“Not all of us live in the city,” I said, accepting Mikhail’s assistance as he pulled out my chair for me and tucked me under the tablecloth. “Thank you. What a gentleman.”
“How was the drive?” he asked, retaking his seat.
“You mean the ride?” A server poured me a bit of wine, and I swirled it around in my glass and smelled it. “It was really nice. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to do that,” Mikhail said. I sampled the wine and nodded at the server, who filled my glass. “You deserve it.”
“And Misha can afford it,” Jonathan said, waving away the wine bottle and offering his whisky glass instead for a refill. “He was just telling me all about how his business is going.”
“Don’t be rude,” I hissed at my twin. Honestly. He was so negative all the time I couldn’t see how Mikhail could stand hanging out with him. “Misha, I’d love to hear about your business. What you’ve been up to.” And why you’re back.
“Before I get back to that, I have to know.” Mikhail’s blue eyes regarded the two of us coolly. “What happened between the two of you? I’ve seen you bicker before, but nothing like this.”
Jonathan uttered a short laugh as I tried to hide in my wine glass. “Surely you didn’t come all this way just to hear about a little sibling rivalry.”
“Is that what it is?” Mikhail asked. “I don’t think I have to tell you how important family should be. Family’s there for you throughout your whole life, even if friends come and go.”
“Do you always speak in quotes from Chicken Soup for the Soul?” Jonathan asked with a derisive noise that was either a hiccup or a sneer.
“Yeah —you should drop whatever you’re working on and start writing the insides of greeting cards,” I quickly added.
It wasn’t until after we’d fist-bumped that I realized my twin and I had played right into Mikhail’s hands. Even if he had had to make himself a juicy target, he’d known we’d combine forces to let him have it.
“It can be that easy,” he said. “Getting along again.”
“But this dinner isn’t about us,” Jonathan said. “It’s about you, bratan. You’re supposed to be regaling us with everything you’ve accomplished while you were away.”
Mikhail hesitated for the briefest of moments, but I recognized it. “A lot happened. A lot you don’t know about.”
“We don’t know anything about what you were doing while you were gone,” I said, careful to omit the dreaded “four years” that would rile him up.
“I was trying to figure out who killed my parents while attempting to keep their company from being stolen out from underneath me,” Mikhail said. “That’s about as briefly as I can put it.”
I darted a shocked glance at my twin before gaping at Mikhail.
“He already filled me in while we were waiting on you,” Jonathan said. “And I’ve already started working on a suspect list.” He wagged his phone at me, and all I could see was a complicated mathematical equation.
“Math is going to solve Misha’s parents’ murders?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Algorithms,” my brother corrected. “And a little more context would help. But first, I’m going to need a couple of more glasses of whisky so I can help process.”
Mikhail’s story came in fits and spurts throughout the evening, interrupted by servers coming and going with plates and glasses and bowls and refills.
“Somebody sabotaged my parents’ car,” he said after he’d ordered for all of us, speaking in French to the server probably just because he could. “They found evidence of it in the event data recorder. One of their former security guards — Sergei — was my only ally. We hired investigators. Combed through records ourselves, trying to figure out who it could’ve been.”
“What did you find?” I asked, aghast.
“That my parents had too many potential enemies to count,” Mikhail said glumly. “On the business side, anyway. We didn’t even get to the personal ones.”
“Surely you talked to some of them,” Jonathan reasoned, tapping away at his phone between long sips of his whisky. “Narrowed it down.”
“No,” Mikhail answered. “We didn’t. Because around that time, shareholders in my parents’ company started getting greedy. I had to immediately focus on all of the various holdings.” He looked at me, his blue eyes almost black in the dim lighting. “At least I got to travel all around the world.”
I was going to have to go back to the abandoned house as soon as possible and find his lost cellphone to see if he was telling the truth.
“You just need a little direction — a little assistance from a professional,” Jonathan said, cracking his knuckles before swilling even more of the whisky. “It would be easy enough to compile a database of all of the potential suspects and run an algorithm to at least give you a top ten list. Which I’ve already done just here on my phone.”
“Is that possible?” Mikhail wondered.