19
I slept two hours, if you can call shivering, crying in bursts, whisper-cursing Nat, and hopping from Wikipedia to Russian forums “sleep. I’m searching for Irina Popova everywhere: old news, Telegram, shady accounts, and a conspiracy blog.
Vega hasn’t slept either. But she’s much more put together.
Inside, she’s freaking out, I know it. Even if she pretends she’s not, even if she gets all serious and says we need to think things through, I know her—and I can already see her opening Canva to design T-shirts that say “MAFIA YES, POVERTY NO.” If I take Nat out of the picture—the recent mind-blowing sex and that literal slam-the-door-in-my-face, queen of in-person ghosting—I’d be exactly like her, making rich-girl expense lists and practicing my private-jet-heiress screams.
"We look a lot alike," she blurts for the umpteenth time, handing me a photo of Irina in her twenties. I’m jealous of myself, go figure.
And yeah. Fucking yes. We really do look alike.
"See it, Madame Freud? That hair!" I point at the screen. "We have the exact same fucking haircut. Is this in our DNA? At this rate, the next thing is we both discover a machine-gun tattoo on our lower back. Or worse, one of those ’90s butterflies."
"Take it down a notch," she says, eyes still glued to the screen. "I don’t know. Maybe it’s a coincidence… or genetic conspiracy. But look at her, really look: she’s got the face of a classy villain, the kind that if she ever kidnaps you, you end up asking for her secret pound cake recipe and if she takes Venmo for the ransom. What a queen."
"A mob queen, with a supermodel wife, a daughter, and a blacklist we’re both going to land on the second she hears one of her little sisters has been… going down on the bodyguard."
Vega tries not to laugh. She fails.
"Girl, you’re first on that list, sweetheart." She bursts out laughing. "I know I shouldn’t laugh, okay? This is terrible, right? I shouldn’t be cracking up, right?"
"Not just terrible—the next level. A disaster. But hey, thanks for livening up the family funeral," I say with red eyes and snot, not sure if I’m crying from grief or laughing.
I’ve cried for hours. The pillow’s wet, my face stings, my eyes burn. Part of the drama is suddenly having a millionaire sister drop out of nowhere; the rest is Nat’s signature. That witch, that divine bitch, that lethal blonde.
I close my eyes and all I see is her back walking away, her “I can’t,” her face, and everything starts shaking again.
"What if I don’t give up?" slips out of me from nowhere, more to stage the movie than out of any real hope. "What if I show up at her place with a swollen face, sobbing my lungs out, and tell her I’m not going to disintegrate just because she feels like playing tragic Russian?"
"Do you hear yourself?" Vega says, gesturing for me to shut it.
"I don’t hear myself. My head is noise, I loop sentences, an internal radio that only broadcasts echo and crap."
Vega lets out a huge sigh, the kind a mom of three teenage Rauw Alejandro stans would heave.
"Jesus, Alaska… The Nat thing, okay, it’s intense, but babe, have you clocked that a sister just dropped out of the sky?
And she is not the lady from the supermarket.
She comes with a helicopter, a personal security detail, an estate, and goons.
Power, girl, power. This is very real. And you…
crying over the cooch that’s caused you the most trouble. "
"Yeah, but it’s all coming at once."
She goes quiet, hands me a tissue with authority, and makes me feel worse and better at the same time.
"You can’t stay here suffering over a woman who stamped your passport. She told you goodbye, Alaska—she left you."
"She didn’t leave me because she doesn’t love me."
"Or maybe she did and that’s the excuse. Focus. Process, think, and don’t sink like this, for fuck’s sake—this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to us."
"What if I text her?" I whisper.
"No, Lasky, for fuck’s sake." She jabs a finger into my stomach hard enough to almost puncture my appendix.
"What if I catfish her and ask her out?" I stretch the drama, just to be a pain.
"I’ll lock you in the bathroom, I swear."
I open Irina’s photos one more time. Russian mafia capo, bulletproof life, blindingly white smile, and a gaze that takes your measurements. I open new tabs: partners, businesses, permits, who signs the contracts, who cuts her hair.
Irina could be family or an enemy. Nat could be love or a wound. I could be peace or a wildfire. And for now, I’m the one who investigates, who watches, who doesn’t text the blonde, who doesn’t run to the capo’s open arms. Today: just coffee, Google, and patience.
"I love you, you’re everything to me," I murmur.
"You saying that to me or Nat’s ghost?"
"You, you pain in the ass."
"Girl, that’s the kind of art you read on a bathroom stall, right next to ‘I love you, Leti. Call me.’"
"Thanks. I’m practicing for when Irina shows up and we have to drop speeches at embassy dinners or in court."
