Broken Promises

"Okay, now what do you really want?"

"Excuse me?" asked Tatiana pointedly.

"Don't think for one second I believe you. I saw you blow someone's brains out. So excuse me if I am dubious about your good intentions."

"Where is this coming from, Roy? I really just want to help you. Why is that so hard for you to believe?"

"Because it's you, okay. I don't know what you have in mind, but I am not letting you get my family's restaurant mixed up in it."

"Look, Roy," she said calmly. "I realise this may be a bit sudden, but this is the only shot you have of Saviano's seeing the end of the month. Do you think I don't know that? Do you think Mr Saviano would have been proud of you letting this seventy year old place go down the toilet because you turned down help."

He looked at her, desperately trying to gauge her motive. Unconditional altruism, it definitely was not. She embodied the phrase there is no such thing as a free lunch.

"This place was like a second home. Whenever my Dad would get drunk and start throwing stuff around. Whenever my Mom would take a few extra pills. Whenever there wasn't enough food left at home because obviously my Dad's booze and my Mom's drugs were more important. Old man Saviano never turned me and Sofia away. Never ever. He never told you that, did he? You think we liked hanging around here all the time because of the pizza? No. We did it to wait out whatever shitshow was playing out at our home."

Roy looked down. It all rang true from what his wife had told him.

"Your Dad gave us a place to stay in the backroom and your Mom gave us a hot meal. We never paid for it. Your parents were more parents to us than ours ever were. So excuse me for not wanting this place to go under."

She held out her hand and rested it on the back of his palm.

"Please, Roy, let me do this for them. Let me keep their dream alive."

She looked at him expectantly, almost willing him to agree. It took a long wait, but he nodded. Tatiana clapped her hands excitedly and shook his hand.

"You made the right choice, partner. I'll have someone come by in the morning with the paperwork. I know people who can make red tape disappear. If all goes well, we can start work by the end of the week. You might have to approve some designs soon. We'll be tearing everything down and putting it back up again. Like Marco said... a little slice of Venice. Trust me, with the proper marketing, it will go wild. I'm going to take care of everything. All you need to do is approve our choices."

Roy did not know what to think. The free lunch was too good to pass up. He thought about his most loyal employees and how much of a difference it was going to make to them.

"There are a couple of changes which I will be needing though. Firstly, your produce supplier. Jerry's Fresh will be taking over. They have the best stuff. When you get sea bass from them, you know it was caught on that day itself. Secondly, I want you to restructure the finances a bit. To that end, you will be opening a business account in Rothman's. It's an old private bank in Europe. Very well respected."

"Why would I do that?"

"The people who give me money didn't want me to share this with you, but I thought you deserved to know. Once a month or so, you will receive a special box of produce. We will inform you in advance. Safely hidden away under the pastrami and porterhouse will be a few bundles of notes. Don't worry, no one can find them unless they know what they're looking for. All I want you to do is quietly add that money to your daily earnings. Show it in your books. At the end of month, transfer that amount to your new Rothman's account."

Roy chuckled under his breath. When something was too good to be true, it usually was.

"Money laundering, eh? That's your end game."

"You seriously didn't expect this much help for free, did you?"

"So all that about how much this place meant to you and about my parents being yours. That was all crap?"

"No," she said vehemently. Her placid demeanour did no change at all. "I meant every word of that. Trust me, Roy, if you want to keep this place open, this is the only way. Believe me, I looked into all the others."

His brain grappled with the new information. He did not say anything, merely closed his eyes and listened.

"Jeremy, your maitre'd. Bianca and LeAnn, your two sous chefs. That's over fifty years combined working at Saviano's. Do you really want them all to be out of a job next month?"

Roy leaned back into the plush seat. He actually felt ill now. The gnawing unease from earlier had become a nauseating dread.

Even so, he could scarcely believe the next sentence to cross his lips.

"How secure would we be?"

"Extremely. Without going into too many details, I can say that the money is wired through multiple banks and financial institutions across five continents. All of them are hand picked as solvent, reliable and having never turned over their records to authorities. The money goes through blind trusts and charities in countries with airtight privacy laws. If there is even the slightest chance one of our banks is under investigation, we will know ahead of time and can clean all records of our involvement with them while setting up an alternate channel."

