Toxic Love: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance
Toxic Love: Chapter 39

The first thing I see when I open my eyes is my brothers hovering over me. I frown, blinking away the darkness as I focus on them.

“Not so close, do you both need glasses?” I wrinkle my nose. “Gabriel, seriously. I can smell the fucking French fries on your breath.”

The two of them grin widely and exhale.

“How do you feel?”

“I—”

Dante.

I start to jerk to an upright position, but instantly choke on the pain that explodes throughout my abdomen.

“Whoa! Hang on there, T,” Alistair grunts, grabbing my shoulders and easing me back down. “You’ve just had major surgery.”

My pulse skips. “Wait, what?! Where’s Dante?!”

“Just breathe, Tempest,” Gabriel murmurs.

“Where is he?!”

“He’s fine,” Alistair interjects. “He’s here at the hospital, too.”

Gabriel smiles and takes my hand as he peers into my eyes. “Yeah, he’s fine. How much do you remember?”

I try to force my brain to replay everything that happened on Dante’s patio. All I can really remember is falling, and then blacking out.

Shit, I had a seizure.

I close my eyes, exhaling slowly before I open them again.

“I need to tell you both something.”

“Tempest, it can wait. We need to talk to you about⁠—”

“Shut up, Alistair,” I mutter. “Look, I have something, and it’s bad, okay? It’s called severe late-onset methylmalonic acidemia⁠—”

“No, you don’t,” Gabriel smiles quietly at me.

I scowl. “Just shut up and let me get this off my chest, okay? I didn’t tell either of you, and I feel like shit about it, but I⁠—”

“Tempest, you don’t have methyl-acide-whatever.”

I glare at Alistair. “Methylmalonic acidemia.”

“Okay. Sure. You don’t have it.”

I blink. “Sorry, what?”

“Do you remember the patio?”

I shake my head. “Only bits and pieces,” I say quietly as my brain tries to process what they just said. “I’m sorry, did you just say I don’t have methylmalonic acidemia?”

“Correct. But you are working through some serious long-term arsenic poisoning.”

Holy shit.

Then, suddenly, I remember.

“Pam…”

“Also known as Jacqueline Sinclair,” Gabriel growls viciously. “Tempest, I’m so fucking sorry. That crazy bitch slipped right under my radar. I mean, she was in my fucking house with you…”

He looks away, his face pained. Slowly, I inch my hand to his and squeeze it.

“You did think she was dead. And Pam looks nothing like the Jacqueline we always saw in the tabloids.”

He nods, still looking away. Alistair clears his throat.

“She was slowly poisoning your food. And when you started to lose your appetite, she started feeding you those smoothies. The hospital ran a lab test on them, by the way.” He scowls. “That cunt was putting anti-nausea meds in them, too, to make you think they were the only thing you could stomach.”

I nod slowly. Anti-nausea meds. That’s probably why the smoothies tasted different when I tried to replicate them. Then my eyes drop to the hospital gown I’m wearing, and I yank it up over my abdomen. My face pales when I see the bandages on my side.

“What the fuck⁠—!”

“Breathe, sis,” Alistair growls, glancing at Gabriel. “You’ve had surgery. Think you missed that when we told you earlier.”

“For what?!”

“The effects of long-term arsenic poisoning are reversible, mostly. You’re going to be on a bunch of meds and vitamins for a month or so to get you back to normal and to kickstart your immune system after the havoc that’s been wreaked on it.” Alistair frowns. “What isn’t reversible, and what was adding to the acidosis of your blood and giving you those confusion spells, was that your kidneys were toxifying.”

My eyes go wide and a sick feeling pools in my stomach as I look back down to my abdomen—at the gauze and bandages wrapped around it. At the swollen, bruised skin. At the tubes snaking in and out of my veins and the incision site.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“They’re both still in there,” Gabriel chuckles. “Which I didn’t know was how they did it until your procedure. But you’ve got a new one in there, too.”

My eyes snap to his. “Who⁠—?”

“Dante,” he smiles.

My mouth falls open. “What?”

“He talked to Dr. Han a little while back and had some tests run. Turns out, he’s a perfect match. So after we pulled you back onto that roof while you were seizing, Dante called Dr. Han, asked for the operation to be prepped, and we hauled you in.”

I stare at my abdomen once again before my head snaps up.

“I want to see him. Now.”

Alistair chuckles. “Figured as much⁠—.”

“Now, Alistair!” I blurt, my heart racing.

