Page 62 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

“You think I don’t know my own father?” I growled. My hand tightened on the glass I was holding. “The pig of a man who got my mother addicted to drugs. The scum of the earth who kicked me out on my ass when I was eleven. The scourge of my life who sent one assassin after another for years until they were too afraid to come after me. That man? I know that man.”

There was sadness and regret in Ivan’s eyes. His gaze was fixed on me. The tension in his shoulders had released, and he seemed at ease. Off guard. I could have killed him then, for everything he had done, and he would have been unprepared.

Except I didn’t want to.

The longer I studied him, the more I noticed the similarities beyond the familial platinum eyes and dark hair. They had been hidden before, purposely altered beneath the carefully crafted face of Jonathan Archer. We bore the same sharp angular jawline and high cheekbones. His voice, when not altered, was deep and gravelly.

At one point, I thought he had been my brother, not my cousin. My first instinct when I saw the mark on his arm flash across the video feed from the Wardstableshad been accurate. The revelation that I spent my entire life hating someone who was absolutely nothing to me was startling. The rug had been pulled out from under me. The wool falling from my eyes.

“You said Antony was your brother as well.” Suspicion laced my voice. Things weren’t adding up, but I didn’t raise my gun again. I would keep the peace that had settled between us.

For now.

“Yes,” Ivan affirmed. “He and I were 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 said.

“I assume Malik didn’t take too kindly to that.”

Ivan snarled. “I do not believe our senile old grandfather had anything to do with it, at least not completely.”

Now I was puzzled. “Why else would Kirill take her?” None of what he was saying made any sense, but at the same time, it did. The pieces of the puzzle were blurry, but slowly, as I shifted everything I thought I knew aside and focused on the facts he was giving me and the ones I had begun to dig up myself, everything was beginning to fit together.

“Her name was Amalia,” Ivan told me, a wistfulness to his voice as he remembered her. “I was only two when she was stolen in the dead of night with you still in her belly. Antony and I would put our ears to her stomach to listen. It would put a smile on our faces whenever we could feel you shift. She would sing to us our favorite lullaby. Her voice soft and sweet.”

Tears swam in his eyes as he told me the only things he remembered about her. The memories of a two-year-old were so fleeting. Finite.

“Bayu Bayushki,” I chuckled. “The lullaby about a wolf dragging a child from bed for sleeping on the edge. She used to sing 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 laughed. “Father used to try and sing it to us, but his voice sounded too much like a dyingkoshka. Antony would beg him to stop, but he would just hammer on, anyway. Louder, if that was possible.”

The two of us laughed, the jovial sound fading away as sorrow and regret cinched our hearts and souls. I had grown up without the love of a father. My only glimpse of what one was truly supposed to be like coming from the kindness and compassion Tomas 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 told him, the lump in my throat growing as I dredged up memories I buried long ago. “And not like the forest or the grass. It was lime green. The kind you found on walls of homes built in the seventies.”

Ivan’s eyes lit up as I told him about our mother. Her favorite foods and how she liked to settle down and read to me in the evenings. She was fierce and protective. Loving and kind even in her darkest times.

Gradually, over time, the happiness of my tale melted into anger, then rage. Now that I had all the pieces, I could see the proper flow of time.

But there were a few questions that remained unanswered.

“If Malik wasn’t behind the plan to take our mother?” I questioned, thinking back to everything I knew. “Who did? Kirill? There is no way he was smart enough to pull it off on his own.”

Ivan shook his head softly.

“Have you heard of a man by the name of Pavel Kasyanov?”

I nodded.

“He was the man I grew up believing to be my uncle,” I told him. “Died a few years ago.”

Ivan smiled darkly. “Horrible accident with a knife in his gut.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Drug deal gone wrong.”

I chuckled. “Couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it.”

“Kirill and Pavel grew up together,” Ivan continued. “Both bastard sons of high-ranking members. Pavel blamed it all on Kirill before I killed him. Said the bastard wanted to bePakhan. Since he wasn’t a legitimized heir, there was no way he could.”

“Unless he got someone to legitimize him.”

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