The Choice

by Stella Gray

  My father laughed. “Don’t be melodramatic,” he said. “I’m merely interested in welcoming the newest member of the Zoric family line. You’re reading into it too much.”

  I wasn’t. “Regardless of the fact that Anja gave birth to your grandson,” I told him firmly, “Tori is the person I made vows to. Not Anja.”

  Shrugging, as though he wasn’t convinced, he said, “Whatever you say, Stefan. Although I do find it interesting that she couldn’t be bothered to show up tonight.”

  He shot me a smug smile. It was maddening. And the worst part was, he was right.

  Storming out of the dining room, I pulled out my phone and ducked into the bathroom to call Bruce. My father’s words had sent my anxiety over the edge, and I’d finally hit my breaking point. It wasn’t like Tori to make plans and then not show up. We’d moved past that stage in our relationship—to a place of mutual trust and understanding. Or at least, I thought we had.

  “Bruce,” I said tensely when the man picked up. “You have eyes on Tori?”

  He paused and my heart plummeted to my feet.

  “You serious?” he finally said. “I dropped her off at your father’s place hours ago. I knew she was meeting you so I watched to see she got into the building okay. Then I drove down the street for a coffee and came right back to wait for you guys. Same way I always do.”

  I clenched my jaw. My father was dead.

  “She’s not here,” I told him. “Stand by until you hear from me.”

  Without waiting for Bruce to apologize or explain, I hung up and stormed back to the dining room. I knew it wasn’t his fault. He had done exactly what I had ordered him to do.

  My father on the other hand had been too calm, too smug during dinner. Smirking every time I glanced at my phone, gazing at me pointedly as he complimented Anja or talked to Max.

  This was all his doing. I knew it.

  As I rounded the doorway, I saw he was pouring himself another drink.

  “What did you do to her?” I demanded, panic rising inside of me. “Where is Tori?”

  I’d been through this before with Anja, but this was different. This was my wife.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “Perhaps she just…took a look around and realized there wasn’t room for her in your life anymore.” He nodded to himself with a look of satisfaction. “Smart girl. Maybe I should have given her more credit.”

  He was lucky I’d spent years learning how to temper my anger at him. But part of me couldn’t deny that his words had a ring of truth to them. I wanted to believe he was lying, and I’d learned long ago to never trust my father’s words at face value—but what he was saying made sense. If my father hadn’t done anything to her, though, then where the hell was she?

  “I’m going home,” I said.

  Bruce gave me a ride back to the condo. My mind was racing with frantic thoughts, none of them good. I grilled him again about what had gone down earlier, and he confirmed again that he’d definitely seen Tori enter my father’s building. All I could think was that maybe she’d gotten cold feet on her way up to the penthouse floor and had decided she couldn’t stand to go through with the dinner. Maybe she’d simply changed her mind, gone home, and fallen asleep.

  I tried her phone again and again, alternately texting and calling. No answer.

  When we got to the condo, I got out of the car and told Bruce to go check all of Tori’s usual spots while I went up to the apartment. Maybe she was hiding out someplace at school or at that Middle Eastern coffee shop where she liked to study. It was possible she felt bad about bailing on dinner and didn’t want to talk to me about it yet. I wouldn’t be mad at her over it.

  But the second I stepped through the front door, I could tell the condo was empty. All the lights were off, the place was cold instead of Tori’s preferred tropical temperature of 78 degrees, and her coat and shoes weren’t in their usual spots. As I walked down the hallway to look in the bedrooms, my footsteps echoing on the tile, I got a bad feeling that I wouldn’t find her.

  My gut instincts were dead on.

  The guest room was devoid of her things—but so was our bedroom. Her side of the closet was stripped bare, the bathroom vanity was cleared of all her toiletries and prescriptions, and every one of her dresser drawers was completely hollowed out. As empty as the hole suddenly gaping in my chest.

  My father was right.

  Tori had left me.

