I recognized them on sight, and fuck, how I hated that they looked at me with fear on their faces.
My boys.
Konstantin and Dmitriy weren’t identical twins.
Konstantin was the older by five minutes, though he was nowhere near as big as his younger brother, even when they had been babies.
With a mop of dark blond hair the same shade as his mom, he was more introspective—or at least, he had been. A shy little three-year-old. He had been my shadow since I brought him home from the hospital.
Dmitriy had been more independent.
He was my spitting image, with long, shaggy brown hair that fell over his green eyes and dark tan skin.
Dmitriy had been so full of life. He was always getting into everything.
More hyper than his brother.
More like me.
The boy with his arms wrapped tightly around his brother, as if trying to protect him from me, was nothing like the toddler I remembered.
I blinked and crouched down so we were at eye level.
“Hi, boys,” I said gruffly. “Do you know who I am?”
Dmitry was the braver of the two. He shook his head as Konstantin buried his face in his brother’s neck, peeking out one green eye at me.
They both had my eyes.
I pulled out my phone, hating that they flinched when I moved as if that was their first response.
I hated to think about the reasoning behind that.
I let out a small, quiet sigh. I didn’t want them to think I was angry with them.
“I’m your dad,” I said.
Konstantin frowned, but it was Dmitriy who answered me. “You can’t be our dad.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because Mom said Dad’s dead.”
I gritted my teeth. Of course, the bitch would kill me off to my boys.
I unlocked my phone, and they watched me with rapt attention. I pulled up a picture I had taken with them on their third birthday. In it, we were all smiling and happy. I couldn’t even remember the last time I smiled like that. I didn’t know the peace and happiness I found with my boys in my arms would have been taken away from me in just a few short months after this picture was taken.
Didn’t know that my world would be inducted into bloodshed and violence, and there would be fuck all I could do about it.
But I wasn’t that helpless man I had been.
I was the fucking enforcer to one of the most feared organizations in the world.
I would kill to protect them.
I showed them the phone, pointing to the younger version of myself in the picture. “This is me, six years ago. And these boys in here are both of you.”
Dmitriy bit his bottom lip, obviously not knowing what to say. Konstantin surprised me when he spoke for the first time.