Broken Promises

"I'll think about it."

"That's basically a yes," said Tatiana and high-fived both kids. The children beamed and dug into their respective plates.

* *

"Wow."

The children were understandably impressed. Even Roy had a hard time containing his amazement.

After finishing their sumptuous lunch by the waterfront, Tatiana led the Saviano family back inside her estate. They followed her to the large hall adjoining the main entrance. Books were stuffed on shelves going from the floor to the ceiling all around the hall. Her library was almost entirely populated with first editions of classics. Russian to British to French to American to... scarcely an important author was not represented. Rare editions of seminal works of all conceivable genres found their way onto the walls.

Centred on the far side was an imposing Steinway Concert Grand piano. She invited the children closer to feel the smooth black polish gleam in the light and try pressing the ebony and ivory striped keys.

"Donna," she said, sitting down in front of the row of keys. "You used to take lessons, right?"

The little girl nodded as she turned a shade of crimson. Tatiana smiled warmly and patted the seat next to her.

"How about we show the men how it's done?"

Donna sat beside her Aunt and tentatively rested the pads of her fingers on the keyboard. She pressed down and felt the upwelling of music that only a Steinway could give.

"What is your favourite piece?" asked Tatiana.

"Fur Elise."

"Krasivoye. One of my favourites as well."

"I haven't played it in a long time."

"I'm sure you'll do well."

Encouraged by her Aunt, Donna started. Three notes later, she stopped. She tried again. The same mistake.

"E major after E flat," said Tatiana helpfully. "Here, listen."

She demonstrated the first bit of the piece. Donna listened intently while she played it again and once more after that.

"Now you try."

Donna nodded and tried. Tatiana leaned over and placed her hands on top of Donna's. Her fingers guided the young girl's to the right notes.

"There we go. Now let's try it on your own."

Donna obliged. After she had rid herself of her initial bit of nervousness, the opening stanza came together perfectly.

Roy leaned against the wall and looked on. He had missed hearing his daughter play.

"G sharp leading to F. Going a bit flat there."

Tatiana was patient. It took a few tries, but Donna eventually got all of it right. Tatiana stepped back and let her perform. The chords gave off a beautiful sound that reverberated through the hall.

Roy continued to admire his daughter. Her eyes were closed and her fingers glided from key to key.

"She's very talented."

He looked to his right to see Tatiana leaning beside him.

"She used to play all the time," Roy said. "We had a teacher for her and Sofia. Every Saturday morning, the house would be full of music. This is the first time I've seen her play in almost three years. After Sofia passed, she hasn't even touched our piano even once."

"I will buy another piano for my apartment. If it's okay with you, I would love it if Donna could come over and play it with me. Maybe once a week, maybe once every two weeks. I leave it to you entirely. I'm not a teacher, but I am very good at this."

"I didn't know that."

"The boss owned a piano bar in St Petersburg. An old man there played beautifully for hours on end everyday. One day, I asked him if he could teach me. It took a while, but I'm as good now."

Roy had a weak smile on his face.

"I know you may not believe it just yet, but there is more to me than what you read in the papers. More to me than all the alleged racketeering, arms dealing, smuggling and whatever else the media accuses me of. More to me than splattering someone's brains on the wall."

The image flashed in front of Roy's eyes. Vividly.

"What I'm saying is... I get it. I realize why you would be nervous letting your children close to me. I know what I do for a living is not palatable to you and your civic sensibilities. All I want you to understand is what I do is not who I am. It does not define me. Not all of me, at least. I do not apologize for how I make enough to afford this place and that piano. However, I would never bring that part of my life near your children. As far as they go, all I want to be is Aunt Tatiana. I like the sound of Aunt Tatiana."

They listened calmly to the little girl coaxing a beautiful melody out of the instrument. Joe leaned against the side of the piano and admired the chords moving inside. In that moment, frozen in time, there were only four people and music. Everything else had receded to insignificance.

"Let her play for some time and then all of you get some rest. I have somewhere to take you in the evening."

"Where?"

"There's a new exhibition at one of my galleries in New Haven," she said. "I know the artist personally and believe me, she is just so incredibly talented. She's already huge in the New Haven art scene."

