Unforgivable Ties

Chapter 17

Vincenzo

I was seeing red. Seeing David slap Stephanie across the face had elicited a primal rage in me I’d never known before. He had always been an arrogant fool, but brought so much money into the club we had looked the other way. Not anymore.

And how dare he touch what was mine? I wanted to tear him to shreds when I had seen him touch Stephanie’s chest without her consent.

I had kept it together in front of Stephanie, but the minute David and I were in a back room, I unleashed my fury. My fist shot out faster than I could blink, colliding with his jaw. His head whipped backward as he stumbled, losing his balance and almost falling to the ground.

“I said,” he heaved, spitting out blood. “I was sorry. I didn’t know she was your woman.”

“So it would’ve been ok to do that to another woman?”

I hit him again, harder this time. He fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the cold tiles, but I wasn’t done. I stormed over to him, my rage a searing flame in the pit of my stomach.

“Give me that,” I said, extending my hand to one of the grunts in the room.

Two of them had already been inside the room when I threw David in. They were on a smoke break, and any conversation they might have been having was cut short. Now, they stood quietly, puffing on their cigarettes as they watched me beat the shit out of David.

The grunt passed me his cigarette. I took a drag; the smoke burning my lungs, fueling my anger. David was moaning on the ground, crumpled in a heap. I let the embers of the cigarette grow hotter as I sucked in another breath and blew out a cloud of smoke.

Then, I drove the cigarette end into David’s lip, right where he had smacked Stephanie and given her a split lip. David screamed, his hands flying to his face, but I only pressed down harder. The cigarette sizzled as it met flesh, filling the room with a foul smell.

“Doesn’t feel too good, does it?” I asked, voice as cold as ice.

David’s screams were still echoing in the room as I tossed the dead cigarette butt on his writhing body. His hands frantically pawed at his face, trying to soothe the excruciating pain.

Normally, for someone like David, I would have stopped my lesson there. But he had made the horrible mistake of hurting Stephanie. All reason and self control I had was out the window.

The cigarette smoke swirled around the room, propelled by a tabletop oscillating fan. I unplugged the fan from the wall socket and yanked the cord out of the fan itself, leaving me with a string of electrical wire in my hand.

My eyes locked with David’s. The fear in them was palpable, but I didn’t care. I felt no sympathy for the man who had hurt Stephanie.

“You wouldn’t,” he gasped, propelling himself backward. His hand slipped, and he toppled on to the tile.

“Shouldn’t’ve touched her,” I retorted, stalking over to him.

“Why are you doing this for some chick?” he asked. He still sounded terrified, but there was an undercurrent of rage with the words. “Is her pussy that good—”

I didn’t let him finish. The wire was in my fist, and with a swift, ruthless movement, I whipped it across his face. His words were cut short as a fresh wave of pain sliced through him; blood splattered on the white tile, mingling with the ash from the spent cigarette.

My rage fueled brighter at him mentioning her cunt. That was for me to think about and me alone. He had no right, no claim to her. And he sure as hell didn’t have the right to hurt her.

“We’re done here, David.”

I took the electrical cord and wrapped it around his neck, pulling tight enough to see his eyes bulge. His hands clawed at the cord, trying to loosen my grip, but it was futile. His skin turned a sickly shade of purple, and the pleading in his eyes faded, replaced by a vacant glossiness.

It was a look I had seen many times before. David wasn’t the first person I had done this to, nor would he be the last. With one last tug, I watched as the light left David’s eyes. His struggling body grew limp in my grasp, his futile attempts at loosening the cord halting. I released my grip on the cord and his lifeless body fell to the side.

“Clean this up,” I said to the two grunts.

I slammed the door as I walked out of the room. Now that he was taken care of, I wanted to see Stephanie. I walked down the brightly lit hallway until I reached the room the men used as their breakroom. From outside the door, I could hear Stephanie and Dino chatting about the latest movie that had been released on Netflix.