  Stefan

  Chapter 11

  When you wake up alone every day, you don’t even think about it. Your routine is locked in place; you get up, shower, have breakfast, go to work, live your life. But when you’ve slept next to someone every night for weeks or months—or years, even—it’s nothing short of devastating to roll over in the morning and find nothing waiting there but the cold, empty bed instead of the body of your lover, warm and inviting.

  I tried to avoid the whole thing by spending the night on the couch. The last time Tori had “moved out” and into the guest room, I’d slept like shit in our bed. But it was no use. In fact, I probably slept worse this time around. Because she wasn’t just down the hall.

  She was gone.

  Every part of me was exhausted the next morning. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I’d spent hours last night pacing the living room with my phone in one hand and a black coffee in the other, running through my contacts one by one as I tried to find my wife. From Tori’s dad to my brother Luca and my sister Emzee, all of Tori’s girlfriends, even my former nemesis Gavin Chase. I’d reached out to everyone. Nobody knew where she was. I’d had to leave messages for both Tori’s father and Gavin, but I was just covering my bases at that point.

  It seemed unlikely that she’d gone back to the senator’s mansion. Tori hadn’t spoken to her father since the day she’d stormed into his office begging for his help in bringing KZ Modeling’s sex trafficking activities to justice. I’d had to stand there and watch silently as he both admitted his complicity and flat out refused to help—and she’d told him he wasn’t her father anymore. So it was hard, if not impossible, to imagine her running back to her childhood home with her tail between her legs.

  I also doubted she was with Gavin. Initially he’d seemed the most likely person she’d go stay with, but Bruce had been posted outside Gavin’s apartment since last night and his surveillance report thus far hadn’t turned up anything out of the ordinary. Tori was also smart enough to know that Gavin’s would be the first place I’d look.

  After instructing Bruce to keep an eye out on the UChicago campus, I brewed a fresh pot of coffee, choked down some toast, and sat at the kitchen table with my head in my hands. Tori wouldn’t skip town this close to finals, would she? Her education was everything to her. I couldn’t imagine her dropping out of school. In fact, getting her degree was the whole reason she’d agreed to our marriage in the first place. And the tuition was already paid for. She’d have to show up in class eventually. At least, that’s what I told myself. It was my only consolation.

  But I couldn’t help the panic edging into my thoughts. This was exactly like what had happened with Anja all those years ago. One day I was in love, and the next? The woman I loved had disappeared. Gone without a trace. I dialed her cell for the tenth time, but to no avail.

  As much as I loathed to do so, I finally admitted to myself that it was time to call my father. It was getting more and more difficult to believe that he wasn’t involved.

  When I confronted him, though, he just laughed at me.

  “She really is quite clever,” he cackled. “Knows when she’s no longer wanted, and removes herself from the equation before anyone else could! That’s called self-preservation, kid. I’ll bet she learned it from her old man. You should try it yourself sometime.”

  If he had been standing in front of me, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself. I would have knocked him to the floor. Instead, I hung up on him and took several deep breaths. This was no time to let my temper
get the better of me. I had to focus on Tori.

  Checking my watch, I realized Tori’s first class of the day was letting out in less than thirty minutes. Bruce was posted outside the building on campus, and hadn’t confirmed seeing her enter, but I was going to stand right outside that classroom door and wait for her. She couldn’t hide out in a lecture hall all day.

  Guilt tore me up on the ride over to UChicago. As worried as I was about Tori, the last thing I wanted to do was infringe on her privacy. But she wasn’t picking up her phone, and I had no idea where she was or if she was safe. I just had to know she was okay. I wouldn’t force myself on her. In fact, if she didn’t want to talk to me, I’d let her walk away. Maybe seeing me in person would give her second thoughts about leaving, though.

  The whole thing had felt so abrupt, so unexpected. When I’d seen Tori last she’d seemed shaken by the whole Anja and Max situation, but understanding as well. I’d felt grateful to have a wife who realized that what I was going through was complicated and confusing.

