by Stella Gray
“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.
“I didn’t want to ruin your life, Stefan, and everything that was in front of you. College, your father’s business, your big dreams. You would have lost it all if you stayed with me, if you had to be a father and support a family. You were barely eighteen. I did what I did for you.”
The pain of knowing she’d run from me in order to give me a chance to succeed in life made me sick.
“We would have figured it out,” I said bitterly.
She laughed. “Really? An out-of-work model and an eighteen-year-old kid? What, you’d just let your father disown you and go to business school on a scholarship? Let me sit at home all day in a shitty apartment and be a full-time mother while you worked on your MBA?”
“I mean, I don’t know…” I said.
“And then what?” she went on, leaning closer as her own anger rose. “You’d get your first job, maybe forty thousand a year, and I’d stay home with a toddler while we struggled to pay for groceries and diapers and health insurance? You think that would have been a good life?”
She
wasn’t wrong. The first jobs I’d had were with KZ Modeling, and they’d paid well, but without my father’s help I would’ve had to start at the bottom somewhere, pay my dues with long hours and low pay. We wouldn’t have been able to afford daycare or a nanny. And Anja was independent. She’d have been the baby’s sole caregiver, with no life of her own.
“It would have fallen apart, Stefan,” she said. “We would have ended up hating each other. You’d be staying with me out of obligation and I’d resent you for being gone all the time.”
As much as I loathed to admit it, what she was saying did make a kind of sense. But that didn’t make her actions right. I went over to the bar to refill the glass, then handed it back to her. She sank back onto the couch and took a long drink.
“I thought you were dead,” I told her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just—”
“I don’t want apologies,” I interrupted harshly. “I want answers.”
Anja looked startled. She said, “Okay,” so softly I could barely hear her and then cleared her throat. “The thing is…I was trapped in the world of KZM. The modeling, and the…other work. I’d been trying to figure out how to leave for a while. Get out of the business for good. But there was never a way out. So when I found out I was pregnant…it was my one chance. I went to your father to tell him, figuring he’d fire me on the spot. But he helped me get away. Start fresh.”
“He gave you money,” I said flatly. “To disappear.”
She nodded her confirmation. “The choice was mine, though. I wanted to go. I never told him the baby was yours but…I thought he knew, and that was why he let me go. To hide it. And then the way he’s supported us over the years—I figured it was because Max is his grandson.”
The way Anja was talking now, unspooling the facts one at a time, it was almost like listening to a robot. I wondered how many times she’d imagined telling me the truth like this, if she was operating on autopilot now, or if maybe she was just disassociating from the difficulty of the moment between us and refusing to let her emotions leak through.
I took the glass back from her and gulped down the burning liquid.
“He didn’t just give you money to leave?” I asked, her words still echoing in my mind. “He kept on paying you to stay away, to hide from me?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Anja looked down. “He sent monthly payments, enough for us to live on, but he supported me in other ways. Before I left Chicago he helped me get a new US identity. Social security number, birth certificate, new name, everything I needed to start over. I was glad for the change. The privacy. Nobody would ever know I was Anja Borjan the model.”
I nodded, finally lowering myself into the chair across from her. “So all this time I’ve been searching the world for you, and you’ve been here in the US. Not dead. Not kidnapped. Not suffering at all.” I forced myself to keep my voice calm. “And my father knew about the—knew about Max—the entire time. For eight years. Nobody thought I needed this information.”
We locked eyes, and I could see the tears glistening in hers.
She’d been right here all along. Probably right under my nose. Knowing my father, he would have kept her as close as possible, so he could keep an eye on her and Max.
I clenched my hands into fists. He’d known about the kid—that I was a father—right from the beginning, and he’d never said a word. If I hadn’t hated him already, this would have pushed me over the edge. And now that I knew he and Anja had worked together to conspire against me, it was hard to believe anything my former flame was saying.
“I know it wasn’t right to keep the pregnancy a secret,” Anja admitted. “But you were in school.”
“What about later? I wasn’t in school for a decade,” I shot back. “In fact, once I’d started working, I would have been even better able to take care of you. Both of you.”
Anja shook her head. “I knew you got a job with KZM right out of your MBA program—your father told me all about it—and you were building a life, a career. The last thing you needed was a baby to take care of. But finding out you worked for your father? That was one more reason to stay away.” She shot me a glare, getting just as worked up as I was. “Do you seriously think I’d go back to you, when you were tied up with all the corruption and the lies? How could you? I would never want to raise a child with someone like that—”
“But you were happy enough to take the company handouts, weren’t you?” I said, cutting her off.
