Toxic Love: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance
Toxic Love: Chapter 37

I’m screaming into the gag as “Pam”—or Jacqueline Sinclair, as I found out half an hour ago when she came over with smoothies for me and then pulled a fucking gun on me—shoves Dante and my brothers out onto the patio at gunpoint. For a second, blinded by panic and fear, I lurch to my feet. Instantly, her weapon swivels toward me, her eyes narrowing.

“Please,” she hisses. “Give me a reason to pull the trigger, you little cunt.”

My eyes dart to Dante. His jaw is clenched, his gaze locked on mine with an intensity that both scares me and fills me with strength.

Sit down, little hurricane, he mouths.

I swallow as I sink back onto the chair, watching as the woman I knew as Pam hustles them all toward three chairs across the patio from me.

This isn’t the quiet, somewhat frosty housekeeper who makes me amazing smoothies.

This is the mother of the monster that almost destroyed me.

Part of me is dumbfounded that I never saw who Pam was. Even though Jacqueline and I obviously never met, I mean, she’s Jacqueline Sinclair. She was a huge name in the New York City socialite scene for years, and her pictures were splashed all over the society news.

But “Pam” looks nothing like that glamorous, cosmetically perfect blonde woman. I remember Gabriel once telling me that after Brett killed himself and his parents divorced, Jacqueline had fallen into drugs and poverty and passed away herself.

Apparently, that last part was slightly exaggerated. But now that I know who she is, you can see glimmers of the old glamorous Jacqueline behind the grayed, harried, old-before-her-time face of “Pam”.

“You,” she snaps at Alistair. “Tie him up.” She nods her chin at Gabriel. “And don’t jerk me around. I’m going to be checking when you’re done. If it’s loose, I use a bullet. Got it?”

Alistair nods silently, kneeling behind Gabriel’s chair and tying our brother’s hands tight.

“Now him.” She nods at Dante. “And don’t bullshit me, Mr. Black.”

Alistair ties Dante’s wrists behind him. When he’s done, Jacqueline makes Alistair sit in the third chair, where she ties him up herself. She stands, hefting the gun meditatively and smirking as she walks over to me.

“I’ve dreamed of this moment, you know,” she hisses. “Every night, while I clawed my way back from the gutter. After I inserted myself into your home, and bowed to you,” she sneers. “Made your fucking bed! Did your laundry! Cooked your food!”

She shakes her head, a wild look in her eyes.

“You couldn’t just take the fucking money like the rest of those gold-digging little whores who chased after my darling Brett and then cried rape! You couldn’t just take the fucking money!”

“Because your son was a piece of shit rapist!” Alistair roars behind her.

She whirls, a livid look on her face as she marches over. I scream through the gag as she slams the butt of the gun against my brother’s temple, making him groan and jerk back. Blood trickles down the side of his head as he blinks quickly.

“Don’t you dare talk about my Brett that way!” She screams. “Slandered! Maligned by the press! Driven to hurt himself like that!” She shakes her head, raises the gun, and aims it right between Gabriel’s eyes.

I start to scream through the gag. Jacqueline pauses, turning to arch a brow at me.

“Something you’d like to say, bitch?!”

Jacqueline marches over to me, swinging the gun in her hand and making me flinch. Dante roars, his arms bulging as he yanks at his binds. Jacqueline ignores him as she reaches out and yanks the gag from my mouth, allowing me to suck in sweet, clean air.

“Let them go! Please!” I blurt, tears streaming down my face. “You can hurt me if you want! Hurt me for what I drove Brett to!”

“TEMPEST!” Dante roars. “Stop it!”

“Don’t talk to her!” Gabriel bellows.

I ignore them both, my eyes leveling with Jacqueline’s.

This is a trade I can easily make. She wants someone to kill, to feel like she’s avenged her shithead son. Fine. That can be me. I can do that. But it’s not going to be either of my brothers. And it’s not going to be the man I love.

I stiffen the second the word even enters my head.

Love.

I love him.

“You want to hurt someone?!” I blurt. “You want to kill for your son?! Then kill me!! Please!”

Jacqueline’s brows raise and slowly, the corners of her lips curl up. “Oh, but Tempest,” she grins wickedly. “I already have been, for months.”

What?

“Do you like your smoothies, hon?” she sneers.

Oh my God.

“They taste just a teensy bit different when you make them yourself?”

Holy fuck.

“I could have just hit you with a car,” Jacqueline says coldly, her eyes burning hatred into me. “Or shot you. Or hired someone to beat your face in.” She smiles thinly. “But I wanted to make them suffer, too, for wanting to take my poor boy to court and ruining his life. I wanted to make them watch you fade away slowly.” Her lips curl even more, until her face is a mask of evil. “Your precious Dr. Han would never have tested for it, because, well, who would ever think arsenic when you already show all the signs of methylmalonic acidemia?”

No.

“Tempest!” Alistair yells, his eyes wild. “What the fuck is⁠—”

“She’s been dying for the last few months, you idiots,” Jacqueline sneers, spinning toward my brothers. “She just hasn’t bothered to tell you.”

They both yank their gazes past her to me, their faces white.

“Tempest…” Gabriel chokes, shaking his head side to side. “No. That’s not⁠—”

“The best part, Tempest,” Jacqueline continues, “is I’ve already killed you. I could let you go right now, and there’s nothing they’d be able to do to save you. Your organs are starting to shut down. Thrown up any blood recently?”

A single tear starts to trickle down my cheek. Jacqueline spots it and laughs coldly.

“Hmm, that’s what I’ll do. You can sit there and watch me take away everything you love in this world: your brothers, and your little fake husband. And then I’ll let you go. So you can wander aimlessly, like me. So that you can fall into the gutter and scream to nobody who will listen about the injustice that was done to you. And then, Tempest,” she hisses, leering close to me. “Then you can fucking die.”

She whirls, marching over to Dante and my brothers and bringing the gun up.

“Now… Which one do you love the most?”

“Please…” I choke.

“Is it Gabriel?”

She grins as she presses the gun barrel to his forehead.

“NO!”

She laughs. “Or maybe the adopted one?”

“STOP IT!” I scream when she presses the gun to Alistair’s temple.

“Or maybe,” she muses, walking back to Dante, nearest the edge of the rooftop patio. “Maybe it’s⁠—”

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

The whole scene goes still for a moment. Jacqueline turns her head toward me, smiling coldly. “I think we have a winner.”

No.

This isn’t happening. Not like this.

I watch, nauseated and horrified, as Jacqueline raises the gun and rests the barrel against Dante’s forehead. Then it hits me.

I’m already dead.

There’s no saving me.

But I can save him.

I’m not even aware I’m on my feet until I’m running. My hands are tied in front of me, but Jacqueline never bothered with my legs, since she had a gun on me.

That’s going to cost her.

She whirls at the last second when she hears my footsteps. But just as her face pales, and she tries to swing the gun toward me, I slam into her as hard as I can. We both scream and go toppling backward, backward, backward….

…And hit the patio railing at waist height.

I hear Dante roaring my name. I feel the lift as I shove Jacqueline backward into midair, then the pull of gravity as I follow her over the railing, forty-odd stories above the streets of New York.

It’s okay.

My bill has already been paid. My ticket already punched. And I’ve always thought the worst part about this whole dying business was that I was going to die slowly.

Looks like it’s going to be much faster now.

And besides, I had the time I shared with Dante.

I got to feel love.

And that’s a life well lived.

My body follows Jacqueline’s over the edge, momentum yanking me down until we both slip over into the abyss.