On cue, she took out her phone and opened up a DeviantArt page with a series of pictures. Roy looked at them with disbelief. He did not care for modern art, but some of the details in these pictures was mind boggling. In between the esoteric shapes that made no sense to him, he saw some sceneries and some human interest pieces. Her interplay of colour, of light and dark textures and her combination of restraint and excess was something to behold.

"Impressed?" Tatiana asked. "I know I was when I met her in Kazan several years ago. Alexis was just a street artist making a buck off tourists at the main square. Her own work had failed to get any traction from the local art market. I offered her a way out and paid for her to move to the US and enrol in the Yale school of art."

Roy kept scrolling through more of her work.

"She lives in an apartment off campus and has a gallery exhibition every few months. She has increased the profile of my galleries here significantly. If she keeps it up, I might have to start showing off her stuff in my galleries in Manhattan too."

"You own art galleries here and in Manhattan?"

"... and in Boston and in Providence and in Trenton, not to mention Moscow and St Petersburg," she smiled. "I'm a big investor in art and culture. After the guns are sold, bullets are fired and money is transferred, this is what we have left to remind us of who we are. Of course, the cynical still say I use them to launder money through expensive paintings."

Roy gaped at her. Each time he thought he had her figured out, she peeled off her current layer to reveal another. Tatiana may have been the devil when he went to her the first time. Now she was an enigma.

"Like I said earlier. There's more to me than just the bad parts."

* *

"Half caf skimmed milk pumpkin spiced latte," said the redhead, handing off a cup to Tatiana.

"Thanks."

They got back in the car which took them the rest of the way to their destination. It was a mid sized building bustling with activity. "Re-elect Gleason" posters and fliers abounded. Smartly dressed aides rushed in and out, perpetually glued to their screens.

"Ready?"

"As I'll ever be," said Tatiana, downing the last of her coffee before she and the redhead went inside.

"Heather Franklin," said the redhead at the reception desk. "We have an appointment with the Senator."

"Let me see," said the lady sweetly. "Your appointment is for ten thirty. You will have to wait a bit since his previous meeting is running late."

"How much time will it take?" asked Tatiana. The unapologetic receptionist fixed her with a cold hard stare and simply shrugged. She was about to rise in response when Heather held out a hand to calm her.

"Look, Kaylee," said Heather, reading the name tag. "We have a time crunch here."

"I'm sorry, but the Senator will receive appointments as they are scheduled. No exceptions."

"I see," said Heather. She leaned over the desk and slid a couple of bills on the other side. "Just call up his intercom and say the word DanCorp. Humour me."

The receptionist looked Heather from head to toe and then eyed the notes lying innocuously on her desk. Heather added two more bills.

"Time is of the essence here, Kaylee."

She quietly slipped the notes into her handbag and picked up the receiver.

"Sorry to interrupt your meeting, Senator, but I have your ten thirty waiting here. It has to do with DanCorp."

Satisfied, the redhead returned to her seat beside Tatiana.

"Fifty bucks say he opens his doors in under a minute," she whispered. "Although, I did lose four hundred in getting that smug bitch to make the call."

The doors behind them burst open as the Senator hurriedly rushed his last appointment out.

"Terribly sorry to cut this short, Mr Zhang. Rest assured my aides will call up your people later today with more details. With any luck, we could have another meeting by the end of the week."

Heather rose and indicated for Tatiana to follow. They walked past through the wood panelled doors and sat opposite the large desk at the end.

"What do you know about DanCorp?" he asked, visibly shaken. Beads of sweat trickled past his thin hairline.

"We'll get to that soon enough, Senator," said Heather. "First, we have something more pressing to discuss."

They were interrupted by Tatiana putting her feet up on the desk and lighting up a Newport Light. She offered the pack to the others, completely oblivious of where she was.

"Like I was saying," started Heather warily. "This is Tatiana, the donor I wanted to introduce you to. She is looking to make a significant contribution to your re-election campaign."

"Your reputation precedes you," said the Senator, his eyes on her crossed feet on his desk.