“Remember the part where you just had organ transplant surgery?” Alistair grunts. But he and Gabriel unlock the wheels of my bed and start to push me and the rack of machines and IVs toward the door.

They wheel me into the hall, where an orderly checks my notes and confirms that I am allowed to be taken into Dante’s room. When the door opens, my heart surges when he looks up from where he’s talking with Lorenzo and Bianca, the latter of whom squeals and rushes over to me.

“Oh my God, Tempest!” she blurts, squeezing my hand tightly.

I grin at her, but then my eyes swivel right back to Dante. I’m almost bouncing out of my bed as they wheel it next to his. The second we stop moving, I go to claw my way into his bed, but they all stop me with shouts.

“Easy, Tempest!” Gabriel snaps. “For fuck’s sake, you’re going to kill yours⁠—”

“I need to be there,” I blurt, pointing at Dante’s bed. He looks up and grins as our eyes lock.

“I thought I felt the winds pick up.” He turns to my brothers and Lorenzo. “Help her?”

“This is such a shit idea,” Alistair grunts, but he, Gabriel, and Lorenzo lift me gingerly from my bed and into Dante’s.

“Hey, little hurricane,” he murmurs quietly.

I turn my head to gaze at him. “You seriously gave me a fucking kidney?”

“It’s just a loan. I need it back when you’re done with it.”

I giggle, leaning in to kiss him as best as I can.

“That might not be for a while. Apparently I’m not dying.”

“Well, then I guess you just hang on to it.”

He grins, leaning in to kiss me again. Just then, the door flies open, and Maeve comes charging in.

“You’re okay!” she sobs, shoving past Alistair and Gabriel to hug me tightly, making me wince.

She pulls back to grin at me, wiping a tear away. I frown as my eyes lock onto the bruising around her left one. “Jesus, Maeve!” I blurt. “What the fuck happened to your eye?”

She glances down. “I…it’s nothing. I fell.”

Gabriel’s face hardens to a stony mask as he turns her toward him and peers at her black eye.

“Maeve…” he growls.

“It’s really nothing⁠—”

“Thank God you’re okay, Tempest!”

We all turn as Charles comes blustering into the room. Instantly, a chill settles over everything as we all look at Maeve’s face, then at him.

“What happened to her eye, Charles,” Alistair says quietly, his voice ice.

Our grandfather’s face darkens for a second before he clears his throat. “What? Nothing. She fell. Didn’t you, sweetheart?”

“Fuck this,” Gabriel snarls. “No more stalling. No more bullshit. Maeve, you’re moving into my place. Today.”

“She has a home, Gabriel,” Charles mutters.

But my brother just shakes his head. “Not with you anymore she doesn’t, you scum-sucking piece of shit.”

Charles’ nostrils flare as he glares at Gabriel. “Careful, Gabriel.”

“Or what, Charles?” Alistair snaps. “You’ll cause a big scene at a fucking board meeting?”

Alistair scoffs.

“We can’t remove you from the board, Charles,” Gabriel says pointedly. “But Maeve’s moving out of your house. Today. This delay tactic of yours while I’m sure you’ve been shopping her out as a bride-for-cash is fucking done. If you put up a stink about it, I will fucking bury you in legal motions and criminal complaints, whether Maeve testifies or not.”

Our grandfather’s face is furious. “You can’t take my fucking daughter away from⁠—”

“Mr. Black.”

Dante’s voice is tired. But it still thunders through the room.

“It’s time for you to leave.”

Charles glares death at him. His hands close to fists. But then, with a snarl, he whirls and storms out of the door.

Maeve bites her lip, looking at each of us in turn before her gaze settles on Gabriel. “I can really move in with you?”

“Definitely.”

Everyone stays for another ten minutes or so, then slowly says their goodbyes, promising to check in soon. Dr. Han pokes his nose in, squeezing my hand and telling me my new kidney is doing just fine, and that I’m going to be just fine.

Finally, Dante and I are alone, squeezed into the tiny hospital bed.

He turns his head to kiss me slowly, and I grin as I kiss him back.

“I still can’t believe you gave me a kidney,” I murmur as I lean my head on his shoulder.

“Well, you already have my heart, little hurricane,” he says quietly. “Why not a kidney, too?”

We both let that gem of a line hang there for a second before I snort and start laughing, even though it hurts.

“That was a terrible joke.”

He chuckles as he kisses me again. “Sorry. I’ll work on it.”

“I’ll always love you even if you don’t.”

Yeah?” He grins as he leans in, his lips brushing mine. “Good, because I’ll always love you, too.”