The Choice

Stefan:

“He’s yours,” Anja said, her eyes locked on mine. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Your son.”

I felt like I’d been shot in the gut, like the whole world had gone still around me.

I heard Tori gasp at my side, and instinctively tightened my grip on her hand. My gaze shifted to the dark-haired boy on the couch. This was…my son?

The shock was visceral. My whole body was cold, my pulse pounding in my ears, as if I’d just plunged under the surface of an iced-over Lake Michigan.

How was this possible?

Anja, the first woman I’d ever loved, the woman I’d lost, the woman I’d tried so desperately to find for almost a decade—I’d spent all this time searching for her, and this was the moment she chose to reappear? Right when things with my wife were finally coming together, when my plans to tear down my father and take over KZ Modeling were starting to coalesce?

Memories flooded back to me as I took in Anja’s waterfall of black hair, her long legs, the wide eyes and sharp arch of her brows. Eight years later, and she hadn’t changed a bit. It was almost like she was taunting me, the way she was suddenly sitting right here in front of me in my father’s library. Looking at me with tears in her eyes and a hopeful smile. As if this was merely a reunion. As if no time or trauma had passed between us. With a child beside her that I was supposed to believe was mine. Was this the reason she’d disappeared all those years ago?

Eyeing the boy more closely, I could see that the kid had the same full lips as most of the men in my family, and similarly dark hair—but Anja had dark hair, too. With lips fuller than mine. I couldn’t say with certainty that he was my offspring. But could I honestly say he wasn’t?

The timeline made sense. Her disappearance made sense. Yet I still couldn’t process it.

As something exploded in a bright flash on the kid’s screen, he glanced up from the game he’d been absorbed in and our eyes met. It was only for a split second, but it was enough to hit me like another gut shot. His eyes were green. More of a blue-tinged green than my own pale olive color, yes, but maybe that was owing to Anja’s mix of colors. Who could say for sure? But if it was true—if I did have a son—what did it mean for the boy, for Anja, for me and Tori?

I was numb, speechless, my mind blown. It was all so unreal.

My chest constricted and I sank into a chair, my brain reeling with all the questions I’d bottled up inside over the years. Even if I could form the words, they all felt irrelevant given the situation. Like pebbles to a mountain. Because the fact of this child sitting here—changed everything.

Looking up at Tori, our hands still locked together, I realized she still hadn’t spoken either. And she refused to look at me. God, why did this have to happen now? As much as I wanted her here, I wished she had never come with me to my father’s tonight. Because despite the fact that I loved her and needed her at my side, I knew this bombshell could destroy us, could destroy our marriage, could destroy everything we’d built. It was all crumbling in the wake of this impossible revelation.

And I couldn’t lose her. Not after everything we’d been through. Everything that was still to come.

I needed to talk with Anja, but there was no way I could rehash my personal history with her in front of my wife. I would never subject Tori to that. But how could I just walk out the door now and leave Anja here? Especially with her son—our son—at her side? Even now, I could see my former love eyeing the huge diamond ring on Tori’s finger, probably noticing the way my wife and I were holding hands so tightly. As much as I deserved an explanation, Anja probably had some questions of her own. And the boy—did he know anything about me? Did he want to?

There was no way out of this. No easy solution. I was trapped.

I looked back across the room at my father, taking in the familiar smirk on his face, and that’s when I realized: he’d done this all on purpose.

Konstantin Zoric, ever the conniving, manipulative puppeteer. He’d arranged all of this—Anja, the boy, inviting me and Tori over for dinner just so he could pull off this surprise meeting—to cause maximum pain for everyone involved. The sadist. He’d stop at nothing to maintain his power over me, his control of the family business…even if that meant destroying my life and the lives of everyone around me.

“Look, son,” he was saying now, his smug voice dripping with self-satisfaction, “Anja’s finally returned. Now you two can build a real family together, once and for all. Just like you always dreamed of.”

