Unforgivable Ties

Chapter 1

Stephanie

I knew I shouldn’t take this shortcut, but I always did. My apartment building was randomly nestled in a warehouse district that was by the docks. There were no other residential buildings around to speak of. And, I didn’t have a car, so getting to the nearest trolley or subway on foot took forever.

When I needed to take the green line, I would cut through the docks. They were mostly abandoned, and I hadn’t run into anyone else in all the times I had taken it. Was it sketchy? Yes. Did it save a lot of time? Also yes.

The docks were piled high with shipping containers, creating an eerie labyrinth of rusting iron and peeling paint. The salty sea air heavily hung around, tangling with the smells of oil and metal. Lonely calls of distant seagulls echoed in the distance, only adding to the bleak isolation of the place.

Tonight, as the last act of a dying sun painted the sky with streaks of orange and crimson, I once again wove between the towering stacks of containers. Out of nowhere, the solitude I had grown accustomed to was shattered by the sound of gunshots.

I froze, my heart pounding like a drum in my chest. The gunshots were too close for comfort, echoing within the confines of the metal maze around me. I needed to hide. Pressing myself up against a shipping container, I looked around for options.

There was a building that was presumably used to store equipment a couple hundred feet away from me. Like the rest of the docks, it was old and worn down.

I darted across the open space, trying to keep as low as possible while more gunshots echoed in the air. How far away were they from me? And why hadn’t they stopped? For a normal crime in NYC, the assailant would usually shoot their target and leave. But this sounded like a shootout.

I was completely out of breath by the time I reached the back door of the storage building. My hand flew to the doorknob, twisting it in desperate hope. It was unlocked. I quickly slipped into the dark room, letting out a breath I didn’t even know I had been holding.

Inside, the odor of old oil and rubber filled my nostrils, but it seemed safe—I would just hide here until the cops arrived. Nestling myself behind a shelf filled with buckets and rusty tools, I tried to steady my breathing. I fumbled in my bag and desperately tried to fish out my phone to dial 911. Finally, I found it amongst the mess and swiped open the lock screen.

There was no service.

“What?!” I whispered to myself.

As my heart pounded in my chest, I tried to reason with myself that it really wasn’t that bad. I was hidden here, and wasn’t part of whatever what was going on outside. Just as I was feeling a semblance of relief, a noise echoed through the hushed room: the creaking of the front door. I choked back a gasp, my eyes wide, frozen in fear.

A man let out a pained groan as he stumbled into the building, the door slamming behind him. He didn’t make it but a few steps before I heard him stumble to the floor with a bone-jarring thud. His labored breathing filled the room, echoing off the steel walls. I remained still, my heart battering against my rib cage like a wild bird desperate to escape its cage.

I could hear the faint sound of his clothes shifting, followed by a loud curse. The man had probably just discovered we had no cell service. Curiosity got the better of me. I was well hidden behind a mop bucket, but I peeked my head up to catch a glance of him.

The flickering fluorescent lights illuminated him sparingly, but I could tell one thing: this man was a giant. He was easily over six and a half feet tall, with a body built solely of muscle. A bullet had pierced the steel of his muscle, and blood was blooming from his ribcage down his t-shirt, leaking onto the gun holstered on his hip.

I couldn’t help but gasp at the sight. He turned his head in my direction, his dark eyes reflecting in the light. His face was covered in grime and sweat, but there was a commanding quality that made it impossible to look away.

As I tried to curl back behind the mop bucket, my phone clattered to the floor.

“Who the fuck is there?” he asked.

Silently, I pleaded for him to change his mind and think I was an inanimate object that had simply fallen to the floor.

“If you don’t come out, I’ll shoot.”

I swallowed loudly, my throat dry and constricting in fear. His voice was as menacing as the gunshot wound he himself was nursing. With a shaky hand, I reached for the mop handle and used it to steady myself as I rose to my feet. I rolled the mop bucket away and slowly revealed myself from behind the shadows.

“Who are you working with?” he narrowed his eyes on me and put his finger on the trigger. “The Bratva?”

“I-I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know what a Bratva is,” I said, my words a hurried, jumbled mess. “Please don’t shoot me.” As I said the words, I cringed away from him, bracing for a blast that didn’t come.

His face remained impassive, his eyes intensely focused on me. He held the gun steady, but didn’t pull the trigger. The silence stretched out between us, broken only by his haggard breaths and the hum of the overhead light.

“You’re a civilian,” he stated, more to himself than me. He seemed to relax, lowering his gun slightly, but his eyes remained harsh and watchful. “What’re you doing here?”

