“You couldn’t have known,” I told him. “Not the way your—the way the company runs.”
Placing the blame on Konstantin, though fair, wasn’t the way to help Stefan right now. As much as I would have enjoyed it. As far as I was concerned, his father was pure evil.
Stefan took a breath and then continued. “I started seeing Anja, casually at first but then it got more regular. A few months into it, I realized I was in love. She was the first person I was with who seemed interested in the rest of the world, who was ambitious and tough like me. She had nerves of steel. It wasn’t just that, though. We had fun. Actually…she was a lot like you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. The way he was talking about her, I couldn’t feel jealous. Because despite how great she sounded, I could tell by the tone of his voice that things between them were long over. And I guessed that something had gone terribly wrong.
Turning his eyes back to me, Stefan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and smiled. He took a deep breath and said, “Me, being the fine young idiot that I was, decided I wanted to marry her. But when I told her that, she said my father would never allow it. And I didn’t believe her. I thought—foolishly—that love could conquer all. That he would understand.”
Bitterness had crept into his voice, and my heart sank. I knew exactly where the story was going, and it was nowhere good.
“What did he do?” I said.
Stefan looked away. “A few days after I proposed to Anja, she was gone. Disappeared without a trace. When I went to my father for help, he told me he’d had her deported. I was devastated.”
I wrapped my arms around Stefan, feeling his pain as if it were my own. All I could think about was this bright, optimistic young version of my husband, still so new to the world, his first relationship—his first love—torn out of his hands by his vile, criminal father. He’d been even younger than I was now.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Did you go after her?”
“My father made me swear I wouldn’t, but I tried.” He cleared his throat, as if to break up the emotion that was making it hard for him to speak. “It didn’t matter, though. I never saw or heard from her again.”
My heart broke for Stefan. For the man he had been. No wonder he had become hardened after losing someone he cared about when he was so young.
He was looking up at the ceiling again. “I’ve been searching for her ever since,” he said. “Trying to figure out where my father sent her. Wanting to make sure she’s safe.” He shook his head. “It’s been eight years and I’ve never found a trace. Sometimes I think she’s…”
But he couldn’t say the word. His hand tightened into a fist. I could feel his frustration. His anger. And I could understand it. It was cruel what his father had done. Beyond cruel.
“I want to believe that my father wouldn’t have done anything to her. That she might be in hiding, but that she’s still safe. Stillalive. But after all this time, I can’t be sure. She’s eluded every private investigator I’ve hired. I’ve called in every resource, spared no expense. There’s been no sign of her.”
I suddenly remembered our honeymoon. The way Stefan’s colleague Marco had shown up at one of our dinner reservations in Austria. At first, they’d discussed KZM’s marketing plans, hiring new models for a runway show, the kinds of things that would practically put me to sleep. But when I’d returned to the table from the restroom, I’d overheard them discussing something much different. Stefan had been angry, and Marco had looked apologetic and upset. I walked up just in time to catch the end of a conversation that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be privy to. Stefan had been looking for someone. Searching for someone.
“That’s who you were looking for,” I said. “On our honeymoon, that night with Marco. You were searching for her. For Anja.”
Stefan nodded. “I’m still looking. I refuse to give up, even though she hasn’t been seen once in all these years. I refuse to let my father win.”
I was filled with sympathy for Stefan. Almost a decade of searching, of hoping, of not knowing if the woman he’d loved was safe, or even still alive.
“I can’t believe your father did this,” I said, my own words filled with anger.
And yet I could believe it. I believed every word. Stefan’s story only proved what I already thought of Konstantin—that he was a bad man who deserved to be locked up, put away where he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.
Stefan said, “I decided then and there, the moment he told me that he’d sent Anja away, that I would never be like him.”
I was glad to hear it, even though I now knew that Stefan was nothing like his father. The two could not have been more opposite. Konstantin was cruel and hard and monstrous. Stefan was capable of great love, as he had shown me tonight. It was amazing he could still open his heart up to someone after how damaged he had become as a result of Anja’s disappearance. All thanks to his father’s cruelty. I didn’t know if I would have been able to do the same.
“You’re not like your father at all,” I told him. “You never will be.”
He didn’t respond, but closed his eyes for a brief moment.
“I want to undo everything my father has done. Erase him, erase what KZ Modeling stands for,” he said, opening his eyes to look at me, his gaze burning with clarity. With focus. “I’ve spent almost a decade of my life working my ass off to get my father to trust me. To involve me in running the family business. So that I know enough about how the agency works—how the prostitution ring works—to turn him over to the feds. It’s the only way I can even begin to fix all the damage he’s caused. All the lives he’s destroyed.”
“You’re going to shut it all down,” I said, the pieces coming together.
Stefan nodded. “But my father doesn’t trust anyone. Even me. Not completely, anyway. He still remembers Anja, how I cared for her. He doesn’t think I can play ball the way he does.”
The conversation I’d had with Stefan on the night we first met came back to me. Stefan had point blank told me that his father was old school. That he wouldn’t hand over the agency to someone he didn’t trust, someone who hadn’t settled down. It all made sense, the way I’d gotten caught up in this mess.
“You agreed to this marriage so you could take him down,” I said. “Not just to take over the company. But to obliterate it.”
