Page 123 of The Don’s Omega

He blinks at me. “Okay.”

“Some of the stuff I tell you is going to sound insane. But I… I need you to hear all of it before you react.” I swallow hard. “If possible.”

“I’ll do my best to just listen.” A worried line appears between his dark brows.

“You might get angry and that’s okay. You have every right to be angry. But please, Fabio, please know that everything I did, I did because I love you. And if I hadn’t done some of the things I did, I’d have lost you and that was unacceptable.”

“Jesus, Elio, you’re scaring me.”

I hold out my hand. “I know. I’m sorry.”

His blue eyes are wide. “So, what is it you need to tell me?”

I take a deep breath. “As you know, the surgery you needed was super expensive.”

He grits his teeth. “Yes.”

“When we first found out you needed the surgery, I realized paying for it would be a challenge. So I did all the things people told me to do. I applied for any financial aid we could get. I… I started the GoFundMe where we raised some money, but it wasn’t enough.”

He nods. “I was certain that wasn’t how we paid for the surgery. The amount we raised wasn’t that big.”

“No. It helped with some of our expenses, but the surgery was crazy expensive.” I hold his worried gaze. “The insurance company wasn’t going to pay for most of it either. Obviously, with what I made at Duffy’s, I couldn’t begin to pay for the surgery. Even with extra shifts, it just didn’t come close. I… I spent hours on the phone with the insurance company, basically pleading with them, but they wouldn’t budge.”

“Assholes,” he growls. “What the hell good are they?”

“Yes, it was sickening how little they cared.” I rub the back of my neck. “So next I went to the bank to try to get a loan.” I grimace. “But they turned me down.”

He grimaces. “You should have told me all of this. I knew you were stressing out about all the money stuff. I knew you were hiding shit from me. Why’d you try to handle all of that alone? You should have told me.”

“No, Fabio. You needed to focus on your health. How would you worrying about money have helped anything? It was best that I kept that from you.”

“Bullshit. I’m the reason you were scrambling. Of course I should have shared the burden.”

I blow out a shaky breath. “I saw it differently. There was nothing you could have done to help me. It would have just stressed you out more, which was the opposite of what you needed.”

He scowls. “So if you couldn’t get a loan, what the hell did you do?” He touches his chest. “I got the surgery, so you did something. Was it the angel investor who helped out?”

“Well… not exactly.”

“Then who?” he asks apprehensively.

I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry. “When the loan officer turned me down, she felt sorry for me. She told me about this guy named Kessler who helps people in our situation.”

He squints at me. “Sounds shady.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He wasn’t a loan shark, right?” He widens his eyes. “Jesus, Elio, you didn’t borrow money from somebody like that, did you?”

Wincing, I admit, “It was a little more complicated than that.”

He looks sick. “What did you do? Tell me.”

“Kessler acts as a go between.” I hesitate. “He… he matches omegas who are desperate with rich alphas who need something.”

He leans back in his chair, dread on his young face. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

I let out a harsh breath. “You have to understand, I was out of all other options. I had to do something drastic, or you’d have died. I couldn’t let that happen.”