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Leave it to Sergei to get the Googling out of the way before he called me, needing to verify everything before he broke the news. “What do we do?” I asked, already itching to get on our plane and head to Russia.
“We leave the motherfucker alone,” he said, laughing ruefully at his inadvertently literal insult. “He’s not just a successful businessman over there, Roman. He’s mafia. Big time.”
“You can’t know that from five minutes of internet searching,” I said. “Not if he’s in Moscow.”
“He had a brother, who had sons. They’re all in the US. Miami. And they’re big-time mafia, too. Enough so that their shit has made the news. Enough that the reporters who wrote about them haven’t written anything since.”
“We’ve got cousins?” was all I could say to that.
He swallowed hard, putting his head in his hands and ruffling up his already messy hair. Thinking back to those revelations made me smooth my hand over the razor precision of my own short hair. I liked to be in control of everything, down to the unruly strands on my head. At the time, it had bizarrely pissed me off to see where we’d gotten our curls, since our mother’s dark hair was pin-straight.
“It looks like we might have siblings, too,” he said.
Learning that had cracked something inside me, even more as we continued to dig and found out he’d raised that other set of twins, married their mother, and seemed to dote on them to this very day, even though both of them had recently moved over here to America.
Sergei noped out when I announced I was going over to meet them. He knew me all too well, and it was true I didn’t have the best intentions when I set off on that initial flight. I wanted to destroy our father, take down everything he had that he’d never shared with us. Knowing that he’d been rich and powerful when our mother was struggling to keep us fed, had gone without so we could get our educations, lit a fire of rage in me that I didn’t think could be doused.
Until I showed up at Oleg Morozov’s doorstep with the proof of who I was, thrusting the photograph of him and our mother into his hands. He no longer had a full head of curly hair, and while he was still tall and proud, he seemed to wilt at the sight of it. I blurted out who I was, and told him about Sergei as well.
The old man promptly clutched his chest and fell to the floor of his ritzy Moscow home. The shock in his eyes was unmistakable. He hadn’t known we existed. It didn’t take me half a second to decide I couldn’t let him die, not without getting all the answers I wanted. I called for help, riding along with him to the hospital. When he was stable enough to talk to me, he wanted to know everything, getting so worked up with emotion that the nurses warned him I’d have to leave if he didn’t stay calm.
“Ah, poor Lidiya,” he said, reaching once again for the photo of them together. “She must have been so scared.” He looked at me with a pained expression that I could tell had nothing to do with his heart attack. “We were so young, barely twenty. I’m sorry to have to say that even though we were wild about each other, it wasn’t true love. She must have known I’d marry her despite that.”
“You would have?” I asked, more of the ice around my heart melting.
“Of course. Nothing is more important than family.” His face drooped. “She would have been miserable. She hated the life and wanted no part of it.”
“The life?” I prodded, wanting him to confess what he really was.
“Oh, my boy, there’s so much I have to tell you. But first, I want to know everything about you and your brother. Twins! I can’t believe it, but my own son—your brother—just had a set of his own. The Morozov genes must be just that strong.”
“Half brother,” I reminded him. “And my last name is Anishin.”
He blinked and shrugged it off, reaching for my arm to squeeze in his grip, still strong even after suffering a major cardiac arrest. “I won’t hear about half this or that. You’re my son, so you’re Leo’s brother. And, of course, your last name is Anishin. Of course.”
I was glad he didn’t push it, and proudly told him all about Sergei’s and my finance company. We started it online in college, each of us working two jobs to supplement the money our mother had scrimped and saved to help us be able to go. His beaming smile when I told him it was now one of the top investment firms in the US was more poignant than I expected. I’d tried to pretend my mother’s love, pride, and acceptance were enough, but deep down, I wished I’d also had a father. And now it seemed like I did.
It took a week for him to be released from the hospital, and I watched him have many conversations with my new half-siblings while he recuperated. They were as shocked as Sergei and I had been. Both of them were having trouble coming to terms with it, especially our new sister, Evelina, who I overheard her refer to us as ‘those guys’ more than once. Ten years younger than us and with their lives just as upended, I cut her a little bit of slack. The fact that they’d not only grown up in ‘the life’ as Oleg referred to being part of the Bratva, but were quite powerful in their own rites was fascinating to me.
Evelina and her twin, Leo, landed in Moscow as Oleg was released from the hospital. He chattered excitedly as his driver took us both back to his house, while I sat in silence, not sure what to expect. Oleg had been surprisingly forthcoming about his business ventures as he shared his past and present with me during the hours I’d sat at his bedside trying to get to know him. My father. It was bizarre, to say the least, but I was oddly happy. Almost content. I wanted to really be a part of it all, no matter what it was.
My new sister was a petite ball of energy, fluttering around Oleg and sniping at him for refusing to sit in a wheelchair. She pushed her shoulder-length dark hair into a messy ponytail and gave me an eye roll before thrusting out her hand to me.
“I guess I’m your sister,” she said, pulling Leo forward from the shadows of the hallway. He towered over Evelina, but we were just about eye to eye, and it was like looking in a slightly distorted mirror with the coloring just a little bit off. “And this is Leo.”
“We’re not going to be awkward,” Oleg commanded, pulling us all together into a hug. “This is a miracle.”
“A miracle that put you in the hospital,” Evelina grumbled. “Go sit down. I’ll help Irina bring lunch in.”
“It better not be that low cholesterol slop they’ve been forcing down me in the hospital,” Oleg grumbled right back, but let Leo lead him into a sitting room that was richly furnished in old-fashioned, traditional style, as if it hadn’t been changed since the house was built, probably a hundred years ago.
I followed, letting everything wash over me, stunned when Oleg announced I’d be staying there instead of the hotel I was in. “It’ll be like old times,” he said. “Like it should have been,” he corrected. “But when will Sergei arrive?”
I’d been working on my twin to get him to ease up on his stubbornness, but he refused to visit. He didn’t want any part of our new family, or what they represented. I’d told him countless times that he could get to know Oleg without getting involved in the Bratva, but he’d hung up enough times on me that I quit asking. I told Oleg that things were haywire at our company, but not to worry. I meant to wear Sergei down so we could be part of the tight-knit family they clearly already were.
Evelina returned, laden down with a big tray, along with another young woman who teetered under her load of dishes. They chattered away together as if they hadn’t seen each other in a long time, barely noticing when I jumped up to take a teapot from the stranger before it toppled to the floor.
“Is this another sister?” I asked, only half joking when Leo helped her put the tray on the large, round coffee table and then hugged her.
