2. Stefan
STEFAN
When I was seventeen, Anja and I had been in love.
Or at least, that’s what I’d believed. I had trusted her with my hopes and fears for the future, and shared stories about my past—my mother and how much I missed her, the difficult childhood I’d had after she’d died and left us Zoric children to be raised by a series of nannies and the occasional bit of attention from our emotionally closed-off, workaholic father.
Anja always listened. Always cared. She was almost maternal at times, nothing like any woman I’d ever dated. Mature beyond her twenty-three years.
I had thought every time we had sex it was like making a promise to one another.
I was young back then. Na?ve enough to think we were perfectly matched, that we were equals, that we’d be together forever and that nothing would ever come between us.
It was almost laughable now, how little I’d understood her position—caught between her modeling career dreams, the sex work my father had been forcing on her, her desperation for US citizenship, how heavy the familial responsibilities on her shoulders were, and the way she’d had to send almost every cent she made back to Romania to care for her family there.
I’d believed that marrying her would solve each and every one of those problems. Instead, my hasty marriage proposal had made things worse.
But if my father had admittedly gotten Anja deported, where had she gone?
None of my investigations in Romania had turned up anything.
How had she kept herself in hiding all these years—with a child?
And why? All this time I had assumed she’d been hiding from my father, but now that she was here, I couldn’t help thinking: what if the person she’d been hiding from was me?
None of it made sense. She had to have known I would have raised the child with her. Stood by her. Would have cared for her and protected her no matter what.
I didn’t know what to think. My heart and my life were with Tori now.
I had no regrets, and our marriage—our partnership—had made me realize how undeveloped my relationship with Anja had truly been.
But I still had so many questions. And no matter what, I had to find a way forward.
If not for Anja and me, for the child we had created—because I’d never turn my back on him the way my own father had turned his back on me and my siblings.
But when I turned the knob and went back into the library, Anja was gone. And so was the boy.
Instead, only my father stood there, a dark and looming presence in his typical ensemble of head-to-toe charcoal, lighting one of his disgusting cigars.
He looked up as I entered, the expression on his face just as smug as it had been when Tori and I had first walked into the room, into his clusterfuck of a trap.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded. “What kind of game are you trying to play?”
I was sick and tired of his machinations. As far as I was concerned, they ended now.
“No game,” he said, pausing to puff the cigar.
“Bullshit,” I ground out, narrowing my eyes at him.
He lifted his hands as if in surrender. “I just want what’s best for you, Stefan.”
I scoffed. He used to say this same thing when doling out punishment to us as children.
“I want what’s best for the whole Zoric family,” he went on. “I always have.”
That I could believe. As far as my father was concerned, the family—his legacy—was what needed to be protected at all costs. But his motives in this were murky.
“You honestly think it’s ‘best for the family’ to suddenly bring back my ex-girlfriend and her kid—our kid—out of nowhere?” I yelled. “How exactly is that ‘best’ for anyone?”
My father, unperturbed, walked over to the bar to fix himself a whiskey, shrugging his meaty shoulders as he poured. “I may have made a mistake back when you were seventeen, acted rashly in my haste to deal with…a problem. But I’m rectifying it now. Can’t you see that?”
It was obvious he was lying—he had his reasons for calling Anja here, and they had nothing to do with the greater good of the family, or realizing he’d made a mistake.
The fact was, my father never admitted to ‘mistakes.’ His motto was, ‘I don’t make mistakes—I make choices.
’ If he was standing here in front of me humbly acknowledging that he’d done something wrong, it was clearly just another form of manipulation. How stupid did he think I was?
“Where is she now?” I asked, pacing in front of a bookcase.
My father smiled, which only stoked my anger. “She’s just putting the boy to sleep in their room, but she’ll be back to speak with you soon. I told her to meet you here in the library, so have a seat and relax. I’m sure you’re both anxious to catch up.”
Have a seat and relax? Was he out of his fucking mind? “I’ll stand.”
That just made him laugh. “Contrary as always. Typical Stefan.”
I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Anja had a room? In my father’s penthouse? Since when? How long had she been here? And why was he embracing the situation like this?