  Now, it seemed like maybe I’d read her reaction all wrong.

  One minute she was here and we were committed to navigating this hurdle together; the next moment, she was gone.

  I had already gone through a life-altering loss like this before, with Anja. I couldn’t do it again with Tori. Especially since things were different now. The love I’d felt for Anja when I was seventeen—practically a kid—was nothing compared to how I felt for Tori. She understood me like no one else did. I had believed we were building a life together. That we were a team.

  Yet the only thing she had left behind were the diamond earrings. A symbol of the fact that we were meant to be together.

  I’d seen them in the bedroom before I left for UChicago, so I had slipped them into my pocket. My fingers were wrapped around them now, even as my driver was pulling up to the curb at East 59th Street.

  “Find a parking spot nearby,” I told him as I stepped out of the car and into the cold air. “I’ll call when I need you.”

  “You got it, boss,” he said before driving off.

  Heading across the quad, my Italian loafers slipping a little in the mud, I saw Bruce and gave him a nod. He was posted exactly halfway between the Harper Library, Tori’s favorite study haunt, and Stuart Hall, where her first class of the day was held. I’d told him to keep an eye on all the doors and call me if he saw her.

  If she didn’t walk out of that lecture hall when class got out in ten minutes, maybe I could speak to one of her school friends and try to find out if someone—anyone—had finally heard from my wife. Or if they had any more suggestions or theories on where she might have gone.

  I wasn’t entirely comfortable violating her privacy like this, but she had to know me well enough to realize that since I hadn’t heard from her, I’d be doing everything I could to find her. If she wanted to be left alone, she could have easily called or texted me to say so.

  As I paced in the hall outside the classroom, my entire body was practically vibrating with anxiety and stress. Admittedly, some anger as well. Of all people, Tori should know exactly what Anja’s disappearance had done to me. How it had affected me. Changed me.

  Why would she put me through the same thing again?

  Even though my father had insisted he wasn’t involved, that he’d said nothing to her, I could easily imagine him poisoning her thoughts. Telling Tori she was better off leaving, that I was divorcing her to be with Anja. Maybe even offering her money. If I ever found out that was the case, I’d make him sorry. Sorrier than he’d be when I put his ass behind bars for trafficking.

  The thought of me choosing Anja over Tori, of course, was absurd. Tori was my wife, my family—the woman I had chosen to spend my life with. Come hell or high water, or ex-girlfriends, or even children I never knew I’d had. We’d find a way through.

  If I could just find Tori, I would tell her that. I would convince her to come home.

  Time was crawling. With a few minutes still to wait, I answered a few work emails and cancelled a meeting. I’d already called out for the day. It was only my second non-medical absence—besides my honeymoon—in the entire time that I had been working at KZ Modeling as an adult. I knew my father would find out, and question my loyalty to the company, but right now my priority was Tori. He could fire me for all I cared.

  Finally, class was over and students began streaming out the door and into the hall. I watched, my heart pounding, my eyes focused on every face. Tori never emerged. When the flow of students stopped, I checked the room to make sure it was empty. No Tori. I hurried after the few students who were still meandering away at a slow, lingering pace.

  One of them looked a little older than Tori, in a black leather jacket and heavy black motorcycle boots. She looked vaguely familiar. I was pretty sure I’d seen her on the night I had found my underaged wife at a strip club about to do some shots.

  “Excuse me,” I called out, causing her to stop and wave at her friends to go on.

  She turned toward me, her eyes down as she typed something on her phone. When she lifted her head, I could tell immediately that she knew who I was—either that she recognized me from the tabloids, or from my relationship with Tori.

  “You’re Stefan,” she said in a vague New York accent, narrowing her heavily-lined eyes.

  “I am,” I confirmed, and gave her a polite smile. “I think we’ve met before. You’re friends with my wife, aren’t you? Tori Zoric?”

  She gave me a hesitant look. “Maybe,” she said cautiously. “We have some classes together. What brings you here?”

