I put my fist to my mouth and shake my head. In the worst possible example of bad timing, my chef walks into the room in his pristine black and red coat, followed by two servers with trays in their arms.
Mia watches wide eyed as the servers set up food on the trays behind them.
“Do you do this like… every night?” she asks in a whisper.
“Only when he’s entertaining a very important guest,” he says, shooting me a wink. “Normally Serafin takes his dinner in his office. Or on the run.”
One of the servers places plates in front of us with giant shrimp on a bed of greens with some sort of sauce drizzled all over it. Mia groans like I imagine she would if she was about to get off, and I smile politely as I dismiss them, hoping the next course brings more of that groaning.
“Oh shit, do you want to pray or something?” she asks, clutching her fork in her hand like she’s planning on using it as a stabbing device.
“You still do that?”
She nods. “Maybe not as much as I should. I’d probably catch on fire if I set foot in a church right now.”
“If you knew what was going on behind the scenes there, you’d probably be amazed they’re not all up in flames,” I say with a laugh. She swirls her shrimp around the plate, coating it in the decadent sauce and pops it into her mouth, closing her eyes as she chews.
“You probably think I’m a low class slob,” she says, laughing as she picks up another prawn on her fork. “I’m just not used to eating like this. That night I saw you at the casino, Janka and I were going to hit up the buffet after our job and stuff our purses with food to eat for the next week, and that’s living it up in my world.”
“You put steaks and potatoes and shit like right in your purse?” I ask. “Just drop them in there?”
She shrugs, crossing her eyes as she takes another bite. I hang my head and laugh. I hope she doesn’t think I’m judging her. I know exactly how privileged I am. I just think it’s hysterical she was going to run all over town with a bag of cooked meat.
“You know you could’ve always reached out, Mia. You know I’d always be more than happy to help you, no questions asked.”
She wipes at the side of her mouth with a napkin and rolls her eyes. We both start laughing so hard, chef Tymon looks alarmed when he comes in the room with the second course.
“Am I allowed to ask what’s so funny?”
“I just tried to tell Mia I wasn’t an obsessive compulsive control freak with a straight face,” I say.
A laugh escapes his lips, and he hangs his head and blushes as the servers clear our plates and replace them with bowls of creamy truffle topped polenta. I’m not even going to tell her she’s about to devour eighty dollars worth of mushrooms. She’d probably try and put them in her pocket for a rainy day. God, I fucking love this girl.
“I really do wish we didn’t go so long without each other,” I say as soon as they leave the room. “I’ve always liked taking care of you. I always wanted to spoil you. I always saw who you really were, Mia, a woman who deserved the world on a silver platter. I would’ve given you everything.”
“I know, Serafin.” She sets her spoon down and leans over the table, studying my face. “And all I ever wanted was to be the kind of woman who didn’t need the world handed to her.”
“You never had a fighting chance. You never got to put yourself first. You can’t rightly tell me you thought you were going to make a life for yourself working for minimum wage at the bakery eighty hours a week. You can’t rightly tell me that made you happy.”
“It did. Those were the happiest days of my life, to be honest. The bakery didn’t pay well, but every night I knew I was going to be able to take home enough food that my brothers and sisters wouldn’t have to go hungry for another day. It was like hitting the jackpot. They got to stuff their faces with foods my parents could never afford to buy for them. I know it wasn’t healthy but at least they weren’t sickly and starving anymore.”
I gulp, feeling the heat rising to my face. “You’ve always had a heart of gold, Mia. That wasn’t your burden to bear, though. If your father was a real man, you’d never be in that position to begin with. If he wasn’t such a lazy piece of shit drunk…” I trail off as soon as she starts grimacing. “I should’ve taken care of him when I had the chance.”
“You were just a kid, too, Serafin. You shouldn’t have had to take care of anybody, but you took such good care of me. All the adventures you took me on, the movies we went and saw, the afternoons we spent in the parks and the museums and just running around like two careless kids, that’s what I lived for. I felt so light and free when I was with you. I didn’t want your money or your gifts, all I wanted was the way you made me feel like I wasn’t trapped in this existence my parents brought me into.”
Her face gets all pink and splotchy, and she takes her napkin from her lap and dabs at her eyes.
I feel like a huge piece of shit for making her cry, but I need to know the truth about what happened that night. If she really did love me as much as she said she did, why did she disappear without a trace?
As if she can read my mind, she puts her hands on the table and leans in. “I should’ve told you this a long time ago, but I was afraid,” she whispers. “I tried to go see you in the hospital. Your parents wouldn’t let me in the room.”
“They probably didn’t want you to see me like that, Mia. I was in really bad shape. I was mangled beyond recognition and they weren’t even sure I was going to survive. I wasn’t allowed any visitors for months. It was probably hospital protocol or something. It wasn’t anything against you.” It’s probably not the whole truth. My parents didn’t want Mia anywhere near me, even after I was well enough to have visitors. Every time I asked about her, they told me she was gone. Even Fabian and Rafal told me she disappeared without a trace, and I know they would’ve snuck her in if they had the opportunity.
“They showed up at my house the next day with a lawyer, Serafin,” she says. “I came home from work and your parents and my parents were signing all these documents. I tried to stop them but I was a minor still. I had no say.”
“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.