“That’s not fair!” she yelled. “I did what I had to do for my kid. And I’d do it all again if I had to. He was safe with me, and cared for, and I was able to provide him everything he needed. I love my son, and I won’t apologize for anything I’ve had to do to support him.”
It was ironic. The whole reason I’d gone to work for my father—the reason I’d thrown myself into the business in the first place—was because of her. Because I needed the resources my father had, the money, the connections, in order to find her. And now she was telling me it was part of the reason she’d kept herself hidden from me.
I wished I could tell Anja all about how I planned to dismantle the trafficking ring once I was in control. But I didn’t trust her. Especially now that I knew how much she owed my father.
“Fine,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I don’t agree with any of this, but I won’t say I don’t respect your choices. It’s obvious you made some very hard decisions. And I’m sure you’ve been…a wonderful mother.” It was true. She’d always had that warm, maternal quality. I’d seen it, experienced it firsthand myself. “But I still don’t understand. Why did you come back now?”
Anja got up from the couch and knelt in front of me. She took my hand, looking up at me again with that pleading expression. My jaw was clenched, and I met her gaze coldly. I couldn’t deny the heat that stirred between us, regardless of all these years that had passed, but even if I wasn’t in love with Tori, and committed to my marriage, I still wouldn’t ever touch Anja again. She’d betrayed me in the worst possible ways. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive her.
“I have felt guilty about what I did every single day for the past eight years,” she said. “I just couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t let you go on any longer not knowing about me, or your son.” She took a breath, her eyes searching the room as if it would give her the right words. “Raising Max as a single mother is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But also the best thing, and the thing I’m most proud of. I know you’re angry, and that’s okay. Just don’t be angry at Max.”
“Fuck.” I pulled my hand away from her and got up, pacing to the window again.
Had she expected me to just fall at her feet, grateful that she was back, asking no questions, accepting her and her child without hesitation?
Everyone around me was manipulating me. I hated the way Anja had chosen to handle everything, from the pregnancy to the disappearance to the way she’d decided to just show up now out of the blue. And I hated the way my father was involved—had always been involved. Taking joy in pulling all my strings, like I was nothing more than a puppet for him to play with.
He wasn’t standing in front of me right now, though. Anja was. I spun around, furious.
“What the hell am I supposed to do about this kid?” I said. “I can’t just magically be a father without any notice. Does he know who I am? Does he know anything about me? Did you spend the last seven years telling him his father was a bad man? Or that I’m dead?”
Anja blinked back tears and shook her head. “I’ve always told him I didn’t know who his father was. He’s accepted it. But I understand how you must be feeling and I—I’m not going to tell Max anything until you decide what you want to do. If you want a role in your son’s life.”
My son.
No matter how many times I said the words to myself, I couldn’t get them to make sense.
I stalked toward her, and she stood, not shrinking back. My temper was new to her, but she’d never been afraid of me a
nd she apparently wasn’t going to start now. “I will never forgive you for this,” I said. “You’ve taken everything from me.”
Even as I said the words, I knew they weren’t true. My father was the one who’d robbed me of my relationship, of fatherhood, of a parallel life that I couldn’t even begin to imagine. But I had Tori now—and I loved her more than anything. The life we would build together, however it turned out, was the life I wanted. In the end, I wouldn’t have traded it—or her—for the world.
“I need to think,” I told Anja, suddenly exhausted.
“Please do. I’ll wait for you to make your choice, so just…take all the time you need,” she said, stepping back. “Your father has my number.”
“Of course he does,” I scoffed, disgusted. Then I headed for the door.
“Stefan—”
“Yeah.”
When she didn’t immediately reply, I turned around to look at her. She took a long, slow breath and moved as close to me as she dared. For a moment she was quiet, but the second she placed a hand over her heart, I knew whatever she was about to say was the truth. The gesture was familiar to me, and I steeled myself for the reveal of another devastating piece of information.
But I wasn’t prepared for what came out of her mouth as she stared into my eyes.
“For what it’s worth,” she finally said, “I still love you. I always have.”
Tori
Chapter 3
My stepmother Michelle came into my life when I was four years old. I could still remember meeting her for the first time. Though I was the kind of child that loved every new person I met, probably due to the fact that I was left in the care of others so frequently, my initial reaction was one of suspicion. Who was this beautiful woman on our doorstep? Why was my father smiling so much at her? This new ‘friend’ of his was glamorous, in heels and lipstick. She was nothing like the older nannies or teenage babysitters he usually introduced me to.
The plan was to take Michelle out to lunch that day, but my father had to take a quick, urgent call from a congressman, so he asked her to help me find my shoes so we could leave as soon as possible. Upstairs in my toy-strewn bedroom, Michelle noticed my dolls and bears arranged in a circle on the floor, a variety of plastic food set out for each of them.