  “Well, that’s what I need some help with.”

  I gave her my most charming smile—the one that could melt the panties off even the iciest of ice queens. And I could see it working. The sassy New Yorker’s smile became a little more friendly, and she lowered her phone and tucked it into her pocket.

  “I was going to surprise my wife and take her out for lunch,” I went on, then gestured toward the classroom behind us. “She’s usually in that class with you, right?”

  “Yeah, usually,” the woman said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and giving me a more attentive once-over. “But not today. I haven’t seen her since Monday afternoon. Actually, she was…never mind.”

  “She was what?” I prodded.

  Shrugging, she glanced away, suddenly very focused on her nails. Evading me, obviously. Trying to cover for Tori. Or covering up something, at any rate.

  Thinking back, Monday was when I’d taken Max to the zoo. I’d gone home and talked to Tori, told her about my day, invited her to the family dinner at my father’s on Tuesday. She’d agreed. Everything had seemed fine between us. Strained, but there’d been no red flags.

  “Did she seem…upset?” I asked, trying again.

  The woman went quiet all of a sudden. “I should go. I’m gonna be late for my next class.”

  “Wait. Please. I won’t tell her you said anything,” I assured her. “The thing is—I think she’s pissed at me, and you know how she gets all distant when she’s upset about something.”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly Tori,” she agreed. “Look, do you want to walk with me? It’s the Social Sciences building, so I have a few minutes. I’m Audrey, by the way.”

  I nodded, and we started walking. “I just want to figure this out. Make it right.”

  “I get it.” Audrey adjusted her scarf as we stepped outside, took a few moments to think, and then finally said, “Okay, so. She seemed kind of weird about that picture of you and the brunette that went up online, in The Dirt? She told us that you guys were old friends, but—”

  “We are,” I interrupted. “There’s nothing else going on. Tori and I discussed it already.”

  “Cool then,” Audrey said. “The thing is, the last time I saw her—on Monday—she was with Gavin.”

  “Gavin Chase?” I said, keeping my voice steady despite the fact that my gut was twisting.

  “Yeah,” Audrey said, looking ap
ologetic. “They were sitting on that bench over there.” She pointed across the quad. “She seemed distraught, honestly. He was sort of…holding her.”

  I saw red. But I was also crushed. How could I have been so stupid? Of course Gavin had been there for Tori in her time of need. I hadn’t even seen how upset she was, but Gavin had.

  My anguish must have been obvious, because Audrey reached out and patted my arm.

  “Sorry, man,” she said. “This is me, though. I gotta go.” She gestured at the building.

  “Thanks for your help,” I choked out.

  “No problem. Hope you guys work it out,” she said, and then walked away.

  For a second I just stood there, frozen. Gavin. Fucking. Chase.

  I pulled out my phone and called the asshole. He didn’t answer and my rage grew. I never should have trusted him. In my gut, I’d known that allying with him might be something I regretted. That getting him involved in my life and my attempt to take down KZM from the inside had been a calculated risk—one that now made me feel like I’d made a deal with the devil.

  Beyond enraged, I walked back to the quad outside of Stuart and confronted Bruce. “Did you see Tori in the arms of Gavin Chase on Monday?” I demanded.

  He paused and I clenched my jaw, already knowing what his answer would be.

  “You told me to keep her safe,” Bruce finally responded. “And you told me Gavin Chase was someone we could trust—someone who would keep her safe, too. You didn’t tell me to report on what she did with the man.”

  It was true. I’d said all of those things to Bruce, thinking I could trust Gavin. No, that wasn’t true. I’d never fully trusted him. But I had trusted Tori. I’d believed her when she’d said there was nothing going on. That Gavin was interested, but the feelings weren’t mutual.

  “If you want me to report on her activities in the future, say the word. But the job as I understood it was to ensure Tori’s safety,” Bruce reminded me.

  “And you’ve done a great job of that, haven’t you?” I lashed out.