We laugh, howl, and cling to each other, small and shaking with nerves. We cry big fat tears—a whole festival. Vega squeezes me so hard she almost knocks the air out of me, or the gas; with stress, you never know.
The days crawl by. We haven’t heard anything else from Nat or Irina.
Right now we’re sprawled on the couch looking worse than inmates on day one in prison.
And man, it’s been a rough week, huh? I keep thinking about Tuesday—me in my underwear, glued to a throw pillow, ugly-crying while scarfing down expired donuts.
Now we’ve gone downhill. Open beers, a bag of chips in full graveyard mode (rest in peace, chips), and a sketchy hummus I dunked a Nilla wafer into.
Vega’s wearing her favorite T-shirt, the one that says "Give Me Drama or Give Me." I’m rocking the worst ponytail in history, bobby pins stabbing my brain and flyaways doing their own thing. I don’t even have the face required to exist in society. I’m not looking in the mirror. There are limits.
And then—boom—a knock at the door. Our door, not the buzzer downstairs for the riffraff. We look at each other and my mouth goes dry.
"Did you order something?"
"That’s not DoorDash," Vega says, in that serious voice she only uses when life is in danger or she’s out of toilet paper.
We get up at the same time, synchronized like two lionesses drinking warm beer. No talking, telepathic-twin mode on an anxious high. Our mouths go dry and our hearts climb into our throats. Vega grabs the knob; I’m pressed in behind her. We open up.
It’s her. Our new sister. Supreme queen of the don’t-fuck-with-me aura, ready to cough in life’s face if she feels like it. Brunette, classy. Long black coat and boots that would punt you straight to the ER. I freeze at her face—the identical nose, only bigger, the eyes as green as ours…
In the background: Nat, frozen, plastered to the landing wall, arms crossed—full Siberian frost mode. And to the right: the other one, Rashel, who looks like she’s packing a samurai sword under her trench coat—total techno geisha.
"Hi, girls," Irina says. Her voice is low. Serious. And so steady it makes me want to apologize in three languages just in case.
I lock up in the doorway, convinced if I blink an eyeball might fall out from the shock. Do I answer? Play dead? I play dead, but with my eyes open. Rigid, stiff, transparent, in case anyone mistakes this for composure. Not a chance. I’m one micro-faint away from rolling down the hall.
"Uh… hi," I manage, but it sounds like waking up from a nap and not knowing if it’s 2024 or the dinosaur age. "You here to… kill someone?"
Vega shoots me a death glare; she should report me for deranged sister and petition for custody of the apartment. I don’t know, better to blurt the dumb shit and pop the tension than keel over from staying quiet.
Irina arches an eyebrow that says, Are these creatures really my blood? Like she just inherited two Tamagotchis and isn’t sure she wants to feed them.
"No, honey. I’m here to meet my little sisters," she says, very calm.
Neither Vega nor I open our mouths; we’re too busy trying to process the fact that this woman just called us sisters.
We step aside and she strides in, like our hallway with vintage textured walls and dust bunnies had always been hers. Nat and Rashel stay in the hall, freaking out. Pretty sure.
Irina Popova looks around with tight respect and a discreet horror that punctures my self-esteem.
The living room is a disaster. Chips on the floor. Three beer cans on the table. A bra on the chair. In the middle of it all, a bowl with Nilla wafer remnants floating in hummus. My legacy.
I just want to disappear behind the oven, but my body won’t cooperate. I can’t even manage a theatrical faint.
Vega, of course, slips on her "hostess at a hip dive" mask. She plasters on a nothing-to-see-here smile and launches into the ambassador-of-tacky speech:
"Sorry about the mess," she offers. Makes you want to hug her… and drown her in the hummus, because the nerve.
Irina nods, the tiniest gesture from a woman who’s dealt with Interpol and still finds this more taxing.
For a nanosecond I forget she could have someone shipped to Siberia riding a bear and picture her on Christmas Eve making pancakes. A pang hits me, sweet and furious, and I don’t know what to do with it. I want that, and it scares me to want it.
"Want me to sit?" she asks, like asking permission to sit in our chaos is embassy protocol or something.
On our couch there’s a rumpled blanket, a cucumber-shaped pillow and… yeah, a slipper we don’t know who it belongs to.
"Sure, yeah, sorry… I’ll make room!" I start doing the bit where I yank things up at record speed. I don’t know where to toss the slipper, so I camouflage it behind the pillow.
She sits. Crosses her legs. Looks at us. Again. She can’t believe it. Neither can I, but it shows more on me.
"You two are beautiful," she blurts, and my heart jumps.