"We don't have time for the niceties," she said, briefly taking her cig out of her mouth. "The head of the State Gambling Commission is your friend from back in Phillips Andover. Same lacrosse team, right? I need you to convince him to approve our bid to build a casino city in Franklin County."

"You have got to be joking," he spluttered. "A casino city? The local bodies would never approve."

"And yet they all have," said Tatiana, sibilantly. "All that's pending is that one approval and construction can start."

"We are talking about thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue," said Heather. "Your constituents will be grateful, and if I am correct, you need their gratitude this November."

"What about all the crime that it will bring? I have the studies to prove it."

"Studies obviously funded by the anti-gaming lobby," said Tatiana. "Look, Senator, we own casinos in Vegas, in Atlantic City, in Macau, in Monte Carlo. We're pros at tackling the crime that rises out of gambling and we're also familiar with the economic boom it brings."

The Senator wiped his forehead.

"As an added bonus, I have a very generous gift in mind for you," she continued, blowing a stream of smoke upwards. "When I get the approval, this is how much I will wire to your campaign."

Gleason stared at the figure on her phone screen with awe.

"No way. The SEC will arrest both of us."

"Do you think I'm an amateur?" Tatiana barked, inwardly bristling with anger. "My organization moves more money in a day than your campaign budget for the last three terms put together."

"What she means," Heather hurriedly interjected. ".. is the money will be moved through shell companies and straw donors leaving no trail to either of us. It would just seem like your fund raising efforts took a turn for the better."

He still looked unconvinced. Heather took out a printed document.

"Here is the structure of our holdings. I can obviously only share with you the names of companies who will be paying you directly. If you want, you can have your people vet this and get back to me. Trust me, I graduated at the top of my class at Yale and am now a senior partner at Griffin, Markham and Wiley. Even I can't find a flaw in it. The document in my hand is bulletproof. The SEC agents would be dead and buried before any of the banks mentioned here cave to their subpoenas."

He glanced at the front page. The two women could see him genuinely think it over.

"Senator Gleason, your own internal polls show you as ten points behind Linda Dewey. You're old and have been doing a shitty job of being Senator for three terms. Trust me, you'll need this money if you want to fool your constituents into voting you into power yet again. Attack ads and sleazy PR campaigns are not cheap. Think of this as your war chest."

"Besides," said Tatiana. "I know what you really want. This fourth term will make you prime candidate for the next Governorship of this state. After that, who knows? The sky is the limit, or rather, the White House is."

"But none of that happens unless you do what we say," reminded Heather. "If we do not have the approval by the end of the week, we will go to Linda Dewey's campaign headquarters in Yonkers and make her the same deal. Do you think she will be as reluctant to take it?"

Heather took a cigarette from the open pack and lit it. She leaned forward and blew smoke straight into the Senator's face. He coughed and clenched his eyes shut.

"I'll even tell her about DanCorp and give her all the evidence she needs to publicly crucify you for it."

"Let's go, Tatiana," Heather said. "You'll have your approval."

"No," she grinned. "I want him to hold my feet and gently move them off his desk."

Gleason took a deep sigh and held her feet under the heels and swivelled them off his desk and onto the floor. He had a look of raw hatred on his face.

"Enough with the self-righteous indignation," Tatiana barked. "You are not the first government official in my pocket. You are not even the most expensive. You don't even crack the top ten. You keep doing what I say and you might make that list."

Leaving the poor man shell-shocked, the two ladies briskly walked out of the building and into the backseat of the car waiting outside. Barely had they sat, that Tatiana grabbed Heather and drew her into a deep kiss. Their tongues played with each other sloppily.

"It was so hot seeing you boss him around in there," Tatiana said. "I wanted to take you on his table with him watching."

"You might as well have," Heather replied. "Gleason would have probably given you his handkerchief to wipe down at the end of it."

"Once again, your information was spot on. Leave Griffin, Markham and Wiley and work for me full-time. Whatever they are paying you, I will triple it. Better yet, I'll let you quote your own figure."

"Thanks," said Heather, breaking her lip-lock. "But I like the variety."

"It's a shame I have somewhere to be," said Tatiana, "... otherwise I would fuck you so hard in my penthouse that you could not walk straight for the next week."

