Black Death And White Roses (1) Mafia Romance

1. Business

Roxana

Don't shit where you eat.

Or so they say. It's sane advice, but when I hear Christian's voice, my heart skips a beat.

I cannot help it; I adore my new boss. Well, relatively new, because I have been working here for two years already. It's a nice place to work. Bern is a nice city, quite picturesque, and the job in itself is challenging and brings good money.

God knows I need money, as much and as fast as possible, because the people my dad owes cash to are not merciful creditors.

Everything began five years ago when my mother died. It was brutal, a car crash on my twentieth birthday. That was the moment I felt God either did not exist or he really hated me. My mother was hurrying home from work so we could celebrate together. I wish she wouldn't have hurried.

My parents were one of the rare couples their age that I knew to really have loved each other even after twenty-something years of marriage.

It is easy to understand how devasted my father was after losing the love of his life, his partner, and his best friend. He started drinking. Yes, what a cliché. Then he started gambling with his drinking friends, leaving me and grandma to take care of my ten years younger brother Daniel.

It was the day of my graduation when I found out about his debt.

I hold a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the Technical University of Bucharest, like my mom. My dad was going to come to my graduation ceremony from Moldova, our home country. It is a solid eleven hours drive but he promised he would be there together with Dani and Granny. Despite all the drinking and other mishaps he was never cruel to us and I believed him in good faith when he said he would be there, he just never made it.

I was beyond disappointed and mad with worry. Nobody picked up the phone when calling, so skipping the graduation party, I took the first bus to Chișinău and found my father unconscious on the floor of our living room. Dani had been brought to our grandma's place previously. Thank God they were not there when all happened.

He had been beaten bloody by the men of Ivan Ivanovici, also called The White Russian. Seemingly he owed Ivan a hundred thousand euros. A fucking hundred thousand. I did not even know how so much money looked. I never even held a thousand euros in my hands.

My dad is a construction worker. He makes a maximum of eight hundred euros a month. I remember him saying, smiling, that he is glad I inherited my mom's brains. Not that Ivan cares about any of it.

Ivan is above all a businessman. He didn't want to kill him because he did want his money back eventually.

When we were at the hospital, looking teary-eyed at our bruised and beaten dad, he paid us a visit to let us know about his mercy. Mercy meant, that we had three years to gather the money and could make monthly payments. Honesty, that was quite nice of a gangster, given the fact that most didn't give such chances but a cold bullet to the back of your head.

So it came that in three days I applied to all the jobs I could find and was lucky enough to land one in Switzerland. Yes, that Switzerland, far away, mountain country, land of clocks, banks, and chocolate.

Now thinking about it, I certainly would not have had the courage to apply for a job in other countries if I had not been pressured to gain money quickly.

My German was inexistent, the hours were criminal, but the pay was in Swiss Francs and I didn't have the luxury of a choice.

I work on-site. Yes me, meager, one meter sixty tall, fifty-five kilos heavy, blond girl who used to love dancing and painting her nails. The thing is, jobs on site are generally paid well because they are hard and most people are not keen on doing them.