Page 79 of Unforgivable Ties

The room seemed to spin, and the overhead lights glared harshly against my disoriented eyes. The metallic odor of blood, the cold sterility of the morgue, everything intensified at that moment. It wasn’t just the realization that I’d stepped into a world far more grotesque than I had imagined; it was also discovering that I was a cog in a macabre machine, part of something so ethically complex and morally defiant.

“Harvest?” I whispered, my voice barely audible. My mind, a usually quick and efficient machine, stumbled over the word. Harvest was a term for crops, for wheat and fruit and corn. Not for people.

“They’re already dead. They no longer serve a purpose to us.”

How could Cesare say that? The men were dead, but they had families, people who loved them. It was an insult to cut them open and sell everything that was left on the black market.

“N-no,” I said, steadying myself enough to stand up straight. “I won’t.”

“I don’t think you understand, Stephanie. You don’t have a choice,” Cesare’s voice carried a deadly calmness that sent chills down my spine. I saw no compassion in his eyes, only a cold practicality, a chilling resolve beneath his clinical demeanor. “The moment you entered into this world, you were bound to it.”

It was a nightmare. The metallic clinking of Cesare’s scalpel against the steel tray echoed in my ears. These were the sounds of the true existence of this warehouse, a noise that would echo through my dreams.

“You said it was temporary,” I said, my voice shaking. “Only until you found someone new.”

“It was never temporary. In fact, you should consider yourself lucky,” he said, acting like I had won the lottery instead of discovering a morgue full of bodies about to be harvested for organs. “Vincenzo should have killed you after what you saw. Instead, he brought you here. You get to live, and you’ll be making more money than doctors do when you graduate.”

“Vincenzo won’t make me stay,” I said, my voice wavering at the mention of the man who’d brought me into this world, the man I’d trusted implicitly.

“That man is so soft for you,” he muttered. “He’s killed two people already. I can only hope no one here looks at you the wrong way, or I’ll have another body on my hands.”

His words hung in the air, turning the room even colder. There was no way Vincenzo had killed someone over me...right? I remembered the look in his eyes when David touched me and when he had found the ski lodge employee on top of me. It was a murderous look indeed, but I had always dismissed it as possessiveness. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized that there could be a much darker interpretation.

“But his loyalty to the mafia is stronger,” Cesare continued. “Yes, he will make you stay. Or, the alternative.”

His implication hung heavy in the air. The alternative was, of course, death.

I swallowed hard, my clammy hands balled into tight fists at my sides. It wasn’t fair, none of it was. But fairness rarely factored into survival. The thought made me feel nauseous, but I had to face it straight on—just like everything else in this twisted world that Vincenzo had inadvertently drawn me into.

I didn’t care if I died.

“I can’t do this,” I said, hot tears running down my cheeks.

I sprinted out of the morgue and down the hallway. Somehow, I remembered to grab my backpack before running out of the building.

I was sure one of the mafioso’s guarding the building was going to shoot me on the way out. But, as I ran away from the warehouse and towards the subway station, no bullets pierced my body.

The streets of the city were slick, rain pelting down from the dark sky above. The road the warehouse was on was near abandoned, with no streetlights to cut through the dark abyss. My heart pounded in my chest as I sprinted through the desolate, endless path of asphalt, the echo of my damp shoes slapping against the pavement the only sound in the deadened silence.

Finally, I reached the subway station, heaving and out of breath. I knew there was a lot of darkness about Vincenzo that he hid from me, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. The man was selling organs on the black market.

And he would pick it over me.

A sob wracked my body, and the homeless man sleeping on the bench raised his head to look at me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to him, apologizing for disturbing his sleep.

There was no way I could ever look at Vincenzo again. I pulled my phone out and called Jessica, praying she would pick up.

“Hey,” she said.

I tried to talk, but a sob wracked my body before I could say anything.

“What’s wrong?”

Jessica’s voice was laced with concern, and it struck a painful chord in my chest, causing another wave of uncontrolled sobs. I could hear her calling my name frantically through the line, but my words were lost in the torrent of tears and broken sobs.

“Jess,” I choked out through the tears. “Can I stay at your house tonight?”

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