too gothy. Too…stabby-looking.

And yet…

There’s a hum that sparks off her skin into my fingertips; a something that the nearness of her does to me.

Fuck.

It’s attraction.

That’s very inconvenient, given that I’m about to marry her aunt. Not to mention her obvious interest in putting out cigarettes on my balls or pushing sharp pointy things into the soft parts of my anatomy.

I need whatever this is to get the fuck out of my system right fucking now⁠—

“Get your fucking hands off of me, you pedo piece of shit.”

And a solution presents itself…

Instantly, the way I’m rapidly drowning in the nearness of her vanishes. My pulse thudding in my ears goes silent. The blood leaves my rapidly swelling dick.

“Excuse me?”

Tempest glares at me, twisting her wrists and finally yanking them free. She takes a step back, then another, crossing her arms over her chest and sneering at me as she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth.

“You heard me.”

“Tempest!” Charles snaps, quickly marching over to us. He shoves her aside, shooting her a menacing glare before turning to beam at me ingratiatingly like the oily, self-serving little fuck that he is.

“Mr. Sartorre, welcome to my home.” He sticks out a hand, which I reluctantly take. “Let me just say, I think this arrangement is going to be fantastic for the both of us, and I’m excited for our families to be⁠—”

“What the fuck did you call me?”

I ignore Charles, leveling a withering look at Tempest behind him. She just shrugs.

“I called you what you are. You’re marrying a fucking child, aren’t you?”

“Surely, growing up in the family you did, you are familiar with the concept of an arranged marriage. And your aunt is eighteen years old.”

“Been marking the days down on your calendar, have you?” Alistair hisses quietly.

I sigh as I raise my eyes to him. “Lovely to see you again too, Alistair,” I say, with all the sincerity of a rich celebrity talking about ending poverty.

“Go fuck yourself, Dante,” he throws back.

“Now now now, that’s go fuck yourself Uncle Dante these days, isn’t it?”

A vein pops out on Alistair’s forehead. His mouth draws to a vicious line. Miraculously, he holds it together.

“In through the nose, out through the mouth, Alistair,” I croon. “In…and out. In…and out. Serenity now. Serenity⁠—”

“If your goal in coming here is to get punched in the face, I can do that right now and save us all a lot of time, Dante,” Gabriel growls quietly.

“Nah, his goal in coming here is to fuck young girls who are barely⁠—”

“ENOUGH.”

My roar silences Alistair and Gabriel without much of a flinch on either of their faces. More importantly, it makes Tempest shudder from head to toe and momentarily wipes that little Wednesday Addams sneer off her face.

For a split second, she actually looks scared.

I smile to myself, enjoying the win of piercing her sarcastic little armor.

“If you’re done insulting me⁠—”

“I could go all night⁠—”

She jolts as I march past her grandfather right into her personal space.

“Touch her,” Gabriel growls, “and we’ll have a very large problem on our hands.”

I shoot him an icy smile. “I’m sure the legal motion will be simply breathtaking, Gabriel. But I have no intention or indeed the least bit of interest in touching dear sister Hurricane here.”

“It’s Tempest,” she hisses.

I relish the tremor she barely chokes back as I turn to level the full weight of my cold blue eyes on her as I loom over her.

“I really don’t care. And let’s be perfectly clear on something, shall we?” I smile darkly at her. “I don’t give one single fuck if you like me or not. In fact, I hope you don’t, so that you stay away from me with that stabby fucking look on your face. Are we clear?”

Her answer is a silent purse of her lips and a shiver she can’t quite hide.

“Wonderful. Now, two things. One,” I tick it off on my fingers right in front of her face. “I have no interest in doing a thing with your fucking aunt. I’m thirty-four years old, she’s eighteen, and, spoiler, I guess it turns out I’m attracted to women, not girls. Two, arranged marriages aren’t about getting laid, they’re for political clout, treaties, or business. That is all this is, capice?”

“Go fuck⁠—”

She gasps as I stop my outthrust finger from just touching her lips.

“Resist the urge to always need to have the last word, little Hurricane. Mouths were built to be shut at times, as strange a concept as that may be to you.”

Tempest looks at me like she wants to drive her knee into my balls.

“Why are you marrying Maeve, Dante,” Gabriel mutters quietly. “You’re obviously not in love with her, since you don’t even know her. And your eloquent speech just now on your lack of physical intentions is…whatever. So, why?”

“Reasons.”

He glares at me. “Care to specify?”

“Not especially.”

Charles laughs nervously at the ensuing silence and clasps his hands together. “Just ironing out the wrinkles, I suppose, yes?”

Sure.

“Anyway, I’m sure you’d like to meet Maeve⁠—”

I allow myself to enjoy the chaos of all three of his grandchildren sputtering and bellowing about the injustice of it all, what a piece of shit I am, and what a monster Charles is, blah blah blah, for another twenty seconds or so before I hold up a hand.

