The Thaw

Elena Marsh works nights at a diner near the rail yards. Viktor Sokolov eats at her counter at three in the morning, four nights running, because nobody there asks him anything. They talk about the weather and her brother's parole hearing and the way he takes his coffee. Then her brother gets out, gets pulled into a job that goes wrong, and Elena needs money a diner can't make and a favour only one man can give. He gives it without conditions. She would have preferred conditions. A year of Sunday dinners, one Christmas where she is introduced as 'a friend', and a capo who resigns the only seat he's ever held rather than put her in a photograph. A capo age gap bratva romance set in Buffalo, in winter, mostly at a counter.