Murderer or weapon.
The one who signed my mother’s death warrant, or just another tool, Vadim pointed at something soft.
Nothing exotic, just an MX-42 derivative because that’s the poison that runs through everything now. My mother’s poison. My husband’s whiskey. The loop closes tonight.
One point four milliliters into his favorite whiskey because the amber color will hide the compound and the burn will mask the bitter undertaste.
The second glass I fill with nothing but alcohol, clean and safe and indistinguishable from its twin.
Russian roulette. Two glasses. One ending.
The chess set is heavy in my hands as I carry everything toward his study, the board and the glasses, and the weight of what I’m about to do pressing down on my shoulders like the whole house is collapsing slowly around me.
Thirty-seven steps, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and then I’m at his door. He’s sitting behind his desk with his head in his hands, looking like something that crawled out of its own grave and forgot how to get back in.
The same shirt from yesterday, white cotton gone rusty at the cuffs where his violin strings sliced his knuckles. He must have played for hours after he walked away from my door, must have dragged that bow across the strings until his fingers bled.
An empty decanter on the desk and broken glass in the corner, and his shoulders hunched like he’s trying to fold himself small enough to disappear.
He looks destroyed.
He looks like I feel.
I hate how much that matters to me, hate the part of my brain that sees his suffering and feels something other than satisfaction, the part that wants to cross the room and put my hands on his face and tell him we’ll survive this somehow, even though surviving together might be worse than dying apart.
I set the tray on his desk, the glasses clink against the marble, and the chessboard lands with a sound like a judge bringing down a gavel.
“We’re going to play a game,” I say, and my voice comes out exactly how I practiced it in the lab, like the woman I used to be before Roman Volkov put a ring on my finger and tore my whole world apart. “One game of chess with real stakes and no mercy and no backing out once we’ve started.”
His head comes up slowly, and his eyes find mine. Confusion.
“What kind of stakes?” he asks, and his voice scrapes out of him raw and wrecked like it’s tearing his throat bloody on the way up.
I gesture at the two identical glasses, the amber liquid catching lamplight like trapped fire, death and salvation sitting side by side with nothing to distinguish between them.
“One of these contains an MX-42 derivative,” I say, and he understands exactly what I’m offering. “Enough to stop a heart in forty minutes. The other glass is just whiskey.”
His eyes drop to the glasses, and I can see him trying to tell them apart, trying to find some difference in the color.
“If I win,” I continue, “you drink the poisoned glass. If you win, I drink it.”
“You know.” His voice is quiet but certain. “You made them. You know which one kills.”
“I know which one I’ll make you drink when I win.” I pull out the chair across from him and sit down, folding my hands on the marble edge of the board with a steadiness I don’t feel anywhere else in my body. “I know which one I’ll have to drink if you win. The question is whether you’re willing to play when you can’t control the outcome, when everything depends on whether you’re good enough to beat me at the one game where I’ve beat you already.”
His jaw clenches so hard I can see the war happening behind his eyes.
“And if I refuse to play?”
“Then I drink both glasses myself, and you can watch me die knowing you were too much of a coward to fight for a different ending.” The words come out harder than I intended, and I see them land in his chest like bullets. “Your choice, Roman. Play the game or watch me end it on my own terms.”
“That’s not a choice,” he says, and something in his voice breaks open, something raw and desperate and terrified. “That’s fucking extortion.”
“Welcome toourmarriage.” I move my first pawn to e4 and wait. “Your move.”
He stares at me for a long moment, his hands shaking, his chest heaving with breaths that sound too fast and too harsh, and then slowly, he reaches for his own pawn and pushes it to e5.
The game begins.
