“What are you talking about, Mia?” The room suddenly feels a lot smaller. I stare at the picture of my parents on the mantel, the vein in my neck bulging out.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this. I signed a document. If your parents knew I was here talking to you right now, they could take me to court.” She’s whispering, her hands trembling as she looks over her shoulder. “They gave me and my parents a lot of money to stay away from you. They paid for me to go to art school. They bought my parents a house in Sopat so long as they promised to move from Krakow and never come back. I’m not supposed to be anywhere near you.”
I laugh out loud, waiting for her to tell me the punchline of this joke. My parents might be white collar criminals, but they wouldn’t have spent the last twelve years of my life lying to me, watching me fall into a dark depression over a woman they paid off. My father doted on me while he was alive, and my mother always wanted the best for me, even to this day.
She stands up from the table, folding her napkin before placing it on her plate.
“You’re not kidding,” I mutter.
I don’t know what’s more painful, thinking she walked out on me, or finding out my life has been a lie. I don’t even know where to start unraveling this disaster. I grab my glass of wine and throw it at the wall across the room, watching it shatter to the floor.
“You probably think I’m a monster, taking the money and abandoning you when you needed me, Serafin. I was only trying to do what’s right by my family. There was no way they would’ve ever got anywhere in this world without your parents’ help. Besides, we both knew your parents would never let you end up with a girl like me. It didn’t take a signed contract to make that obvious.”
“Mia, do you know what that means? Do you understand how fucked up that is? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out.
She rushes out the room and up the stairs before I can stop her, brushing past the chef carrying another course of food. The sound of the door slamming echos through the whole house making me feel suddenly very alone in this world.
It wasn’t her job to fight for me. It was my job to fight for her. I might not be able to change the past, but from this day forward, nobody’s ever getting in between the two of us again. Not her parents, not my parents, not Janka or her dead beat ex husband. If my father taught me anything, it was how to fix problems and make bad situations go away, and now, thanks to him, I’m going to be putting those skills to the test. Never again will anyone make Mia feel like she doesn’t have a choice.
As long as in the end, her choice is me.
10
Serafin:
“I’m so glad you called, love. I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” my mother says as she pulls her handkerchief out of her pocket and begins dusting off the picture frames on the mantel. “This is unacceptable. Whoever is doing your cleaning needs a talking to.”
“Mom, stop,” I say. “Sit down. You want a drink?”
I haven’t seen my mother in a few months. She spent the winter traveling the world with her other rich widow friends, sightseeing and cruise hopping.
I know her life really didn’t start until after my father died, and somehow she looks even younger than she did at his funeral. I guess that’s what happens when you have nothing to be stressed out about anymore with more money than you could possibly burn through in a lifetime. Between plastic surgeries, spa trips, and six month long vacations, my mother is living her best life.
It still doesn’t stop her from being a raging bitch towards the hired help, though, apparently. I always secretly suspected it actually makes her happy flexing her status over others.
“I need to talk to you about something.” I motion for her to sit down at the table across from me, but she keeps pacing around the room, like she’s purposely avoiding a conversation with me.
There’s no way she could know what I brought her here for. Mia is at her first day of work at Jakub’s office. I haven’t talked to her since last night, and only caught of glimpse of her getting in the town car this morning, her short black slip dress a little too over the top for my liking, even though it fit her body just right. All of Jakub’s secretaries wear the same thing, though. I know she wants to pay off her debt on her own, so unless there’s an actual problem, I’m not going to intervene with her work life.
I am however, fully prepared to intervene with her personal life. Especially because it overlaps with mine in such an intricate and familial way.
“Who did this painting?” she asks, spying Mia’s canvas on the wall. “It looks like you’ve finally developed a less macabre taste. Maybe you could replace some of those with more by this artist.” She points to my Gothic collection hanging nearby, Jan van Eyck’s Crucifiction hanging in the center, in all it’s macabre dead bodies and skeletal glory.
“You’d like that? If I traded in my Fuseli for some more stuff by this artist?”
“I don’t see why not.” She cocks her head as she studies the painting. “You can tell whoever painted this is a very well trained artist.”
“I would hope so,” I say, trying to contain my laughter. “You paid for her schooling with my inheritance.”
My mother turns and scowls. Her platinum blonde hair is so white it almost looks gray, and as she stands there with her hands on
