Chapter 4 #2
His knees gave out beneath him.
His body hit the cracked asphalt with a sickening thud.
“Hey!”
Instinct overrode caution.
I rushed around the front of the car and hurried toward him, my heels clicking against the pavement before sinking into a cautious crouch several feet away.
The docks were eerily silent.
Rows of abandoned warehouses loomed in the darkness like sleeping giants. Weak security lights buzzed overhead, casting pale circles across the empty loading bays.
Not another soul was in sight.
I glanced around once more before looking back at him.
“Sir...”
He didn’t answer.
Blood continued to spread beneath him.
“If you won’t let me take you to a hospital, at least let me help.”
His breathing came in slow, uneven pulls.
“There isn’t anyone here.”
Still nothing.
“You’ll bleed to death long before whoever you’re waiting for arrives.”
At last, he lifted his head.
Frustration burned in his eyes.
As though his own injuries offended him.
The overhead light caught his face.
Blood streaked one side of his face, partially obscuring a long, jagged scar that carved its way down his left cheek.
Two vicious gashes had permanently distorted the corner of his mouth, leaving it curled into what looked like a perpetual sneer.
Then I saw his eyes.
His right eye was an unnerving shade of vivid green.
His left...
A pale, clouded blue, the unmistakable mark of an eye that had been irreparably damaged.
The scars should have disfigured him. They should have diminished him.
Instead, they only made him more terrifying.
Like a man who had survived hell and brought a piece of it back with him.
My breath caught.
Recognition struck with breathtaking force.
Romeo Flynn.
The realization crashed into me all at once.
I should have known.
The voice. The unmistakable Irish lilt. The effortless authority in the way he spoke.
Every clue had been there from the beginning.
Only the scars had concealed him.
They had transformed the handsome young man I had once pulled from the lake into someone darker, making it impossible to reconcile him with the boy who had lived in my memories for the past ten years.
He looked at me without recognition, his expression clouded by blood loss.
Panic surged through me.
It was the same instinct that had taken hold of me ten years ago by the lake—the overwhelming need to keep him alive.
“You’re losing too much blood,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady despite the chaos inside me. “I swear, if you don’t let me help you, you’ll lose consciousness within seconds.”
I took a cautious step closer.
“Please.”
The plea slipped out before I could stop it.
Surely, he wouldn’t question why a complete stranger cared this much... or why, against all reason, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him a second time.
For several long seconds, he simply watched me.
His gaze searched my face with the wariness of a man who had survived by trusting no one.
As though every helping hand he’d ever reached for had ended with a knife buried in his back.
As though he was trying to decide whether I was here to save him...
...or finish what someone else had started.
At last, he spoke through gritted teeth.
“My pocket.”
I frowned. “What?”
“My phone.”
His breathing faltered. “Take it... from my pocket.”
He swallowed against the pain. “Call the first name in my contacts.”
A strained breath escaped him. “Keegan.”
I blinked at him, stunned that a man who looked moments away from collapsing was more concerned about reaching his phone than allowing me to stop the heavy bleeding.
His gaze drifted toward me again.
For one strange moment, it lingered.
Not on my face.
Lower.
His eyes traced the full, heavy curves straining against my dress.
He didn’t seem to realize how blatantly he was staring, how his jaw had tightened and his breathing had shifted.
I felt the familiar twist of insecurity bloom in my chest—he was staring so openly, so intently, that I wanted to cross my arms and hide them.
Yet he didn’t seem to realize how long his gaze had held, how dark it had become.
I ignored it, cheeks burning.
I reached into the pocket of his blood-soaked jacket and retrieved the phone.
While unlocking it, I quickly assessed his injuries.
Years of growing up around Bratva soldiers had taught me enough first aid to recognize which wounds couldn’t wait.
“The laceration on your forearm is losing the most blood,” I said, more to myself than to him. “If I don’t get pressure on it immediately, you’ll keep bleeding.”
A flicker of impatience crossed his face despite the pain.
“There’s a medical bag.”
I looked up. “Where is it?”
He drew a strained breath before answering.
“Inside the warehouse.”
He nodded faintly toward the building behind us.
“Third locker on the left wall.”
His voice grew weaker with every word.
“Black duffel.”
He paused to steady his breathing.
“The code is four... seven... two... nine.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said, already turning toward the warehouse.
“You stay exactly where you are.”
