Chapter 5 - NO MORE DEBTS
Roman spent four days in a private hospital under an assumed name.
The bullet missed his liver by less than an inch.
Gwen told him this proved the universe was getting tired of trying to kill him.
Roman said the universe needed better aim.
She threw a pillow at him.
Thomas watched from the doorway.
“I’ve worked for him fifteen years.”
Gwen looked over.
“So?”
“I’ve never seen anyone throw something at him twice and remain employed.”
“I don’t work for him.”
Roman opened one eye.
“She reminds me frequently.”
During those four days, everything changed.
Knox entered federal custody.
Then he started talking.
Not because he developed a conscience.
Because Sullivan Vane ordered two men to kill him before investigators could move him to a secure facility.
Roman’s ledgers followed.
Bank accounts.
Payoffs.
Shipping routes.
Judges.
Police officials.
Union fixers.
Businessmen who publicly denounced organized crime while privately taking Vescari and Vane money.
Roman included his own operations.
That was the part Thomas struggled with.
“We can give them Sullivan without giving them us.”
“No,” Roman said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because then Gwen is right.”
Gwen looked up from the broken carburetor she had inexplicably brought into the hospital room.
“About what?”
“That we’re pretending our violence becomes moral because the other side started it.”
Thomas stared at her.
“I liked you better when you only insulted his eyebrows.”
“Wrong little girl.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Roman’s cooperation did not make him innocent.
Federal prosecutors made that very clear.
He faced racketeering charges, illegal gambling, extortion, and conspiracy offenses accumulated across fifteen years.
But his evidence dismantled something larger.
Sullivan Vane was arrested attempting to cross the border in a private aircraft.
Gwen found that appropriately stupid.
Twenty-three public officials were charged over the next year.
Three police commanders resigned.
Two judges were removed.
Harbor contracts were seized and transferred under federal supervision.
Roman negotiated a plea.
He surrendered the criminal assets.
His legitimate shipping companies entered independent management.
He agreed to testify.
Thomas asked whether he understood what that meant.
Roman did.
Prison.
Not forever.
But years.
Gwen did not try to persuade him otherwise.
Some debts should be paid.
Six weeks after the crash, Roman returned to Gwen’s coastal house for the first time.
Not with five SUVs.
One black sedan stopped at the end of the dirt road.
Thomas drove.
Roman stepped out using a cane because his injured leg had not fully recovered.
Gwen stood outside the rebuilt workshop.
Roman stopped.
“You rebuilt without me.”
“You were busy becoming a government witness.”
“I said I’d pay.”
“And I said you cannot rebuild history.”
The old workbench remained.
So did the height marks.
Only the burned exterior boards had been replaced.
Roman entered.
Bullet holes remained in one steel cabinet.
“You kept those.”
“They’re character.”
Thomas carried in a wooden box recovered from Knox’s property.
Jack Miller’s notebooks.
All of them.
Gwen ran her fingers across the grease-stained covers.
For the first time since the fire, she cried.
Roman looked away.
That irritated her.
“You can look.”
He did.
“My father wrote down everything.”
“So I’ve learned.”
Gwen opened the oldest notebook.
Her father’s handwriting covered the first page.
A note to himself about charging Thomas more because “the big bearded kid keeps breaking propellers.”
Gwen laughed.
Thomas protested.
“I was nineteen.”
“Apparently you were terrible at boats.”
“I was.”
For a while, nobody spoke.
Then Thomas went outside.
Deliberately.
Gwen noticed.
Roman leaned against the workbench.
“I report for sentencing next month.”
“I know.”
“Five to seven years.”
“I know.”
“The prosecutor believes it will be closer to five.”
“Roman.”
“Yes?”
“Stop telling me numbers like you’re reading a shipping manifest.”
He looked at her.
“What should I say?”
“The truth.”
He took a slow breath.
“I don’t want to go.”
That was better.
Gwen nodded.
“I imagine prison sucks.”
Another almost-smile.
“I’m afraid that when I get out, none of this will exist.”
“The shop?”
“You.”
Gwen stopped.
Roman had faced a sinking jet without screaming.
He had faced armed betrayal without begging.
Fear looked stranger on him when it had nowhere to hide behind violence.
“You met me six weeks ago.”
“I’m aware.”
“You bled on my couch.”
“I remember.”
“You got my workshop set on fire.”
“Technically Knox—”
She pointed a wrench at him.
“Careful.”
Roman smiled.
Then became serious again.
“You pulled me out when you had no idea who I was.”
“That was probably why.”
“If you knew?”
Gwen considered.
“I’d still have done it.”
Roman looked surprised.
“I might have charged more.”
“There she is.”
Gwen set down the wrench.
“I’m not waiting five years staring dramatically at the sea.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“Good.”
