Older than the city outside.
Older than him.
Older than whatever is coiled up inside this family and poisoning all of them from the inside out.
He stops in front of a double headstone.
Not flashy. That surprises me.
Dark stone. Clean lines. Two names carved side by side in Russian. Fresh flowers sit at the base, carefully arranged. Someone comes here often.
Maksim stares at the graves for a long second before he speaks.
“My grandmother,” he says, nodding once toward the left. Then the right. “My grandfather.”
His voice is flat, but not careless. There’s a difference. I step up beside him and look down at the names.
“Your mom’s parents or your dad’s?”
“Both.”
I glance at him.
He’s still looking straight ahead.
“What?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. The corner of his mouth moves like he almost regrets bringing me here at all. Then he shifts his weight and finally looks down at the stone.
“My mother and aunt Vera were adopted by my grandmother.”
I blink.
“The woman from the house?”
He nods once.
“They were adopted separately,” he says. “They aren’t blood. Not really sisters. Just raised as them.”
That tracks, I guess. Kind of. The resemblance between the women was there in coloring more than face. Same gold hair, similar blue eyes, but not much else. Vera had a brushed softness in her. His mother didn’t. His mother looked like she’d been carved out of expensive ice.
I glance back at the graves. “Okay…”
“My grandfather already had Nikolai when he married her.”
The words settle between us.
My eyes flick to him, then back to the stone, then back to him again as the shape of it starts forming too slowly in my head.
Wait.
I frown. “So your parents—”
He looks at me then.
No expression. No softness. Just that cold, steady gaze of his taking in the exact second it clicks.
“Are step-siblings,” he says. “Yes.”
