Except I don’t want to.
The longer I study him the more I notice the similarities beyond the familial platinum eyes and dark hair. They were hidden before, purposely altered beneath the carefully crafted face of Jonathon Archer. We bear the same sharp angular jawline and high cheekbones. His voice, when not altered, is deep and gravelly.
At one point I thought he was my brother, not my cousin. My first instinct when I saw the mark on his arm flash across the video feed from the Ward stables was accurate. The revelation that I spent my entire life hating someone who is absolutely nothing to me is startling. The rug is pulled out from under me. The wool falling from my eyes.
“You say Antony was your brother as well.” Suspicion laces my voice. Things just don’t seem to be adding up, but I don’t raise my gun again. I keep the peace that settles between us.
For now.
“Yes,” Ivan affirms. “He and I are born two years before you. When they first were married. Mom was eighteen and working at a diner in America when he met her. Seduced her. Married her. It was a whirlwind romance, he says.”
“I assume Malik didn’t take too kindly to that.”
Ivan snarls. “I do not believe our senile old grandfather had anything to do with it, at least not completely.”
Now I am puzzled. “Why else would Kirill take her?” None of what he is saying makes any sense, but at the same time, it does.
The pieces of the puzzle are blurry, but slowly, as I shift everything I think I know aside and focus on the facts he is giving me and the ones I have begun to dig up myself—everything is beginning to fit together.
“Her name was Amalia,” Ivan tells me, a wistfulness to his voice as he remembers her. “I was only two when she was stolen in the dead of night with you still in her belly. Antony and I put our ear to her stomach to listen. It put a smile on our face whenever we could feel you shift. She sang to us your favorite lullaby. Her voice soft and sweet.”
Tears swim in his eyes as he tells me the only things he remembers about her. The memories of a two-year-old are so fleeting. Finite.
“Bayu Bayushki,” I chuckle. “The lullaby about a wolf dragging a child from bed for sleeping on the edge. She sang that to me as well. I remember the first time I was able to properly understand the words—I was too scared to sleep for days.”
Ivan laughs. “Father tried to sing it to us, but his voice sounded too much like a dyingkoshka. Antony begged him to stop but he just hammered on anyway, louder, if that is possible.”
The two of us laugh, the jovial sound fading away as sorrow and regret cinch our hearts and soul. I grew up without the love of a father. My only glimpse of what one was truly supposed to be like came from the kindness and compassion Tomas had showed me many years later. Many years too late.
Ivan and Antony were forced to live without the tender care of a mother. Their memories just wistful dreams. Even in her worst times, when Kirill had her hopped up on drugs, she never stopped being the loving mother I knew when she was sober.
“Her favorite color was green,” I tell him, the lump in my throat growing as I dredge up memories I buried long ago. “And not like the forest or the grass. It was lime green. The kind you find on walls of homes built in the seventies.”
Ivan’s eyes light up as I tell him about our mother. Her favorite foods and how she liked to settle down and read to mein the evenings. She was fierce and protective. Loving and kind even in her darkest times.
Gradually, over time, the happiness of my tale melts into anger, then rage. Now that I have all the pieces, I can see the proper flow of time.
But there are a few questions that remain unanswered.
“If Malik wasn’t behind the plan to take our mother,” I question, thinking back to everything I know. “Who did? Kirill? There is no way he was smart enough to pull it off on his own.”
Ivan shakes his head softly.
“Have you heard of a man by the name of Pavel Kasyanov?”
I nod.
“He is the man I grow up believing to be my uncle,” I tell him. “Died a few years ago.”
Ivan smiles darkly. “Horrible accident with a knife in his gut.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “Drug deal gone wrong.” I chuckle.
“Couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it.”
“Kirill and Pavel grow up together,” Ivan continues. “Both bastard sons of high-ranking members. Pavel blames it all on Kirill before I killed him. Says the bastard wanted to bePakhan. Since he isn’t a legitimized heir, there is no way he can.”
“Unless he gets someone to legitimize him.”
“Pavel and Kirill made sure all the evidence pointed back to Malik,” Ivan keeps on, his breathing growing rapid as he recalls how the mother he barely got to know was taken. “Kirill and our father were friends, but according to Pavel, all Kirill wanted was Andrei’s seat of power. So, he starts a war. Offered his brother his support as a spy.”