“I also won’t ask you to promise anything.”
“Good.”
Roman reached into his coat.
Gwen raised an eyebrow.
“If that’s a gun, I’m going to be annoyed.”
He pulled out an envelope.
Inside was a check.
Three hundred dollars.
Gwen stared.
“For the sofa,” Roman said. “Medical supplies. Fuel. Fishing line.”
She looked at him.
“You said the debt was bigger.”
“It is.”
“Then what is this?”
“The only part you allowed me to pay.”
Gwen laughed.
She took the check.
“Interest?”
“No.”
“Cheap bastard.”
Roman stepped closer.
“Gwen.”
“What?”
“When I get out—”
“No.”
He stopped.
“Don’t build a future conversation five years early.”
“What do I do instead?”
She looked toward the inlet.
The water was calm.
The place where his aircraft sank looked completely ordinary now.
“Survive the next thing.”
Roman followed her gaze.
“You make that sound simple.”
“It isn’t.”
His shoulder touched hers.
Neither moved away.
A year later, Roman testified in the largest organized-crime corruption trial the city had seen in decades.
Gwen watched exactly one day.
She hated courtrooms.
Roman looked wrong in a suit without armed men behind him.
Smaller.
More human.
That was probably good.
He pleaded guilty afterward.
At sentencing, the judge acknowledged both the harm Roman had caused and the extraordinary value of his cooperation.
Five years.
Gwen did not cry in the courtroom.
She waited until she reached her truck.
Thomas pretended not to notice.
Life continued because it always did.
Gwen repaired engines.
She expanded the workshop.
The city eventually stopped sending reporters to her driveway.
Thomas visited twice a year, always bringing something broken so Gwen could pretend that was the reason.
Roman wrote.
His first letters were terrible.
Too formal.
Gwen returned one with red pen corrections.
STOP WRITING LIKE A MOBSTER DICTATING HIS WILL.
The next letter began:
Dear Gwen,
Prison food is a crime nobody here seems interested in prosecuting.
Better.
They wrote for four years and three months.
Roman was released early for cooperation and conduct.
The day he came home, there were no black SUVs.
No armed convoy.
No thirty men waiting underground.
A gray rental car came slowly down Gwen’s dirt road.
Roman stepped out.
He was thinner.
Older around the eyes.
Free.
Gwen stood beside the workshop holding the same iron pry bar.
Roman looked at it.
“You still carry that?”
“You still crash airplanes?”
“Not recently.”
He stopped several feet away.
Neither spoke.
Five years earlier, he had been a bleeding stranger on her couch.
A man an entire city wanted dead.
Then a mafia boss.
Then a witness.
Then a prisoner.
Now he was only Roman.
“What happens now?” he asked.
Gwen looked toward the workshop.
An old 1984 outboard motor sat disassembled on her bench.
The same model she had been rebuilding on the night his plane fell from the sky.
“You know anything about carburetors?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“You’re starting at the bottom.”
Roman laughed.
Gwen walked inside.
After a moment, he followed.
No guards lowered their heads.
No one called him Boss.
The ocean moved quietly beyond the windows.
Gwen tossed him a wrench.
He nearly dropped it.
“That is embarrassing.”
“I had employees for this.”
“You don’t anymore.”
Roman looked at the engine.
Then at her.
“I still owe you.”
Gwen shook her head.
“No.”
“You saved my life.”
“Twice.”
“Exactly.”
“And you paid the three hundred.”
“That was the sofa.”
“Then stop counting.”
Roman went quiet.
Gwen turned back toward the motor.
“You know what your problem is?”
“I suspect you’re about to tell me.”
“You think every debt has to be balanced.”
“And you don’t?”
“No.”
She fitted a socket onto the lower housing bolt.
“Sometimes somebody pulls you out of the water because leaving you there would be wrong.”
Roman watched her.
“That simple?”
“No.”
She glanced toward him.
“But simple things can still be true.”
Outside, the inlet reflected the afternoon sun.
Five years earlier, that water had swallowed an aircraft and delivered a bleeding stranger to Gwen Miller’s door.
For a long time she believed that was the night her quiet life ended.
Eventually, she understood something else.
Her old life had already become too small.
Roman’s plane did not destroy it.
It broke it open.
He picked up the wrench again.
“Where do I start?”
Gwen pointed toward the corroded lower unit.
“Take that apart.”
Roman examined it.
“With what?”
She stared at him.
“The wrench in your hand, genius.”
He smiled.
Not the cold smile of the man thirty armed soldiers once called Boss.
A real one.
Then he bent over the workbench.
Gwen switched on the old radio.
May you like
Music filled the shop.
And for the first time since the night the jet crashed, nothing was sinking.
