Stefan gave me a grin. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a black and white wedding, knowing you. Our own little Wednesday Addams.”
“We’ll see what Tori thinks about that,” I said.
As they rattled on about how happy they were for me, I continued wrestling with the possibility of shattering their illusions via the very unromantic truth about my engagement.
“Ford’s a great guy though,” Luka was saying. “I’m glad it’s gonna be him.”
“Hmm?” I said, realizing I’d zoned out.
“You know we love him for you as a human and all that, but even more so business-wise,” Stefan added. “I don’t think I could have chosen better if I’d chosen for you.”
Both of my brothers laughed and I joined them, hoping they wouldn’t pick up on how forced my chuckle was.
“But all jokes aside, seeing you happy is really the best part,” Stefan said. “It’s been a rough year.”
“It has,” I agreed, all of us sobering up as the shadow of our father’s misdeeds loomed over us. “I really am happy, though.”
It wasn’t a complete lie.
“I’m glad,” Luka said. “God knows what Dad would have had planned for you.”
“He wouldn’t have given me any choice,” I said immediately. “In fact, I’m sure he already had someone picked out. Someone who would have benefited him and his plans.”
Both of my brothers nodded, their expressions dark.
“He really fucked with all of our heads, didn’t he?” Stefan mused.
It was a rare moment of honesty. None of us liked talking about how hard it had been, growing up with Konstantin Zoric as our father. Not just because he was a workaholic who was rarely home, too busy hiding his other life as a sex trafficker from us to act like an actual parent—but because we hadn’t had a mother or any other close relatives to balance it all out.
Our mom had died when I was just two years old, too young to remember much of her, but my brothers had been old enough to remember her warmth and her laugh, how she’d loved painting. How much she’d truly loved us all. I wished I had even one single sweet memory to hold on to the way my brothers did.
But in the end, her love couldn’t protect any of us from the monster that our father became. We never got to see how real love—and loving relationships—worked. It was amazing we had survived his controlling tyranny at all, let alone survived so well, considering how messed up we all were because of him and the long years of emotional and verbal abuse.
I knew I’d been on the receiving end of the least of it, because I was a girl, but I still bore my fair share of emotional scars from our father’s behavior.
For most of my life, I’d been the odd person out. The youngest. The quietest. The only girl. When I’d gotten bullied in school, developing psychosomatic stomach pain that kept me home too many days, the nurse finally called my father at work to report my excessive absences, which he knew nothing about. He came home early that day to ream me out and I’d broken down and admitted what was really going on. He had been furious. Not at the bullies, though.
He’d been furious at me.
“How could you let this happen?” he had raged. “You’re a Zoric—they should fear you, respect you. You need to show them who you are.”
His advice just made me feel worse. If it hadn’t been for Ford stepping in to quell the bullying, I might have never made it out of high school in one piece.
But I pushed those memories and feelings aside as I smiled up at my brothers.
“Forget him,” Luka said, clapping a hand on Stefan’s shoulder. “Just look at all of us now. Tori’s due soon, and you’re gonna be a great dad. I know it.”
“And you’ll be a great uncle,” Stefan said. “And you, Em, are going to be the best auntie a kid ever had.”
“Not to mention, Luka’s going to be a great papa himself,” I pointed out.
“You’ll be an auntie twice over! And a beautiful bride,” Luka said, a little bashfully. Probably due to the unusual amount of genuine sentiment we were all expressing, so unlike ourselves and so not in line with the way we’d been raised.
Our father had scarred all of us, but now that he was gone—locked away for life, behind bars—we all had a chance at a real life. Real love. A fresh start.
“We didn’t ask to get born into this family,” I said. “But I’m so lucky I get to have the two of you as brothers.”
“I don’t regret being born a Zoric,” Luka said. “I just wish our dad had been anyone but Konstantin.”
