THE EMPRESS'S DOOR

At forty-one, Chayathon Sterling has built three lives and kept all of them.
A partner at a bilingual law firm. A marine engineering student at Imperial College London. A husband. The father of three children who call him Dada in a dacha outside St. Petersburg.
He thinks that is the whole of it.
Then the doorbell rings.
The woman at the door is Seo Ji-woo. She is forty years old, she flew from Moscow, and behind her - twenty-three years ago - are three children who have his blood and his face. A deal made by a dying politician. A pregnancy he never knew about. Triplets were raised between Athens and Bangkok, who want to know their father before it is too late.
And somewhere in Bangkok, a junior associate at his own law firm is on a FaceTime call with his twelve-year-old daughter.
She hears everything.
She whispers: Papa?
His wife Katya turns to him.
"Serdtse," she says - heart, in Russian, which is what she calls him. "Did you know?"
He didn't.
But there are eight children. Three women. One curse his family said could never be broken.
And the Empress has opened the door.