Stefan and I, on the other hand, had been thrown together for business reasons. Ours was a marriage of convenience—one that wasn’t convenient anymore. Though Stefan might not have realized it yet, Anja obviously did. And Konstantin was the one who’d made all these moves to get me out of the picture. I didn’t fit. I was the outsider. I always had been.
I knew what I had to do.
Stefan
Chapter 10
It was Tuesday night, and I was late for dinner. Getting out of the office had taken longer than I’d anticipated, thanks to all the catch-up work I had to do after playing hooky yesterday. And it had started raining just after dark—really coming down, pelting everything with hard, ice cold torrents of water—so traffic across town had been infuriatingly slow, the visibility poor.
Shaking the rain off my coat in the elevator up to my father’s top floor penthouse, I couldn’t help wishing Tori was at my side. But she’d insisted on coming straight from UChicago and meeting me here. I’d tried to tell her we’d both be more comfortable if we showed up at my dad’s together, but her argument was that it would look better if at least one of us was on time. I couldn’t fight her on that. Punctuality was something my father valued highly, and considering the way things had been going lately, Tori needed all the brownie points she could get with him.
This dinner was already a lot to ask of her. I could only imagine how hard all of this was on Tori. Truthfully, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it either. While I was eager to spend more time with Max, that enthusiasm didn’t extend to seeing my father and Anja.
I was doing my best to forgive her, to convince myself that the choices she’d made all those years ago had been driven by her fear of my father’s power and her love for Max. My father, on the other hand, deserved no mercy from me. Unfortunately, there was too much at stake to risk alienating him in any way. So for the time being, I had to pretend that everything was fine. That I still planned to take over KZM and run it exactly the same way he always had.
Stepping off the elevator and heading down the hall, I checked my phone, hoping for a text from Tori telling me that things were going fine. Nothing. It was hardly a surprise. She’d been quiet lately, probably because she was processing a lot. We both were. There were going to be a lot of changes in our lives now that Max was in the picture. I wasn’t exactly sure how we were going to make it work, but I knew that we had to. For Max’s sake.
I rang the doorbell and one of my father’s domestic employees let me in and took my coat. A huge clap of thunder cracked outside, and I couldn’t help feeling like it was an omen.
My father, Anja, and Max were all waiting around the dining room table. The room was lit with candles and the soft glow of the chandelier overhead, the best china and crystal laid out. There were even cloth napkins folded into little origami triangles at each place setting, like at a formal meal. I couldn’t remember the last time my father had hosted something this extravagant in his home, and that was saying a lot. He was the kind of person who loved to show off.
“Where’s Tori?” I asked, pulling out the chair next to Max.
“Not here,” my father said airily.
“Really? I thought she was—”
“Hello, Stefan,” Anja cut in. “How was work?”
“Hi, Stefan,” Max said quietly, echoing his mother. “Did you see the light-ling before?”
I gave Anja a half-nod and then sat down and grinned at my son. “I sure did,” I said. “It was pretty cool. Thunder’s kinda loud, though. You hanging in there okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, but from the looks of it the poor kid seemed overwhelmed. My father could be intimidating enough, but the set-up was a lot to take in as well.
Max was sitting up unnaturally straight in his chair, hands tightly clasped in front of him, eyes wide as they roamed the room full of antiques and the formal table settings. I understood how he felt. It was hard not to be nervous around my father’s things. You could tell at a glance just how expensive and priceless everything was. And if you broke something, god help you. My father was quick to punish.
Not that I’d ever let my father do anything like that to Max—or any other children I might have. Nor would I do that to my own kids. I’d never repeat his parenting mistakes.
“You’re late,” my father said, standing from his seat at the head of the table. He gestured for me to move chairs so I’d be next to Anja, but I didn’t budge.
“I was getting caught up on a few projects,” I said. Then I looked at Max. “Sorry it took so long,” I told him. “You guys should have started without me.”
No doubt the kid had to be hungry. It was obvious from the near-empty bread basket and bowl of olive pits on the table that they’d been sitting there picking at the appetizers for a while.
“We’ll eat now,” my father said, his words a command. The domestic worker standing near the doorway nodded and then scurried off to the kitchen.
I frowned. “We should wait for Tori. I don’t know what’s kept her; she should have been here already,” I said, but then noticed there wasn’t another place setting. “Where’s her seat?”
My father just ignored me, leaning back as a bowl of soup was set in front of him.
“We can set her up when she arrives,” Anja said, reaching across the table and gently putting her hand on my arm. “If she shows.”
“She’ll be here. Probably just got caught in traffic. People here can’t drive in the rain.”
Pulling my arm back, I looked over and narrowed my eyes at my father. It was no secret to my wife that he was a complete asshole, but even still, I knew that Tori would be hurt if she arrived and there wasn’t a place setting for her. Not that she’d be surprised. But I couldn’t ask them to wait any longer, that much was obvious. Max was practically inhaling his soup and had taken the last piece of bread as well.
Excusing myself and slipping out into the hallway for a moment, I slid my phone out of my pocket and checked my missed calls and texts. There was nothing from Tori. When I called her, it rang through to voicemail.