"Mmm... promises," said Heather. "I wish you were properly gay instead of whatever it is you label yourself. We could have some fun."

"Your stop is here. Good bye and great work back there."

They shared a last kiss before the redhead lawyer headed out. Tatiana instructed her driver where to go next, hoping she had not missed the start. Towering buildings and gridlock gave way to suburban real estate. The driver parked outside a small open-air stadium and let her out.

"Roy," she spoke into her phone. "Sorry I'm late. Where are you?"

She went inside and followed his instructions until she found him and Joe sitting on the middle row of seats. They were surrounded by other parents and children.

"What did I miss?"

"Nothing yet. The players are just lining up."

Tatiana saw the line up of pre-pubescent girls line up in green and blue jerseys. The referees gave their last minute instructions to the coaches and the teams.

"I don't see Donna."

"She's on the substitutes bench. Coach Ellis' strategy is to bring her on towards the end of the game when the opposition defence is too tired."

"Interesting," said Tatiana, sending a quick text from her phone.

The referee blew the whistle. The ball passed between players. The small crowd cheered the game on.

"Which team does Donna play for?"

"St Martin's. The team wearing the blue jersey."

Tatiana watched keenly. St Martins had a great opportunity with a pass coming from the left wing, but the striker failed to get a touch on it. The crowd groaned in disappointment.

"She should have scored that," said Tatiana, reading the name of the back of the jersey of the girl who missed. Another quick text.

The rest of the first half was keenly contested. St Martins had more of the possession and created two more excellent chances, but both were squandered by the striker.

"I have to make a quick call," she said apologetically. Excusing herself to a relative quieter part of the stands, she pressed a number on her speed dial.

"Heather, did you find anything on the thing I sent you?... Seriously? Send it over. You'll have your usual fee by end of business today."

Tatiana saw the tell-tale popup on her phone informing her she had received a link. She quickly went through the description with it. A smile split her face by the time she made her way back to Roy. The players were just leaving the field.

"Half time," informed Joe. The scoreboard still read 0-0.

"Would you excuse me for a second?" she said to Roy sheepishly. "I need to find the ladies' room."

With that, she made her way down from the bleachers past the groups of parents animatedly discussing their team's chances. She went to the locker rooms to find coach Ellis in a huddle with his team. He barked a few more encouraging words before sending them off to get a few stretches in.

"Coach Ellis?"

The coach turned to face her. He was in his late thirties with a perpetually stern face and a navy cut.

"I saw the first half and think you could use a change of striker. Simone Eckhart missed three chances. Three. St Martins should be three nil up by now."

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"It doesn't matter. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but maybe you could take her off for another striker. Maybe Donna Saviano."

"Excuse me, lady," he sneered derisively. "How about you leave the team decisions to me? I'm not going to make a change because you say so."

"No, Coach Ellis," Tatiana sighed and held out her phone. "You are going to make a change because of this."

The coach stared at the screen for a few stunned moments before all the colour drained out of his face. He wanted to say something, but only managed to splutter a series of monosyllables not meaning anything specific.

"I take it you didn't know that the owner of the Katz Motel has secret cameras installed in all his rooms. Occasionally, he gets lucky and sells the tape on a particular forum for low budget amateur porn. You'd be surprised how popular this stuff is, especially when the subjects don't know they are being filmed."

Coach Ellis kept watching while opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. He seemed to have forgotten the concept of words.

"Bring Donna Saviano on for the second half or else this video goes to your wife as well as Mr Eckhart. Do you think he will be proud his wife did this to ensure their girl got to start?"

The faint sounds of masculine moans came out of her phone speaker. Tatiana turned the screen towards herself and immediately scrunched her face in mock disgust.

"That looks painful. No wonder you need to stand and hop around all match long. It must hurt to sit."

"What do you want? I'll give you anything. Please don't send that to my wife or Lisa's husband. They'll both kill me."

"Donna Saviano on for Simone Eckhart."

Tatiana walked off and rejoined Roy at his seat. He had bought a few condiments. Joe sat beside her and offered her some popcorn.