I stood, my fists clenching. It was all I could do to keep myself from lunging at my father. My first instinct was to punch him in the face, but I couldn’t. There was a child in the room. My child. But I was enraged in the face of my father’s gloating, and even more disgusted by the way he was acting as though Tori—my wife—wasn’t even here. Like she meant nothing, wasn’t even worth a passing thought to him. But her grip on my hand only grew tighter, and she finally looked at me, offering a tight smile that I couldn’t read.

Then she turned toward my father, and though I was grateful she’d interfered before I could engage in a full-out assault, I braced myself for what my wife was about to say.

“Konstantin, why don’t we give Stefan and Anja a chance to speak alone?” she suggested, keeping her voice calm and neutral.

“What?” I blurted. I had no idea what I’d expected from Tori, but it wasn’t that. Judging by my father’s expression, he was just as surprised as I was.

“An excellent idea,” my father said, quickly recovering his cool demeanor. “I’m sure they have a lot of…catching up to do.”

Anja was looking at me expectantly, but I shook my head. “No. The last thing anybody needs right now is to—”

“Stefan,” Tori interjected, cutting me off before smiling apologetically at Anja and my father. “If you’ll excuse us for just a moment?”

“Of course,” Anja said, her Romanian accent now just a hint of what it once was.

Then Tori gently led me out of the room and into the hallway, closing the library door shut behind us. I slumped against the wall, grateful for the dim lighting, and rubbed a hand over my face.

“Tori. I don’t know what to say. This is all happening so fast. I never—”

“Shh. Just listen,” she started, looking me determinedly in the eye.

“No, you listen,” I shot back, suddenly energized by my panic and grabbing her by the shoulders. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on in there, but my father is obviously amusing himself by playing God—”

“It. Doesn’t. Matter,” Tori said, her voice soothing. “Your father doesn’t matter. Okay? This isn’t about him. It’s about you and Anja and that little boy in there. Regardless of your dad’s role in making this happen, it is happening. And now you have to move forward.”

I took a deep breath, squeezing her shoulders softly. Then I nodded.

“You’re right. I just don’t know how any of this fits together. How you and I…”

My voice trailed off as I fought to find the right words. Because there weren’t any.

“We can talk about all of this later,” she said. “For now, you need to focus on Anja. I’ll take a car back to the condo, and we’ll catch up when you get home. This is important.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I laughed at the absurdity of it all. “I don’t even know how I feel. I mean, if this is true…where do I even start?”

She smiled. “You’ll figure it out, Stefan. I know how long you’ve been trying to find her, and obviously you two have a lot to discuss. Just take it one step at a time. You don’t have to decide anything right now. Talk first, decisions later.”

I wrapped her in my arms, pressing my face against her hair.

“I love you.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Everything will be okay,” she replied, pulling away and smoothing her hair back down.

My wife was so fucking understanding, it killed me. It also made me desperate to keep her from walking out that door. She was the only solid thing I could count on right now.

“Stay,” I said. “You don’t have to run back to the condo. This isn’t just about me.”

“It’s better if I go,” she said, shaking her head. “Whatever history you two have between you, it’s got nothing to do with me. And I need a little time for myself, too. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I searched her eyes. Her expression was guarded but resolute. My wife, the rock. Stronger than anyone ever gave her credit for. As she tilted her head back to look up at me, her diamond earrings caught the light. I’d given them to her on the way to my father’s place, to represent how we were a pair, how we belonged together. I hoped she’d still give me a chance to prove that.

Leaning forward, I dropped a soft kiss on her lips, trying to communicate how I felt. Letting her walk away didn’t feel like the right move. Not by a long shot. But I had to let her go. Give her some space. And I knew she was right about me needing to stay here and talk to Anja.

After walking Tori out of the building and seeing her safely into the backseat of my private car, I headed back up to my father’s penthouse, lost in thought.

