Thank god his parents aren’t coming.
"No Rodion?" I ask. I was kind of looking forward to watching Matvei with his best friend.
He shakes his head. "Not today."
The door is opened before we reach it, a uniformed attendant nodding and smiling graciously before she looks at me. "Welcome."
Her smile falters, her eyes widening.
"My god," she whispers. "The resemblance is uncanny."
"I know," Matvei says quietly. Me. They’re talking about me. I swallow hard.
With a sharp tilt of his chin, he dismisses her.
"Why are they staring?" I whisper, uncomfortably aware of everyone’s eyes on me.
"You’ll understand in a minute," he murmurs back.
His hand finds the small of my back again. This time, I don’t mind.
I’m breathing rapidly, my pulse fluttering. He turns and looks at me, almost curious.
"You ran—repeatedly—from one of the Kopolov family’s most dangerous men," he muses. "And you expect me to believe you’re afraid of a little dinner?"
We both know it’s more than that. I’m about to face the man that has every right, in the eyes of the Bratva, to slit my throat and bury my body. I’m about to face the sister I never knew I had, the one who ended up married to the man I ran from.
I’ve never wanted to run so badly in my life.
But I smile at him anyway.
"I’m not afraid," I lie.
Chapter Seventeen
Anissa
“Hmm.”
Inside, the large formal dining room hums with quiet conversation. Crystal glasses catch the chandelier’s light, throwing sharp reflections against the walls. I know who everyone in this room is.
Everyone except the woman who looks like mymirror image.
I barely register Semyon, his sisters Yana and Zoya, or even the man who was supposed to be my husband.
My gaze locks on the blonde. A hush falls over the room. Someone drops a glass. It shatters, sharp and brittle in the quiet. No one moves.
"Son of a bitch," Vadka mutters into his drink. "Who knew?"
Matvei exhales a sharp, amused breath. "Gleb, that’s who.”
I stare, unblinking, at the beautiful woman standing before me now. Willowy where I’m curvy, but the same white-blonde hair, the same blue eyes, the same upturned nose.
I’m dressed in dark-colored jeans and a black top with shiny, high-heeled boots, and she wears a simple pale-pink peasant dress tied at the waist paired with ivory flats.
“It’s good to finally meet you,” she says. It’s so bizarre hearing a voice so much like my own.
Polina.
