Page 57 of Silenced

I tap on Peshnya’s real name—Mikhail. “The man himself. I just never put the pieces together before now. You must be related.”

“Peshnya’s family?” he half-croaks, gaping at Cassiopeia’s birth certificate like it holds all the answers.

Unfortunately, neither it nor I have them.

“Wouldn’t your father have claimed a familial tie with Peshnya if he could’ve?”

Dmitri purses his lips. “Unless Peshnya threatened him to keep quiet…”

I hum. “Interesting.”

“Confusing, more like,” he rumbles before he turns still.

At his hesitation, I ask, “What is it?”

“Peshnya was loyal to the KGB, theKremlin. Not the Bratva.”

“Maybe that’s why you don’t know his name. Your great-grandfather exiled him?”

He frowns. “Maybe.”

“I never heard any rumors of him defecting,” I sign, amazed to find that Mikhail Turgenev was in the US at all. Never mind long enough to marry and spawn a daughter.

“That alone might explain why he’d have been burned off the family tree. Defection—he’s lucky he made it out of Russia alive.” He whistles. “I can’t believePeshnyais a Turgenev. How didn’t I know that?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I muse.

“You think this is one?”

“Perhaps.”

“Peshnya retired, didn’t he?”

“They say he got caught up in that explosion in St. Petersburg—the church blast? Lost his hearing.”

That would explain why her ASL had strange inflections that I couldn’t interpret. Didn’t explain why her spoken Russian was dire, though, when her father was a born and bred native.

“He’s dead now, isn’t he?” Dmitri asks.

“Have to think he is or Rundel would be insane to piss off Peshnya.” My lips curve. “Almost wish he were alive just so I could see him carve his name into Rundel’s brains with an ice pick.”

Dmitri chuckles. “That would be a sight to behold for sure.”

“Confirm if he’s dead or not.”

Nodding, Dmitri gets to work then shows me a death certificate. “Accidental death.”

Nonplussed, I sign, “I have to think that’s an understatement.”

“For a man with a reputation like Peshnya, I can’t disagree,” Dmitri retorts with a chuckle. “Think he had enemies?”

“No. He didn’t change his identity.”

“Arrogance?”

My lips flatline. “Maybe. But it’s one thing to put yourself in danger, another to fail to protect your family.”

“True.”

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