“Actually, Charles, no. I just wanted to stop by today and meet my new niece and nephews.”

The three of them glare pure death at me as I smile beatifically at them.

“I’m sure Maeve and I will have plenty of time later to get to know one another.”

Tempest’s eyes narrow dangerously at me. Before she can open her mouth again, Charles clears his throat.

“Tempest, why don’t you run upstairs to your aunt and tell her all about Mr. Sartorre?”

Tempest shoots me a cold look.

“You know what? That’s a great idea. I’d rather be literally anywhere else in the world but in the same room as you.”

“The feeling is quite mutual,” I smile.

She wrinkles her nose, holding her head up high as she moves to walk past me. But just as she does, I turn to the side, grabbing her wrist tightly in such a way that her brothers can’t see.

“Play nice, little cyclone,” I murmur quietly into her ear as she stiffens under my touch. “Or I’m sure I could be persuaded to rethink my position on sleeping with eighteen-year-old aunts.”

The fire in her eyes when she whips around to face me is scorching enough to burn. Half of me expects her to attack me. But in a frankly stunning show of self-control, she just curls her lips and leans in close.

“If you touch Maeve, I’ll fuck you.” She smiles sweetly. “With a claw hammer. ‘Capice’?”

Then she turns and strides out of the room, letting the doors slam shut behind her.

Charles awkwardly clears his throat. “Well, my apologies for⁠—”

“Let’s move on, shall we?”

He smiles. “Agreed. And, since we’ve got the lawyers here, should we look quickly at the premarital contracts?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. As if I have any interest in taking anything from Charles. But fine, sure; we can go over whatever ridiculous prenuptial bullshit he’s concocted. His two grandsons immediately start poring over the paperwork he whips out, while occasionally glaring at me like they want to shove me out a convenient window.

Infuriatingly, a certain black cloud keeps blowing intrusively into my thoughts, distracting me from the meeting. A black cloud with way too much eyeliner, a mouth full of poison, and a toxic tongue.

A black cloud who, unbelievably, has my cock throbbing against the front of my suit pants for the next twenty minutes.

When I finally leave with a greasy fond farewell from Charles and two frosty “go get hit by a fucking car” looks from Alistair and Gabriel, I head back outside to where Carmy is waiting. When I find him leaning against the side of the SUV with a cigarette dangling from his lips, I frown at what I see scratched into the paint next to him.

“If that was you, it’s not the least bit amusing, and you’re paying to fix it.”

“Not me,” he exhales slowly, eying me coolly.

“Well?”

“Goth chick in black, about yea big.” He holds his hand up, chest height.

My jaw clenches.

Goddamn her.

“She used one of the rocks from the driveway.”

I stare at Carmy. “And where the fuck were you?”

“Me?” He shrugs. “I was in the car, buddy.”

I blink. “And you just…let her do this?”

“I make a point of not getting between scary goth girls with improvised weapons in their hands and the target of their angst. You should try it. You’ll live longer.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and glare at the “i like to fuck teenagers” scratched into the side of the SUV.

“She went back inside the house afterward, if you’re looking to make a thing out of it.”

If by “a thing” he means throttling her with my bare hands while fucking the living shit out of her , then…

I frown.

Whoa, you gotta chill out with that, friend.

“There’s some duct tape in the glove compartment,” I mutter to Carmy. “Feel like making yourself useful?”

I wince when the roll of tape comes flying over the roof and smacks me in the shoulder.

“Sorry, man,” Carmy grins. “I’m the crown prince. I don’t make myself useful to anyone. ’Sides, it’s your car.”

I flip him off as I tear a piece of tape from the roll and slap it over the worst of the words scratched into the car.

“They know why it is you’re marrying the kid?”

I shake my head. “Figured there wasn’t much need to show all the cards.”

“Probably smart. They could use it as leverage and try and get more out of the deal.” When he clears his throat, I look up to see him finishing his smoke and stomping it out on the gravely driveway. “They, uh…they still hate you for what happened to that girl?”

“Her name was Layla,” I growl quietly. “And they most certainly do.”

“You know, a simple conversation would clear that up⁠—”

“I gave my word, Carmy,” I murmur.

“I know, buddy.” He walks around the front of the car and claps me on the shoulder. “I’m just saying, I think it would help, given that you’re about to marry into a family that fucking hates you.”

“It probably would.”

We both get in the duct-taped Range Rover and I rev the engine.

“Alistair and Gabriel are all bark, to be honest,” Carmy frowns, glancing out the window up at the house as I start to pull away. “But that one chick…she’s gonna be a problem.”

“Sure is.”

More than you fucking know…