Page 23 of Unforgivable Ties

“Correct! He’s a little quiet, but I’m hoping one day he’ll come around,” he paused. “What was your name?”

“Stephanie,” I responded, grabbing gauze and pressing down on his wound to control the bleeding. “Hold this.”

“Oh, does this make me your medical assistant?”

So far, Tall Dino had broken every unspoken rule I had learned about the mafia. He was nonserious, enjoyed chitchatting, and had a sense of humor.

“Unpaid,” I responded, grabbing sterile saline to clean the wound.

“Eh, got to start somewhere, I guess,” he said, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “Anyway, I was listening to your phone call—”

“You were listening to my what now?!” I sputtered, almost knocking the saline over.

“Well, y’know. Through the door—”

“You just stood outside and eavesdropped, instead of coming in and fixing your gaping stab wound?” I said, gritting my teeth.

“In a word, yes,” he replied nonchalantly, his light brown eyes sparkling with amusement.

This strange mobster had heard me talking to my best friend about how I had moved in with Vincenzo. Fortunately, I hadn’t referred to him as my “boyfriend,” and Jessica wasn’t on speaker, so he wasn’t able to hear her side of the conversation.

“I hope you’re satisfied with what you heard, then,” I muttered, cleaning his wound with saline.

“Oh, it was interesting. Vincenzo doesn’t strike me as the type to settle down with a girl.”

“It’s not like that!” I hissed, hoping Cesare wasn’t listening through the monitor. “I’m just temporarily living there until I find a new apartment.”

“Temporarily?” he looked like he believed it as much as Jessica had.

This guy seemed to like gossip. I launched into the story about my old apartment, embellishing every detail of its dilapidation to make my situation seem dire. I recounted the perpetual leaks from the ceiling, the questionable splotches on the wallpaper, and how the building was almost falling apart. Tall Dino went crazy when I mentioned how the stair fell right as the worker was condemning the building.

“No! That’s like a sitcom,” he exclaimed, his brows raising in surprise.

“It was,” I said, finishing the last stitch on his wound. “Now, you have to keep this clean.”

I launched into my spiel of how to keep the wound clean so it would heal. Tall Dino nodded along, and actually seemed to listen, unlike many other patients I had had.

“Thank you, Dr. Stephanie,” he said, sliding off the examination table. “I hope we meet again, just not under these circumstances.”

I hoped so, too. But in a life like this, the chances were it would be under this circumstance. And unfortunately, it might even end with him six feet under.

Vincenzo

“That’s everything then?” I asked Cesare.

We had another batch of organs packed up and ready to be sent to a man known as “The Surgeon.” His identity was so secret, even I was unaware of who he actually was. Cesare didn’t know either, and he had worked with The Surgeon for years.

“Yes,” Cesare said, signing off on the last load of cargo.

The organs had code names. We didn’t just write “two livers” on the outside of each box. Instead, the boxes were labeled with innocuous nicknames. “Two livers” became “double aces,” and so forth.

“We should’ve taken up their offer and provided live bodies after Leone died,” Cesare complained. “Do you know how much money that would make us?”

There had been five prominent families in the mafia underworld. Leone Alto was by far the biggest name, his business dealings reached far and wide. One of his most lucrative was kidnapping people and giving them to The Surgeonfor organ extraction—it was always better to have a fresh body intact than piecemealing from a recently deceased mangled one.

“Even we have to draw the line somewhere,” I responded. “The Bratva can have the gig.”

Leone died, and Ettore had married his daughter, effectively ending the Alto name. He had then taken over Leone’s business ventures, but steered clear of the more inhumane dealings like human trafficking.

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