My last sentence leaves our conversation in limbo for several uncomfortable minutes. I can’t deny the hurt I felt when he left me, but I also can’t deny that it would hurt more to live without him.
As I stab at the eggs to ensure the runny yolk smothers the ghastly steamed spinach leaves, I try to shift my focus off my heartache and move it to something that matters. “Do you really have a sister?”
Mikhail meets my eyes and smirks before blasting my veins with envy. “Yeah.”
I have no right to be jealous. He’s speaking about his sister, for crying out loud. But I’d be a liar if I said jealousy wasn’t obliterating my understanding.
I get a moment of reprieve when he confesses, “She was whom I was speaking with yesterday.”
An ugly green head has me snapping out a reply before my brain can remind me that I’ve given my little sister many nicknames over the years, so how can I be so judgmental? “You call your sister sweetheart?”
Smirking, he shakes his head. “Not since she hooked up with Andrik.”
His smirk slips as his cheeks whiten. I understand why. How the hell are Andrik and his sister hooking up? I thought inbreeding ended with Tsar Nicholas II’s execution. Also, Andrik is in his late thirties and has not once shown an interest in pedophilia.
This storyline gets more intricate the more I consider it.
When Mikhail spots my bewilderment, his smirk shifts to a full-blown smile. “You look how I felt when I found out Zoya was my sister.”
“Zoya, as in Andrik’s wife?”
Damn, they really brought Tsar Nicholas II’s practices into the modern world, didn’t they?
My head won’t stop swirling with information, so Mikhail sets out everything in bullet-point format. He tells me how Zoya is the sister his mother was pregnant with when she went missing twenty-eight years ago, and that she and Andrik aren’t related because Andrik’s mother went outside of the marriage for fertility assistance, which resulted in her conceiving a child with her fertility doctor.
His brief rundown of events that only occurred months ago answers a lot of questions, but it also encourages more. “Your mother is alive?”
He looks torn about how to reply, equally gutted and relieved.
He briefly nods while saying, “Though she has a long way to go before she will ever feel that way.” My sympathetic look keeps communication lines open. “They shipped her from one side of the globe to the next for decades, and she has birthed many children.” His smile is back, though weak. “I have another full sibling I know of. The rest are half or no relation whatsoever.”
I peer at him as if to say,How can that be?
Mercifully, he is still as skilled at reading me as he was last night when he made my dream a reality.
“They used in vitro fertilization to impregnate her.” He scrubs at his jaw, the prickles filling my shocked silence with a rough, abrasive noise. “She was nothing but a fucking incubator for them.”
I don’t balk at his outburst. He’s expressed similar views previously. Although they were only rumors, for months, peoplecirculated the story that his mother’s disappearance was staged because she had conceived a daughter instead of the preferred male heir the Dokovics desire.
Year after year, Mikhail’s hope of finding her, though fervent, diminished as the likelihood of her being alive lessened.
Last I heard, he was preparing a plaque for the memorial wall of a local cemetery. It was a small token compared to how much love he displayed for his mother during his formative years, but it was better than the nothing she had.
Needing to be closer to him, even knowing it will inevitably hurt me, I scoot to his side of the booth. He watches me under heavy lids, but he doesn’t sound a protest, freeing me from the panic that I’m making a mistake.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” My offer would seem worthless to anyone else, but to Mikhail, who was raised in a very bigamist, male-driven world, it is the equivalent of a pot of gold under the rainbow.
I’m highly skeptical he knew women had rights before he met my opinionated and extremely vocal family. My mother, like her mother before her, raised me alone, and my aunts speak of matrimony with disgust.
Mikhail considers my offer for three heart-throbbing seconds before he shakes his head. I’m disappointed until he adds words to the mix. “Though I’m sure my mother would love to meet you. Her face lights up every time I talk about you.”
He talks about me?
Still.
Even after all these years.
The sob in the back of my throat chops up my words when I say, “I would love to meet her.”