"So there is no risk?"

"No more risk than of you choking to death on asparagus."

Roy clenched his fists until they were white. Tatiana kept her hands on top of them and held them gently.

"You're doing the right thing, Roy. For your kids. For your employees. Even for your family legacy. In a few weeks' time #Savianos will be trending."

He clenched his eyes shut and nodded softly. He could no longer tell if it was in assent or in defeat. He had made one painful choice, but that had opened the door to so many others that he could not keep track.

"Here."

He opened his eyes to see Tatiana had opened a fresh pack of Newport Lights. She had taken one and lit it.

"You can have one after you wash yourself."

"Wash myself?"

"Go and throw up. You look like you need to throw up in a bad way."

He got up, feeling the bitterness at his throat.

"Like I said the other day, it will get easier with time. All you need to do is see the smile you're putting on your employees' faces and that will make our little arrangement worth it."

Scarcely had she finished, than he was gone. The sound of violent retching soon filled the men's room.

* *

"You are the least fun person to go sailing with."

Roy turned to see Tatiana approaching his spot on the bow. He sat with his legs dangling over the edge.

"You can at least tell me what you think about the boat."

"It's nice."

"Nice?" Tatiana seemed mortally offended. The Anna Karenina was a truly impressive two deck yacht. It gleamed a golden hue in the light of the setting sun. They had started out in the Long Island Sound before hugging the East River all the way down the coast. "It's been a while since I was on the water this long."

She lit up a cigarette and held out her open pack.

"The kids are on the upper deck with Yuri. He'll keep an eye on them."

The engine was dead and the boat idled in the water. It gently moved back and forth. Roy took a fag for himself and lit it up. His eyes looked straight ahead to the expanse of water giving way to the montage of skyscrapers glinting in the dying sunlight.

"Look, Roy. It's not like I enjoyed it. It's not like I like killing people."

He did not respond, but chose not to make eye contact as well. Tatiana held his chin and turned his gaze towards her.

"Do you know how much unnecessary heat a murder brings? Disposing a body. Taking care of witnesses. Hoping that you got all the evidence. This isn't Moscow where the police know to look the other way if you are important enough. Trust me, murder is the last option on my list of last options. You have to do something spectacularly bad for me to blow your brains out.

Brains. Dripping off the wall.

"But threatening my sister's children? That qualifies."

"Okay," said Roy, blowing rings of smoke. Tatiana's keen eyes followed one ring as it expanded and disappeared.

"I swear, I'm not the monster you think I am. What I do is just something I have to do."

"It's not you I'm worried about."

She looked surprised. Roy removed her hand and turned his gaze back to the soaring glass walled buildings framing the water's edge in the distance.

"You've accepted your place in the darkness. I'm sitting here in the twilight," he said. "I'm afraid the longer I look at the darkness, the closer I am to it. Yesterday, when you were in my restaurant discussing our new... financial arrangements, I barely hesitated before agreeing. It was if the part of my brain which knows right from wrong was screaming in silence. It was only after it was all done that it hit me."

"You were doing what you needed to keep food on the table for your employees. It's the right thing to do."

"I feel the same way... and that scares me."

Tatiana put her arm around his shoulder and patted him softly.

"It took me a while to be okay with what I do as well. Give it time. To be fair, no one expected any better."

Roy took another drag of his cig.

"Sofia was the smart one, the sweet one. I was always the screw up. Getting into fights. Shoplifting. Hanging out with the wrong crowd. Remember my boyfriend?"

"Vasily?"

He vaguely remembered a self tattooed man with excessive facial hair. He owned a chop shop which employed similar looking men. Even as a boy, he knew to stay away from the place.

"Yes. The small time gangster I dropped out of high school and moved in with. Just another one in my series of stellar life choices."

She looked at the setting sun wistfully for a few seconds.

"Vasily moved back to Moscow and I went with him. Once there, I was mostly his arm candy, occasionally his lookout. But the Bratva bosses saw some potential in me. Unusual, since women there are meant to look pretty, but never get their hands dirty. Guess what? Vasily was shot dead within a year of moving, but I grew. I earned the respect of my peers and made money for my superiors. I was that damn good. Ten years in Moscow and they asked if I would head their enterprise in America."