Biting back my questions, I walked to the window and stared out at the city skyline, lit up against the dark.
Throttling my father would solve nothing, I reasoned.
I had to play the long game. Let him have his small victories.
His end was near, and if everything went according to plan, he’d never know what hit him.
Turning back toward him, I said, “Fine. You win.” I knew those were probably his favorite words to hear. Then I sat in a chair and put my hands on my knees. I wanted him to revel in his position of power. Lull him into a sense of full control—and complacency.
“’Atta boy. Knowing when to quit fighting is half the battle.” Grinning, he stubbed out his cigar and took a long drink of his whiskey. The ice cubes clinked as he swirled the glass. “Of course, I never quit. But the ability to assess the might of your adversary is a vital skill to have.”
“Sure, Dad.” I looked up at him and gestured to the door, letting my frustration color my tone. “Just go, so I can talk to her alone.”
“Of course, son.” He held up his drink in a triumphant toast. “And I suggest you fix yourself a drink. I have a feeling you’ll need it.”
With another chuckle, he strolled out of the library, closing the door behind him.
Without anything else to do but wait, I took advantage of the whiskey—though it tasted bitter to me, and did nothing to assuage either my anxiety or my irritation at my father.
By the time Anja reappeared, my anger was a hot fire burning in my chest. I wasn’t just pissed at my father, but at her too.
Obviously she hadn’t been kidnapped or killed.
She’d had free will in her disappearance, and in staying hidden.
Had it never crossed her mind to reach out?
Especially considering we had a son? Whatever her reasons were, she owed me an explanation.
“Hello,” Anja said, padding over to my chair and sitting on the couch across from me.
She’d put on yoga pants and a black T-shirt, but neither the clothes nor the years had changed her into anything less than the beautiful woman she’d always been. How easily I’d once been deceived into believing that her beauty was more than skin deep. Now I knew better.
“Where did you go?” I blurted, ignoring any attempt at manners or formality.
She looked confused. “I was putting Max to bed. Your father said—”
“No, where did you go all those years ago?” I clarified. “And why did you keep your—our son—a secret?” The words felt strange in my mouth, the idea of fatherhood still foreign. “Do you have any idea how fucking hard I looked for you? The time and resources I exhausted?”
I was practically yelling at that point, and she flinched.
I didn’t care. I had intended to ask one question at a time, to patiently listen to each response, but once I got started the words had poured out of me, one after another, filled with anger and bitterness.
There was no explanation I could imagine that would justify the way she’d hidden herself and our child for all this time, without even a single call or email to let me know what the hell had happened.
Anja just looked at me, her cool blue-green eyes assessing me, appearing completely unmoved. The same way she’d always responded to any flares of temper I’d exhibited.
“His name is Max?” I added, starting to deflate a little in the face of her silence.
“Maxim Andreus Fischer,” Anja responded, crossing her arms and sitting up straighter. “And how dare you sit there and yell at me. I was a kid back then, Stefan. And so were you. I was pregnant and scared and I didn’t know where to turn. What was I supposed to do, just—”
“So you ran away?” I stood, too wound up again to remain seated. “That was your solution? God, Anja, I was in love with you!”
The room felt hot, and I loosened my tie and took another pull from my drink.
“I loved you too,” she said quietly. “With all my heart.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know how to feel about that statement. It sounded like bullshit. This whole evening was bullshit. “You loved me so much you disappeared from my life, carrying our kid,” I repeated sarcastically. “Yeah. That makes a whole lot of sense.”
“You don’t believe me?” she asked. “You think I played you all along?”
She was searching my eyes, pleading for my forgiveness, a single tear slipping down her cheek. Years ago, that would have had me running to her side, taking her face in my hands and wiping the tear away. Asking her what I could do to make things right.
It wouldn’t work on me now.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what to believe,” I said. “Running scared, yes, I can understand. But having a kid you never told me about, evading me for almost ten years, and then showing up out of nowhere like this? The pieces don’t fit.”
Anja got up and walked over to me, then took the whiskey out of my hand and drank down all that was left. She winced at the taste but her gaze when it met mine was fierce.