Broken Vows

Chapter 5 Episode 5

I pull out my phone and scroll through my contacts list, hoping to see a spark of hope amidst the names, but there is nothing. I’ve lost touch with everyone since I started culinary school. There hasn’t been time for friends.

This is probably the kind of situation where most girls would turn to their moms, but she hasn’t been in the picture since I was six years old. Even if I had her number, I wouldn’t call her. Dad hasn’t always been perfect, but at least he was there. At least he cared enough to stay.

I untie my apron and pull it over my head, leaning back against the brick side of the restaurant.

I look up and see a man on a motorcycle with his hair in a bun parked along the curb. He is waggling his eyebrows at me like I’m supposed to fall in love with him for harassing me on the street, and the fire that filled my veins inside hasn’t died out yet. The embers are still there, burning under the skin, and I step towards him, lips pulled back in a smile.

He looks surprised, and I’m sure he is. That move has probably never worked for him before. He smiles back at me, his tongue darting out to lick his lower lip.

“Is that your bike?” I purr.

He nods. “Want a ride?”

My voice is still sticky sweet as I respond, “So sweet of you to offer. I’d rather choke and die on that grease ball you call a man bun, but thanks anyway, hon.”

It takes him a second to realize my words don’t match the tone. When it hits him, he snarls, “Bitch.”

“Asshole.” I flip him the bird over my shoulder and start the long walk home.

My feet hit the floor before I’m fully awake, and it takes me a second to understand why I’m up and moving at all. Someone is pounding on my front door. I glance at the clock on my nightstand. It is just before seven in the morning.

I stayed up late last night, nervously waiting for Cal Higgs to call and inform me I was fired after the stunt I pulled in the dining room. Not only did I spill wine on the mean Russian man, but the rest of the guests saw it. I’d put the reputation of The Floating Crown at risk, and firing me seemed like the only way Cal could set things right. But he didn’t call, so I reluctantly fell asleep, wondering when the other shoe would drop. Seven A.M., apparently.

Early morning light is filtering through the white curtains in my apartment, bathing the rooms in light, but my eyes are too busy adjusting to the brightness to do anything other than squint. I grab a sweater from the back of the couch, wrap it around myself to cover my bubblegum pink pajama shorts and tank top, and peer through the peep hole. I expect to see Cal Higgs or someone else from the restaurant there to fire me and bring me the purse I left in my locker since I was too busy running away to grab my things.

Instead, I see my father.

As soon as I slide the bolt over, my father opens the door from the other side and pushes past me. “What were you thinking, Eve?” he hisses.

I stumble back and shake my head. It is far too early for this. “What? Why are you here?”

My dad is a tall, thin man. Most men—especially in his line of work—are muscled and intimidating, but my father has always been intimidating in another regard. His natural thinness gives his face a gaunt appearance—eyes sunken in, cheeks hollowed, chin pointed. Like a skeleton. He looks like Death himself if the Grim Reaper ever gave up the shroud and scythe.

Of course, to me, he has always been my dad. But my love for him doesn’t mean I can’t see what other people see.

When he turns on me, I shrink back into the wall, terrified of the black fury in his eyes. “You started a feud with the Volkov Bratva.”

I hear the words, but they don’t connect. It feels like I’m outside my body watching myself. A passive observer rather than an active participant. I haven’t been awake long enough to handle what is currently happening, so after a long pause, I run a hand down my face and shake my head. “Excuse me?”

“The man you spilled wine on!” my father roars. “Do you remember that?”

I squeeze my eyes closed. “Yes. Obviously. How did you hear about that?”

My father sighs and steps forward, grabbing me by the shoulders gently. He bends forward so he is looking in my eyes. “The man you spilled wine on was Ivan Volkov.”

This time, his words connect. “Shit.”

He lets out a long exhale like he is relieved to know I’m not as stupid as I just appeared to be. “s**t, indeed.”

“I didn’t know,” I say, breaking out of his hold and pacing back and forth in front of my apartment door. “He was just such a jerk, and I…I lost it.”

I look up at my dad. His eyes are turned down in the corners, sorry, but his lips are still pinched together in frustration. He doesn’t know the reason I lashed out at the man was because he reminded me of my father. Because, like my dad, the man expected me to aspire to nothing more than being some man’s trophy wife.

“It doesn’t matter what he said.” My dad walks into my small kitchen, grabs a glass from the cabinet next to the refrigerator, and fills it in the sink. He drinks all of it before he continues. “You need to apologize.”

“Apologize?” My eyebrows are so high they are probably lost in my hairline. “You think the boss of the Volkov Bratva is going to accept my earnest apology? I’m not sure if you’re aware, Dad, but you mob leaders aren’t the most understanding of men.”

“You’re not going to give him a fruit basket,” he snaps. He rounds my kitchen island, grabs my arm, and leads me over to my couch. I’m too tired to resist when he forces me down on the cushion and then sits across from me on the coffee table. A bigger man would break the legs, but my dad doesn’t weigh much more than I do. “You are going to beg for forgiveness, Eve. You are going to make this right by giving Ivan whatever he wants.”

I wonder if my dad knows what he is asking me to do, but when his mouth twists to one side and his eyes go glassy, I know he does. Ivan Volkov could want anything. Anything. I can’t promise him that.

“I can’t do that,” I say. “I can’t.”

He takes a deep breath. “I’m not asking you, Eve. You ruined a business relationship for me, so you don’t have a choice.”

I’m too shocked to find the words to argue. My dad reaches out and runs a thumb across my cheek. “You f****d up, kid. Now, it’s time to fix it.”

I’m still sitting on the couch, staring at the corner of the coffee table where my father had been sitting, when he closes my apartment door behind him.

By the time I’m shoving my toothbrush and some back-up underwear into a small backpack, it is late afternoon. My shift at The Floating Crown had been creeping closer and closer as the sun moved across the sky, and the closer it got, the more I realized I couldn’t go.

I can’t walk into the restaurant and bow to my father’s wishes. I can’t apologize to a man who doesn’t deserve my apology. Regardless of who he is within the city and my father’s world, begging him for forgiveness and turning myself into his personal slave is not an option. So, I’ll leave.

Too many people throughout my life have made me painfully aware that they don’t think I could survive on my own. Growing up the daughter of a don, they think everything in my life has been handed to me. And in a sense, it has. My time at culinary school was the first time in my life where I accomplished something by myself and for myself. And it was incredible. So, why not continue doing that? My father has made it clear that as much as he loves me, he loves his power and position more, so why should I stick around and be blindly loyal to him? I’m going to get out of the city and start over somewhere else. Even if I end up flipping burgers, it will be better than handing myself over to the Volkov family.

I have enough money in savings to get out of the city and begin the process of starting over somewhere new, so, an hour before service is set to start at the restaurant, I buy a ticket and hop on a bus headed south.