That was eight years ago. Roy knew because she had paid them a visit that ended poorly.

"I had no illusions of who I was, but I thought Sofia would still be happy to see me. We were, after all, family."

She tossed her spent cig into the water and looked at him.

"Imagine my surprise when I see that you two are married and she has just had her second child. Roy, Sofia, Donna and little Joseph. The perfect little bubble. There's no place for the family screw up, is there?"

"I'm sorry for how she reacted that day."

"Oh, don't be," she waved her hand dismissively. "Believe me, I understood why she said what she said. I might have said worse if the roles were reversed. Do you know the first time I shoplifted? I was thirteen and Sofia was eleven. It was her idea, but she got cold feet at the end. So I ended up having to do the deed and I was the one who was caught. All the while Mom and Dad chewed me out for what I had done, she stood quietly and watched. Since then, she became the golden child and I became the cautionary tale. If she hadn't lost her nerve, it might have been her who went down my path."

"Sofia wouldn't have-"

"Wouldn't have?" Tatiana interjected angrily. "Wouldn't have blown someone's brains out? If you had told me back then, I would have told you that I wasn't capable of it either. You never know what you are capable of until there is a gun in your hand."

She paused. Her demeanour remained calm, but towards the end, he could make out she was bristling with anger and doing an exceptional job of containing it.

"Perfect Sofia. Light of your life. Mother of your children. Maker of your home. She was five minutes of bad judgement away from being me."

"Tatiana," said Roy evenly. "You may have absolved me of my debt and you may have saved my restaurant, but do not talk that way about my wife ever again. You could never be one tenth the person she was."

Tatiana smiled broadly. The bravado on the man beside her was almost endearing.

"I suppose it worked out for the best. We went down our separate paths. Sofia was happy with you and her children and I... well."

She rolled up her sleeve all the way to her shoulder to reveal an eight pointed star tattooed on her arm.

"You get that when you become a captain of the Vory. Care to guess how many women have this title?"

Roy looked at the top of her arm with astonishment.

"Now there's a glass ceiling no feminist will care to brag about being broken," she joked.

"What is this one for?" Roy asked, pointing to the facsimile of Satan on the inside of her arm.

"That was for the first time I killed a rival faction leader. I left his body impaled on the sword of the statue at the public square for all to see."

Her tone could not have been any different if she said it was for the first time she had finished a half-marathon. Roy scanned her plain expression, trying to get a clue as to what was going on behind those cold blue eyes.

They turned their gaze back to the cluster of towers now lit up while they were bathed in the deepening dusk.

"Road trip next weekend."

* *

"And we've arrived," said Tatiana with a flourish.

Joe and Donna were in the backseat, each glued to their own screen. The distraction ended Joe's streak of Fortnite wins. Donna was more interested in the Snapchat group of her soccer team regarding their upcoming tryouts. They both looked up.

From a distance, Tatiana's estate could well be mistaken for an abandoned house. A green wall of moss covered two sides and the remaining two had paint peeling off. It was only up close, once the immaculately manicured hedges came into view, that it became apparent that the old look was by design, not neglect. The building itself was an expansive mansion with forty rooms. The front door opened to high ceilings and twin oak staircases curving inward to meet at the upper storey.

The sprawling estate culminated in a small pier where chairs and tables were laid out. From the very end, the blue of the sea became one with the sky at the horizon.

"This is where I go when I need to get out of the city," she said. The four of them got out of the car. The house was just outside New Haven. Close enough that they could see the city further up the coast.

"Make yourselves at home. I have a surprise planned for later."

The children gaped at the sight of the sprawling estate. Greenery unfurled on all sides with the feel and consistency of a billiards table. Roy took a cigarette and followed Tatiana inside.

"How do you own this?"

"The same way as any other rich prick owns a place like this. Through a shell company based in Grand Cayman. Are you impressed?"

He nodded and walked with her to the centre of the main hallway. The inside looked like it had recently been renovated.

