❝'Cause if one day you wake up and find that you're missing me
And your heart starts to wonder where on this earth I could be
Thinking maybe you'll come back here to the place that we'd meet
And you'll see me waiting for you on the corner of the street

So I'm not moving.
I'm not moving.❞

Chapter Seven:
In The Strictest Confidence
(cont'd)

Hans blinked. Once. Twice. A couple more times before opening his mouth and closing it, again and again like a fish. Clearly, this wasn't the kind of reaction he'd grown up receiving but I was glad to be the one giving it to him. I cleared my head and waited for him to start, hoping that he would because I really did want to know the truth. The truth behind his carefully placed mask.

Hans turned on his back again, assuming his previous position as he closed his eyes. This time, it wasn't a way to block me out. I knew, because the very next second, he started to speak.

"My mother's name was Anya." He stopped and for a second, I worried that he'd thought better than to tell me. But it was to smile at the memory of his mother. A smile I was close enough to see was both beautiful, and broken. "She was a dream. Beautiful, honest, optimistic. She believed in life, you know? With this boundless energy that not just anyone has. She'd grown up all her life in this small village in the Netherlands but she dreamed of the world. Of more than what was given to her. That's when she moved to the city. Her family didn't approve but she did it anyway, chasing after adventure... "

I sat back, my back meeting the headboard and listened with undying attention as Hans continued. It almost seemed too good to be true, how easily he'd accepted to sharing but I wasn't planning on stopping him.

"Mom worked a lot of jobs. She wanted to explore her options, and try everything. One of her jobs was as a singer at this popular cabaret in town. It was her favorite, brought her a lot of attention." Hans paused and opened his eyes which were a haze, clouded in the dreams of the past. "That's when dad met her."

I nodded along to let him know I was listening. The movement registered at the corner of his eyes, causing him to look away from anywhere near me again.

"Dad was never a romantic. He was there on business, and when he first saw her performing, he was captivated, just as everyone else was by her magic. I don't think he'd ever intended for her to be more than a night's worth of pleasure but..." Hans shrugged ever so slightly. "I guess mom became his exception."

It sounded like every girl's perfect fantasy. Fall in love with a stranger from another land, have the love affair of your life and marry the man you're destined to be with. Although I had chosen to forget this story, to one day hear it from Hans himself as I was now, I knew this wasn't going to end with Anya's happily ever after. That knowledge is what made it all the more harder to hear.

"Dad would fly in frequently to see her under the guise of it being 'for business'. They started something special. At least, that's what she told me. That dad was one of a kind and that he loved her more than anyone else ever had." Hans gulped and brought one arm to rest atop his forehead, covering his eyes. "But he stopped visiting all of a sudden. Stopped sending letters or calling. He cut her out of his life and she never found out why."

My hands tightened in their grasp on my lap, knowing what was coming.

"I grew up for the first seven years of my life without a father. I had a lot of questions. Why did she work all the time and have no one to take care of her? Where was my dad? How come he never came to see me? Why did we live in a small, dilapidated apartment when she kept saying I was meant for so much more? Every night when she tucked me into the small bed in our room before sleeping on the floor below me, she would promise me the world and every happiness in it. She would tell me I was the most loved. And I believed her. So I never asked."

The rise and fall of Hans' chest was steady but the breath, catching in the way of his words told me he was not okay. I wanted to crawl over and pull him into a hug. I wanted to kiss away the bad memories and promise him, just as Anya had, the whole universe if I could. But we weren't kids anymore. If there's anything I'd learned in my twenty-six years of life, it was that the world was cruel and unrelenting. Fairy tales were never meant to come true in such a place.

So I sat still. I sat still and listened with a heart swelling in pain as Hans poured his past out to me, because that's all that I could do.

"One day, when I woke up, I noticed her still fast asleep on the ground. And when I tried to wake her, she didn't get up. I tried, and tried but she wouldn't move. I called our neighbor, a friend of my mom's, who rushed in and started crying. I didn't get why she pulled me into a hug and held me close because mom was smiling in her sleep and I told her it was fine. That mom was having a good dream and she was happy." Hans' laugh was broken and I flinched back at the sound of it. "I was such a stupid kid. She'd died of exhaustion, of being so fucking powerless in the world she loved so much. But I didn't see that. I kept holding on to her last words, her nightly mantra she'd sing into my ears. That the world loved me, and one day, I'd have all of it."

