Stefan
Chapter 21
After dinner, Tori and Max returned to putting together the huge Lego set that Tori had gotten while Anja and I remained in the kitchen, cleaning up. I could tell that she was putting on a brave face, but it was obvious that her concerns about the future weighed heavily on her mind.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I assured her, wiping pizza grease off the counter. “Regardless of what the senator says, Tori and I have your back. We’ll figure it all out.”
My ex nodded, but I could see that her eyes were filling with tears. She swiped them away as she turned to load the plates from dinner into the dishwasher.
“What is it?” I asked, worried that there might be something else she hadn’t told us yet.
Anja was silent for a long time before she looked over at me, her eyes red.
“You’ve been so good to me, Stefan,” she said. “Tori, too. I don’t deserve it.”
“It’s water under the bridge,” I said, gesturing for her to sit back down. “Sure, I wish things had happened differently, but I believe that you did what you thought was best—I can’t imagine it’s been easy for you all these years, being a single mom and trying to stay in hiding.”
I went over to the cupboard where Tori kept the tea kettle and filled it with water, then set it on a burner to heat. My wife often liked having a cup of soothing chamomile tea before bed, and maybe it would help Anja unwind as well. One more thing they could bond over.
Anja shook her head. “This isn’t about how I ran away when I found out I was pregnant with Max, though I am sorry for the way it all went down.” She took a deep breath. “The truth is, I didn’t come here intending to tear you and your wife apart. I was misled.”
“By my father?” I guessed, knowing full well that he had orchestrated both Anja’s original disappearance and this recent return with Max. “What did he tell you?”
“He said that your marriage was on the rocks,” she admitted, looking ashamed. “I was told it had been arranged for political reasons, but that you were both unhappy.”
“Half of that is true,” I said. “But my wife and I are very happy together.”
Anja smiled sadly. “He told me that Tori was on her way out anyway…but it was a delicate situation and you’d need a really compelling reason to divorce. He was sure Max and I could be that reason.”
The tea kettle screamed, and I wanted to scream along with it. Anja jumped up and took it off the stove, and it was my turn to sink into a chair as she rifled through Tori’s tea selection.
“My father really is some kind of evil genius,” I mused, my jaw clenching in anger.
Anja laughed. “I guess I can’t disagree with that. Maybe ‘supervillain’ is more accurate?”
“He does have all that money,” I conceded. “And all those charcoal turtlenecks.”
All jokes aside, I felt sick realizing my father had stooped so low yet again. I knew he’d wanted to get rid of Tori because she was defiant and headstrong and hated KZM’s trafficking business—and therefore would always be a potential threat to it—but now I knew exactly how he’d managed to convince Anja to come back to Chicago with Max. By pretending that the two of them had a new life waiting for them here, with me. How fucking cruel.
Anja sat next to me, the scent of lemon wafting from her steaming mug.
“What else did he tell you?” I asked.
She frowned, thinking back. “He said…just that if I came back, we’d all have a chance to be a family together. That I owed it to Max to finally meet his dad. Give him all the opportunities I never had. I mean, your father was generous with us, but our life wasn’t…like this.”
Looking around the kitchen, decked out with its gleaming marble countertops, high-tech appliances, stupidly luxurious fixtures and all kinds of bells and whistles I barely even used, I didn’t have to ask Anja what she meant. I had the wealth and resources at my fingertips to care for and spoil Max in ways Anja could currently only dream about. It was easy to understand why she’d bought into my father’s tempting lies so quickly. All she cared about was her son.
“Tori and I are committed to helping you and Max in whatever way we can,” I said.
“I know. And I can’t thank the both of you enough for that,” Anja said, pausing to sip carefully at her tea. “God, I can’t believe I fell for his lies all over again. I should have realized it sooner, considering the man he was when I worked for him. I don’t know why I ever trusted him to begin with.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “You’re far from being the only person he’s taken advantage of. He’s a master manipulator. And you were barely sixteen when you arrived in the US—it wasn’t about being naïve; you had to take whatever opportunity came your way.”
I could only imagine how hard it must have been for Anja. All alone in a foreign country, undocumented and impoverished, knowing she was the only hope that her family back in Romania had for financial survival.
But she was shaking her head. “There was more to it than that, Stefan. When I met your father I was young, yes, but I knew what I was doing. Some of the girls—the other models—they were bullied into the sex work, threatened with deportation. But coming to the States, I’d already figured that without papers or an education and not much English, it was pretty likely that the only work I’d get would be hooking. So when Konstantin said he’d help me get modeling jobs too, it seemed like a dream come true.”
She was smiling bitterly, and my heart ached for the younger Anja who had been through so much, and who’d had to learn to be so strong.