When I opened the door, they stopped their conversation to look at me. Stephanie’s face filled with emotion—relief, gratitude, and an undercurrent of an emotion I couldn’t place.

The Dino’s made themselves sparse, saying goodbye before exiting the room.

“Hey,” she near whispered. “Thanks for saving me.”

She was sitting on top of a table. I walked up to her and softened my hardened gaze as I took in the sight of her. Her clothes were messy and her face had a bruised side. Yet she still managed to look beautiful.

“Maybe I’ve been a bad influence on you,” I said, placing my hand on top of her head. “You’ve only been working for the mafia a few weeks and you think you can win a fight?”

She giggled at my joke, and the soft, melodic sound of it cut through the tension that had been lingering in the room.

“I’ll get them next time, I swear!” she said, pouting in a way that was almost childlike. Her lip split open again at the movement, and blood trickled out. “Oh, ouch!”

“No next time,” I said sternly, dabbing at her lip with my handkerchief.

“Yeah...I don’t think I’m cut out for fighting.”

Tears welled in her eyes, and she wrapped her arms around me as she buried her face in my chest. My heartbeat did an odd skip in my chest. I wasn’t used to this type of affection, this closeness from another human being.

I thought I would be repulsed. But when it was Stephanie hugging me, I found a warmth blooming in my chest. It was a pleasant sensation, a feeling so foreign it almost frightened me.

In a move uncharacteristic of me, I wrapped my arms around her. Her body was trembling slightly, the fragile form of her convulsing with quiet sobs.

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” I said. “Those types of things never happen here. I thought you would have more fun watching everyone than being stuck with me.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she whispered into the fabric of my shirt, her voice muffled. “I’d rather be with you.”

There was a heavy silence that followed those words. I could feel my heart pounding against my rib cage. Her confession hung in the air between us like a tangible force, so weighty I could almost taste it. A part of me wanted to pull away, to retreat back into my shell where emotions didn’t have the space to wreak havoc.

“What’d you do to him?” she asked, changing the subject.

“How do you know I did something to him?” I deflected her question. I wanted to hide just how much of a monster I really was.

“Your knuckles are all scuffed up now, and you have blood on your pants,” she said, pulling back and wiping her tears with the back of her hand. Her gaze was fixated on my bruised fist, where the skin on one of my knuckles had torn open.

“He learned a lesson,” I said.

Stephanie looked like she wanted to ask more, but stopped herself. Instead, she gestured to my knuckles. “Let me help.”

“Not much you can do there, Steph. Bandages will get in the way of work.”

She glared at me, but it was about as scary as a kitten hissing. When she pulled away from me, I wanted to grab her and pull her right back into my arms, but I didn’t. That warmth inside me was steadily growing, making my actions and words all the more confusing.

Stephanie pulled her first aid kit out of her purse and began sorting through its contents. She pulled out some small scissors, a roll of gauze, and a bottle of disinfectant.

“I don’t care if it gets in the way of your work,” she said, her voice stubborn but soft. “You can’t let it get infected.”

“How many supplies do you keep in there, anyways?”

“Enough to fix up idiots who start fights and get into shootouts,” she retorted, her eyes flashing with a mix of jest and concern. She took my hand gently, her touch as soothing as it was unsettling.

As she started cleaning the scrapes and cuts on my knuckles, I felt a strange sensation stir within me. It was a kind of vulnerability I wasn’t used to, an openness of not just my physical wounds but also those deep inside that I’d kept hidden from everyone, including myself. Her touch ignited a warmth that seemed to spread throughout my entire body, wrapping around the deep-set chill I’d been carrying for as long as I could remember. It was comforting yet foreign, a sensation that teetered on the edge of pleasure and pain.

The nerve-wracking part was that I think I liked it. I wanted to get closer to Stephanie, to let her soften the hard edges inside me. But the thought of getting close to someone was scary—scarier than any street brawl or late-night confrontation I’d ever had.

As I looked at her, gently touching me even though I looked and felt like a monster, I wondered how much longer I could resist.