Chapter 2 A Bound By Blood and Secrets

Elena was convinced she was going to die.

Not from a gunshot wound or anything dramatic like that. No, she was going to die from hauling a man who weighed approximately two hundred pounds up two flights of stairs in the middle of the night.

"Why," she huffed, pulling him up another step, "are you so ridiculously heavy?"

He groaned in response. Not helpful.

"Seriously, what do you eat? Concrete blocks? Do you lift cars for exercise?" Another step. Her legs were shaking. "Is that your hobby? Just walking around being unnecessarily heavy?"

She had to pause on the landing between floors to catch her breath. He slumped against the wall, barely conscious, still bleeding all over the place. She looked at his face properly for the first time since dragging him out of her car.

Even half-dead and pale as a ghost, he was annoyingly handsome. Like, movie-star handsome. Sharp jawline, with a straight nose, dark hair falling across his forehead in a way that should be illegal.

"You know what really gets me?" she said, adjusting her grip under his arms. "You could've been an actor, or a model. One of those guys on magazine covers selling cologne or watches or whatever. But no. You chose this life. Running from gunfire, getting shot, and making terrible life choices that ruin a perfectly good Tuesday for an innocent doctor who just wanted a peaceful drive."

One more flight to go.

Her arms felt like overcooked noodles. Her back was screaming at her. She was sweating through her shirt, and her hair was probably a disaster. If Mrs. Chen from 2B opened her door right now and saw this, Elena would have to move to a different state.

"If you die after all this effort," she panted, hauling him up another step, "I'm going to be so incredibly mad at you. Do you understand me? Furious. I'll find a way to bring you back just so I can kill you again."

Finally, thank God, finally, they reached her floor. She half-dragged, half-carried him down the hallway to her door, then spent what felt like an eternity fumbling for her keys with shaking hands.

Please don't let anyone see this, she prayed. Please, please, please.

The lock clicked. She shoved the door open with her shoulder and pulled him inside, immediately letting him collapse onto her entryway floor the second the door shut behind them.

Elena stood there for a moment, her hands on her knees, gasping for air like she'd just run a marathon. Everything hurt. Her shoulders, her back, her legs. Everything.

The man was sprawled across her floor, unconscious and bleeding on her nice carpet.

"Great," she said to the empty apartment. "This is fine. Everything is fine."

Suzie and Darrel appeared from the living room, meowing curiously at the stranger on their floor. They sniffed him like he was a new piece of furniture, completely unbothered by the blood.

"Don't get attached," Elena warned them. "He's not staying."

Darrel immediately rubbed his face against the man's arm, purring.

"Traitor," she muttered.

She stood up straight, her doctor brain finally kicking in past the panic. He needed help. Now. She ran to the bathroom and grabbed her medical kit—the extensive one she kept for emergencies. Then she snatched a clean towel from the linen closet and filled a bowl with warm water.

When she came back, he was exactly where she'd left him. Still unconscious, still bleeding, and still taking up way too much space on her floor.

The gun.

Elena's eyes darted around until she spotted it. It must have fallen from his waistband when she dropped him. She picked it up carefully, holding it away from her body like it might explode, and shoved it into the highest kitchen cabinet she could reach, way behind the cereal boxes Annie had bought her last time she visited.

There. Problem temporarily solved.

She knelt beside him and grabbed scissors from her kit, carefully cutting away his blood-soaked shirt. The wound was on his left side, just below his ribs. Still bleeding, but slower now. That was something, at least.

Elena had seen gunshot wounds before. She has treated them during her residency in the ER. But this was different. This wasn't a sterile hospital with nurses and attending physicians ready to jump in if something went wrong. This was her living room floor at nearly midnight with a man who wouldn't even tell her his name.

"Okay," she said out loud, mostly to calm herself down. "You can do this. Just clean it, check if the bullet's still in there, stitch him up if needed. Easy and simple. You've done this before."

It was absolutely not easy or simple.

Her hands wouldn't stop shaking as she cleaned the wound. She had to pause twice just to steady her breathing. The bullet had gone clean through—thank God for small mercies, so she didn't have to dig around in there. But the entry wound was messy and she had to be careful not to miss anything that could cause infection later.

He stirred once while she was stitching, a low groan escaping his throat. Elena froze, but he didn't wake up. She worked as quickly as she could after that.

By the time she finished, it was past one in the morning. Her back ached from kneeling on the floor, and her hands were stained with his blood. But the wound was clean, and properly stitched, and bandaged. His breathing had evened out too.

She sat back on her heels, utterly exhausted.

Now came the hard part. The part where she had to figure out what the hell to do next.

She stared at him, this unconscious, dangerous stranger bleeding on her floor, and reality came crashing down like a bucket of ice water.

She should call the police right now, and tell them everything, let them handle it.

But if she did that, they'd have questions. So many questions. Why did you bring him to your apartment instead of driving to a hospital? Why didn't you call us immediately? Why did you treat his wounds yourself?

And what if he woke up and told them she'd helped him willingly? What if they didn't believe her story about being forced at gunpoint? She could be charged with aiding a criminal. She could lose her medical license. Everything she'd worked for since her parents died, will be gone.

Her eyes drifted to the kitchen cabinet where she'd hidden the gun.

No. She couldn't call the police. Not yet.

Which meant she was stuck with him.

"Perfect," she muttered bitterly. "Just absolutely perfect."

She looked at him again, really looked at him. Even unconscious, he radiated danger. The kind of man who lived a violent life and probably had a lot of enemies. The kind who made bad decisions and dragged innocent people into his mess.

She needed insurance. Some kind of guarantee that when he woke up, he couldn't just walk out of here. Or worse, hurt her.

Her eyes scanned the room desperately, landing on her laundry basket in the corner by the couch. Specifically, on the sports bras draped over the side, still waiting to be put away.

An idea formed in her exhausted, slightly hysterical brain.

A completely ridiculous, desperate, possibly insane idea.

But it was all she had.

Elena grabbed the bras, three of them, her sturdiest ones that cost way too much money, and got to work. She dragged him the few feet to the radiator, looped the bras through the metal pipes, and tied his wrists securely behind his back.

She tested the knots, and they held.

She tested them again, pulling harder. Still held.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she said to no one. "I can't believe this is my actual life right now."

But it was done. He was secured. When he woke up, he'd be trapped.

She stepped back to look at her handiwork, a dangerous man tied to her radiator with her expensive sports bras.

If Annie could see her now, she'd never let her hear the end of it.

Elena was too tired to care. She grabbed a blanket from the couch and threw it over him. Criminal or not, she wasn't a monster. He could at least be warm.

Then she stumbled to her bedroom, locked the door, and collapsed onto her bed fully clothed.

She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.