“I use this route as a shortcut,” I launched into an unnecessarily long explanation of how I ended up here.

“Tch,” he responded, narrowing his eyes at me again. “Don’t do that again. It’s dangerous.”

Now that my heart had mostly stopped racing from fear, I couldn’t help but notice how attractive this man was. He had long, black hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. With his hair pulled back, it was impossible to miss the intricate tattoos that adorned every inch of his body.

Normally, I wouldn’t look twice at a man like him. But something about him was...magnetic.

“Leave,” he commanded me. “And do not take this route again.”

My gaze drifted to the crimson liquid seeping from the puncture wound on his ribs. As a medical student, I was confident that I could mend it and stop the flow of blood. The question was: was this man a bad person, and would he be better off dead?

In med school, we were taught to ignore our morals and treat the patient. “You’re hurt,” I said, stepping closer to him.

“If you pass out from the sight of blood,” he responded. “I’m just going to leave you here.”

Despite his dismissal, I held my ground. “I’m a med student,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I inched forward. “So unless you plan on dying, let me take a look at your wound.”

He eyed me suspiciously as I walked closer to him, his gun again trained on my body. “No sudden moves,” he warned gutturally, his eyes never leaving mine. After a tense moment, he nodded minutely and lowered his weapon.

“I also accept ‘Thank You,'” I said, kneeling down and searching through my bag for my medical kit.

He gave what could almost be considered a laugh. “You haven’t saved me yet.”

Gently, I peeled back his shredded shirt to expose the gunshot wound. God, I would really have to focus on this task. His body was literally perfection, each muscle defined underneath the ink that adorned his skin. But the crimson stain spreading across his abdominal area broke the mesmerizing picture.

Rummaging through my bag, I found a pair of gloves and put them on. His eyes were still trained on me, a mixture of suspicion and curiosity glinting in the brown depths as I got to work.

“This might sting a bit,” I murmured as I cleaned his wound with antiseptic.

All patients I had done it to had physically recoiled or couldn’t hide the grimace on their face. This man’s expression didn’t change as I applied the antiseptic. Evidently, he was used to bearing pain; an intriguing yet unsurprising trait for a man like him.

As I worked, the surrounding silence seemed to grow louder. His eyes never left mine, creating a strange intimacy that had my heart pounding in my chest for reasons far beyond anxiety.

“I need to stitch up the wound. It may hurt,” I warned him.

“Aren’t you going to take the bullet out first?”

“What? That’s only in TV shows,” I scoffed, mad at the media for promoting incorrect medical knowledge. “Sometimes, even doctors will leave it in place if it’s too dangerous to take out.”

He grunted noncommittally at this and fixed his gaze on the ceiling, seemingly lost in thought. I took a deep breath and threaded the needle, my hands surprisingly steady. The tension in the room was palpable as I dipped the needle into the wound; the guy didn’t even wince, only clenched his jaw as I sewed. His stoicism was fascinating, almost eerie. I wondered what sort of life he’d led to be so accustomed to pain.

“You need to see a doctor,” I said as I placed gauze on his wound and began wrapping.

“Well, you’re almost a doctor, right?”

I gave him a disapproving look. “I still have two and a half more years of med school, and then years of residency. You could have internal wounds,” I said, finishing up wrapping the gauze. “Consider this a bandaid.”

He sat up slowly, gritting his teeth against the pain. His eyes were still locked onto mine, and I felt a strange sense of connection despite our evident differences. “Alright, Doc.”

The man checked his phone again, before cursing and slamming it into the floor. I presumed we still didn’t have service.

“What happened out there?” I asked curiously.

“There are things in life that are better left unknown,” he replied darkly, his gaze drifting away from me and towards the window.

I was about to push back for a response, but the words died in my throat as I saw the determined look on his face. It was clear he didn’t want to discuss it. Maybe it was the adrenaline wearing off, or the obvious dismissal of my query, but my courage faltered.

“Stephanie,” I said. “My name is Stephanie.”

He nodded in response, but didn’t offer his name to me.

The sound of a car engine shattered the silence on the docks. As it grew louder, it became clear that the vehicle was headed towards the building where the mystery man and I were.

“Fuck,” the man said, “You need to hide.”

“But…are you going to be ok?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know them. Just stay quiet and out of sight till we’re gone.”

I scrambled to my feet, frantically making my way back to my hiding spot. Before going in, I turned around and gave one last look at the man. He, too, was staring in my direction, an unreadable look on his face. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask him, but would never be able to. So, in our last moment, I committed him to my memory.