In spite of all the years that had passed, or perhaps because of them, my heart had ached seeing Anja’s face again. She reminded me of so many things, but mostly of the person I had been when I was seventeen and in love for the first time. Far from innocent, yet innocent about the world. Maybe that’s what my heart ached for. For the person I was back then. I’d had my whole life ahead of me, full of possibilities.

I’d been optimistic. Happy.

Instead of angry and jaded, obsessed with revenge and with my plan to take down my father and his vile corporation. A plan that I still had every intention of following through with. No matter what happened with Anja and the boy, I would not be stopped. I just wished Tori hadn’t been dragged into it. Into all of this. My father was a monster.

Tori had put on a brave face, but I knew she had to be hurting. I had no idea if I’d be able to repair what my father had just broken.

I stormed out of the elevator and back toward the door of the penthouse. When I walked inside, though, I slowed my stride. It was true that I was dying for answers, but I was also battling the urge to kick down the library door and throttle the man responsible for all of this.

He’d told me he had arranged Anja’s disappearance the first time around—deporting her right when it would hurt me the most. Now it seemed he’d brought her back just when he knew it would hurt me again. When he knew my marriage to Tori had been on the rocks. The bastard.

But he’d underestimated me. I might have chased Anja for years, but she was now more a fond memory to me than anything else. I cared about her, and I’d do right by my child, but my relationship with Tori was solid. I wasn’t going to walk away and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her go. I’d never stop fighting for her.

As I walked up to the library door, I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the conversation ahead. After years of dead ends and cold trails, the mystery surrounding Anja’s disappearance was about to come to light. I could hardly believe it. Even if my father’s intentions had been malignant, I was grateful I’d be getting the truth.

Anja had a shitload of explaining to do, and I was finally going to get my answers.

Stefan:

When I was seventeen, Anja and I had been in love. Or at least, that’s what I’d believed. I had trusted her with my hopes and fears for the future, and shared stories about my past—my mother and how much I missed her, the difficult childhood I’d had after she’d died and left us Zoric children to be raised by a series of nannies and the occasional bit of attention from our emotionally closed-off, workaholic father. Anja always listened. Always cared. She was almost maternal at times, nothing like any woman I’d ever dated. Mature beyond her twenty-three years.

I had thought every time we had sex it was like making a promise to one another.

I was young back then. Naïve enough to think we were perfectly matched, that we were equals, that we’d be together forever and that nothing would ever come between us. It was almost laughable now, how little I’d understood her position—caught between her modeling career dreams, the sex work my father had been forcing on her, her desperation for US citizenship, how heavy the familial responsibilities on her shoulders were, and the way she’d had to send almost every cent she made back to Romania to care for her family there.

I’d believed that marrying her would solve each and every one of those problems. Instead, my hasty marriage proposal had made things worse. But if my father had admittedly gotten Anja deported, where had she gone? None of my investigations in Romania had turned up anything. How had she kept herself in hiding all these years—with a child? And why? All this time I had assumed she’d been hiding from my father, but now that she was here, I couldn’t help thinking: what if the person she’d been hiding from was me?

None of it made sense. She had to have known I would have raised the child with her. Stood by her. Would have cared for her and protected her no matter what.

I didn’t know what to think. My heart and my life were with Tori now. I had no regrets, and our marriage—our partnership—had made me realize how undeveloped my relationship with Anja had truly been. But I still had so many questions. And no matter what, I had to find a way forward. If not for Anja and me, for the child we had created—because I’d never turn my back on him the way my own father had turned his back on me and my siblings.

But when I turned the knob and went back into the library, Anja was gone. And so was the boy.

Instead, only my father stood there, a dark and looming presence in his typical ensemble of head-to-toe charcoal, lighting one of his disgusting cigars. He looked up as I entered, the expression on his face just as smug as it had been when Tori and I had first walked into the room, into his clusterfuck of a trap.

“What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded. “What kind of game are you trying to play?”

I was sick and tired of his machinations. As far as I was concerned, they ended now.

“No game,” he said, pausing to puff the cigar.

“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 and 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.”