The walls were white and adorned with paintings. It was an eclectic mix of well known pieces and some which Roy could not quite place. They looked contemporary, an extreme contrast to the imitations of classics around them.

"Take your pick of the rooms upstairs and take a shower. We're having lunch on the dock."

Roy led his children upstairs and handed them their change of clothes. They picked different rooms and dutifully went about showering and changing. Tatiana waited outside one of the doors. She heard the shower turn off inside and the bathroom door close. She waited a minute or so before knocking.

"Joe, are you in there? Are you dressed?"

"Yes, Aunt Tatiana."

"Can you please open the door and let me in?"

A few seconds later, the door swung open revealing a very confused eight year old boy in changed clothes with wet hair. Tatiana slipped in and closed the door behind her. She sat on the bed and put both hands on her nephew's shoulders.

"You know you can tell me anything, right? Absolutely anything."

He nodded.

"Earlier when you were downstairs, I saw you hold your side for a moment. It looked like it hurt while you ran in."

Joe went red in the face. His eyes darted to the door and window. She waited patiently. After a brief silence, she gently pressed his side causing him to wince.

"Lift up your shirt."

As she predicted, it was a bruise. A large bluish patch marred the left border of his chest where his ribs ended.

"Who did this to you?"

"No one. I fell."

Tatiana smiled and pressed his shoulders tightly.

"It will stay between us. No one else has to know, lapochka."

He peered up at her blue eyes, trying to decide whether or not to say what he wanted to.

"It's a boy at school who bullies me everyday. He's in the eighth grade. I caught him smoking once and told the teacher and since then, he has been doing this to me."

"Has he done it before?"

"Not this bad. He takes me aside during recess and hits me whenever he wants."

"Does your Dad know?"

"He doesn't know about this bruise, but he knows. He tells me to stand up to him or ignore him so he gets bored and leaves me. I've tried and it doesn't work. The only other way is if Dad talks to Principal van Reyn, but that will mean everyone will know I snitched."

Tatiana let one hand leave his shoulder and gently ruffle his hair.

"Let's make a deal. I will not tell your father or your Principal. In exchange, you come with me to get that bruise checked out once we return. Also, when anything like this happens again, you will call me. Anything you need, day or night, give me a call."

Joe looked at her face and nodded uncertainly. She smiled and got up.

"I'll take care of it, but not a word to your Dad. Remember, what is said in this room stays between you and me."

* *

It was late afternoon by the time they sat at the table on the dock. Roy had taken it upon himself to prepare what he could with the available ingredients. There were four helpings of lasagna alongside some spaghetti and meatballs. Tatiana brought along a bottle of red wine. She poured it into a glass for herself. Roy had brought along some fruit juice for himself.

"After your last disappointment with wine, I decided to arrange for some myself. Fortunately, I own a vineyard up in Maine. None of the cheap stuff from them. This is a ten thousand dollar vintage."

"Za zdaróvye."

Roy toasted and took a sip of his fruit juice.

"So... what do you kids make of my place?"

Donna turned her head. The imposing mansion blocked he sun out. The tallest of the four spires could be seen as a black silhouette against the afternoon sky.

"It's so big."

"Thank you," Tatiana smiled. "If your Dad will let me, I would like to take you to my dacha in Sochi the next time you have a vacation. It's much bigger and on the side of a hill. We can go sailing in the Black Sea and skiing in Rosa Khutor."

She turned to Roy and smiled broadly.

"You'd love it too. It's crawling with artists, dancers and musicians. We could see the galleries, the museums and even the Bolshoi perform live. I know how much you like them."

Roy suddenly found three pairs of eyes looking at him expectantly.

"I'll have to think about it. Sochi is not exactly a short drive away. We have to get travel visas and-"

"Hun," interrupted Tatiana. "All you need to say is yes and I can take care of all that stuff with one phone call. I'll even fly you all out there in my jet."

"You have your own jet?" Joe was clearly baffled.

"You bet I do," she said. "How would you want to fly with the whole plane to yourselves?"

"Please, Dad."

Both kids looked at Roy beseechingly. He averted their gaze and twirled his fork absent-mindedly in his spaghetti.