The bed springs screeched as Hans sat up abruptly. I jumped, slightly startled by the motion as he turned around, tucking one foot below him as he faced me on the bed with an unsettling ghost of a smile on his lips. He ran a hand through his midnight black hair. His forehead gleamed with sweat and the look in his eyes told me why. He'd told me too much. Was he regretting it?

"I guess you know the rest of the story, don't you? My poor, clueless, billionaire of a father learns of my existence and comes rushing to save me. And by rushing, I mean a month after mom had passed. She didn't even get a decent burial because we couldn't afford it," Hans growled in disgust. "I hated him from the moment I saw him but I couldn't stop him from whisking me away from that dingy apartment and to his life of riches and gold."

Hans was coming apart at the seams. I wanted to stop him, I really did. But he needed this. He needed to let out everything that had been eating him up inside for years.

"I couldn't figure if this was what mom had meant when she said I could have the world - money, fame, a big fancy house with a father that had literally everything at his feet. I grew up questioning everything she had taught me and everything I was given the moment she'd died. I wanted to know why dad had never come back for us and I found out, alright. Not through him but through the headlines, the articles, the controversies that my return sparked on his professional career."

Hans glanced out the window, his eyes fixing in a cold, unmoving stare on the night sky outside.

"When he finally told me himself, I was eighteen and about to go off to college. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, to become a business tycoon. I demanded why I should aspire to become like him, someone who had forsaken the woman he had loved for money. That's when he told me everything.

"That after the last time he'd seen mom, he had come back home to an enraged family and a waiting fiancee. His parents prohibited him from going back and seeing my mother and tried to force him into marriage. It took him years to battle through all this and when he finally stepped up, he cut off his ties with the Blythes' and started Innovus himself. He left to see my mom immediately after that. And that's when I met him." Hans smiled sadly. His head turned and he looked at me. "When I refused to believe him, he showed me the years worth of letters that he had sent her. That his parents had made sure she never received. I read each and every single one of them."

With a sigh, Hans slouched forward, dropping his face in his hands. "I had never thought to consider that amidst the whole mess of my life, my mom had actually been right about him. That he had actually truly loved her. The letters were proof of that but...I could never bring myself to forgive him. I still haven't."

Silence hung between us. I stared at Hans' body, the curve of his back as he hunched and hid his face away from me, from the world his mom had promised him. All the articles I'd read had cast him off as an 'illegitimate child' borne out of a torrid love affair. His very existence is the reason why Jonathon Blythe chose to never officially wed and breed a 'worthy heir'. The publicity was short-lived before Hans went off the radar. Helena hinted that Mr. Blythe must have paid his way out of the controversy. That didn't lessen the horrors of any of it, of growing up in a society that deemed your existence worthless.

"So, there you go, Henderson." Hans stood up, a wonky smile on his lips. "I just bared my soul to you."

"And I thank you for it," I replied, softly. I paused and brought my knees closer to my chest, hugging them in with my arms. "I need to apologize...for the night we first met." I bit down on my lip and glanced upward at Hans who was watching me patiently. "I said things that I now regret."

"Ah. That's right. I remember now." He chuckled to himself. "I recall you branding me a worthless, invisible heir."

The way I cringed back made Hans laugh. He reassured me gently, "It's fine. I didn't take that to heart."

"Well, for what it's worth, I am sorry." I tucked my chin in my arms, deep enough for him to not see the blush on my cheeks. "I knew you weren't the man they painted you out to be."

"Your faith in me is utterly flattering but," Hans mused, and strolled over. He sat down next to me, and captured a stray strand of my black hair around his finger, wrapping it around. "Let's make this an even trade."

The corners of my mouth lifted up. I shifted closer to him, leaning forward, and in the process, shocked him with my easy acceptance.

"What do you want to know?" 

_____

Song: The Man Who Can't Be Moved by The Script 

Vote goal: 30

The song is in dedication to Anya and Jonathon, Hans' parents. <3 If I get the time, I might do a spin-off on their story. Would you guys like to see that?

Vote, comment and share. <3 and any suggestions for new songs to add to the soundtrack would be much appreciated. ;)