As though that were even possible in his condition.
I sprinted toward the warehouse.
The massive steel doors stood partially open.
Inside, darkness swallowed almost everything beyond the entrance.
My footsteps echoed across the concrete floor.
One locker.
Two.
Three.
The black duffel sat exactly where he’d said it would.
My fingers punched in the code.
The lock clicked open.
Inside lay neatly packed emergency medical supplies alongside several items I deliberately chose not to inspect too closely.
I grabbed the bag and ran back outside.
Romeo had somehow managed to drag himself against the warehouse wall.
A crimson trail marked the path he’d crawled.
He looked even paler now.
One trembling hand held the phone against his ear.
“I’ve been attacked,” he said hoarsely. “I’m at Warehouse Six.”
He paused, drawing a labored breath before continuing.
“Get here before I pass out.”
The phone slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the asphalt.
I dropped to my knees beside him.
The metallic scent of blood saturated the cold night air, so thick it settled at the back of my throat.
I forced myself to ignore it.
Panic had no place here.
Opening the black duffel bag, I worked almost instinctively, my hands moving with the quiet confidence that came from years of standing beside the Sokolov family’s private physicians.
Growing up in the Bratva meant learning early that bullet wounds, knife cuts, and broken bones weren’t rare emergencies—they were part of everyday life.
Romeo’s injuries were serious.
The deep gash along his forearm was bleeding the most, the edges ragged enough to suggest either a vicious knife strike or shattered glass.
Fresh blood soaked through the gauze almost as quickly as I applied it.
“Damn it...”
I grabbed another packet.
And another.
Packing the wound carefully, I applied firm, unrelenting pressure until the bleeding finally began to slow.
Only then did I wrap the arm tightly with compression bandages, checking that the circulation in his fingers remained intact.
“Stay with me,” I murmured.
Whether I was speaking to him or myself, I wasn’t entirely sure.
His breathing remained shallow.
Once the wound was clean, I pressed fresh gauze against it until the bleeding slowed to a sluggish seep before securing everything with adhesive strips from the kit.
Only then did I lean back.
A long breath escaped me.
My clothes were ruined.
Dark crimson stains covered the front of my cream blouse and soaked into my trousers where I’d knelt beside him.
My sleeves were sticky with drying blood, and no matter how many times I wiped my hands on the clean towel from the medical kit, crimson remained trapped beneath my fingernails and in the creases of my skin.
I’d stabilized him.
Nothing more.
He still needed a surgeon.
A proper operating room. Real medical care.
As I reached for another bandage, I became aware of his gaze.
This time, it lingered on my face.
Not casually.
Intently.
As though he were searching for something buried beneath my features... trying to decide whether we had crossed paths before, or whether I was simply another stranger fate had placed in his path.
“Is there something fascinating about my face that I’m unaware of?” I asked dryly.
His brow furrowed as though he were trying to focus through a haze of pain.
Before he could respond, his eyelids fluttered.
The effort of staying awake was clearly becoming too much.
His breathing slowed.
His head tipped back against the concrete wall.
For several seconds, I simply watched him.
Without the tension hardening his expression, I could finally see him clearly.
The years had transformed him.
The carefree teenager I’d once admired had vanished completely.
His jaw had become broader and more sharply defined beneath several days’ worth of dark stubble.
His dark hair had grown longer than I remembered, falling untidily across his forehead, damp with sweat and blood.
Prison had changed him.
Not just physically.
There was something heavier about him now.
As though ten years behind bars had stripped away every trace of innocence and left only the man required to survive.
Yet beneath the scars...
Beneath the exhaustion...
I could still catch fleeting glimpses of the nineteen-year-old I had once pulled from the lake.
The realization settled heavily in my chest, tightening around my heart in a way I couldn’t explain.
Romeo.
It really was him.
His phone lay where it had fallen onto the asphalt.
After a moment’s hesitation, I picked it up.
The screen illuminated immediately.
A news alert flashed across the screen.
brEAKING: Multiple bodies discovered at Flynn Manor. Authorities launch homicide investigation into one of the deadliest mass killings in recent Florida history.
Newly released ex-convict Romeo Medved Flynn named the primary person of interest. The FBI has urged the public not to approach him and to report any sightings immediately, describing him as armed, extremely dangerous, and potentially linked to organized crime.
My blood ran cold.
Yarina’s words came rushing back.