“You know who they are?” he asks.
I keep my eyes on Katerina.
On the boy beside her.
On the little girl half-hidden by her skirt.
I say nothing.
Mikhail follows my silence instead of pushing against it. “There’s a rumor.”
Now I turn.
His face is careful, which means he already understands this matters more than whatever he planned to say tonight.
“What rumor?”
He glances toward the Markovs, then back to me. “That those are your half-brother’s children.”
For a second, the words do not make sense.
I look back at the children. The boy’s eyes. The shape of his stillness. The girl’s mouth, too soft to be mistaken for Lev’s blood, too alive for any dead man’s claim.
Then I turn to Mikhail again.
“Why,” I ask very quietly, “am I only hearing this now?”
Mikhail does not look away. “Because it’s a scandal. Sergei Markov has been keeping a lid on it from the start. No one in that circle talks openly unless they want to disappear from the guest list. And she denies it too.”
Sergei Markov.
“Who is she?” I ask, though I already know.
Mikhail’s mouth tightens. “Katerina Markov. She’s the girl Lev was supposed to marry.”
I stare at him. “No,” I say.
He waits.
I hear myself continue before I decide to. “I thought it was the girl in Moscow. The Markov girl. I saw them at the airport together.”
Mikhail shakes his head once.
“No. That was the stepdaughter. Vika—Victoria Markov.”
The room tilts in a small, dangerous way.
“Vika?” I say, more to myself than to him.
“Yes,” Mikhail says. “The one with Irina. Not Sergei’s blood. The woman over there, with the children, she’s his actual daughter.”
My gaze cuts back to Katerina.
She has not moved.
From across the room, she looks composed enough to pass for calm. Only someone watching closely would notice the tension in her shoulders, the way her hand rests too firmly on the boy’s back, the fact that she has not looked away from me once since our eyes met.
Sergei’s daughter.
