The silence stretches. Somewhere a bell rings, calling students to their next class.
Mishka looks at me. “Do you love him?”
“More than I thought possible.” The words come out steady despite the tears tracking down my cheeks. “He’s not good, Mishka. No on moy. And he would die before letting anything happen to you, not because I asked him to, but because protecting you protects me. That’s how he loves.”
“Through action.”
“Through action,” I confirm. “Through guards and glass and people following you. Through private jets when I miss you and threats when anyone looks at you wrong.”
Mishka turns back to Roman. “Show me.”
Roman blinks. “Show you what?”
“Chess. Your strategy.” Mishka’s jaw sets with a determination that reminds me painfully of our mother. “If I’m going to live in a world with bodyguards and ballistic glass, I want to understand it. I want to be useful, not just protected.”
I open my mouth to protest—he’s fourteen, he should be thinking about exams and girls and normal teenage problems—but Roman speaks first.
“One condition.” He pulls his right hand from his pocket, the tremor visible in the grey winter light, and extends it toward my brother. “You let me earn your trust. Earn it, move by move, the same way your sister earned mine.”
Mishka looks at the offered hand. At the tremor, Roman isn’t hiding. At me. Back at Roman.
Then he reaches out and shakes.
“Game on,” he says, and his smile is finally, finally real.
* * *
We spend four hours at the school.
Roman plays chess with Mishka in the common room while I watch.
Roman’s right hand shakes when he moves the pieces, and Mishka notices. Roman explains without being asked: nerve damage, factory, three months of physical therapy that’s helped but not healed.
“Does it hurt?” Mishka asks after Roman castles queenside with fingers that won’t quite cooperate.
“Sometimes.” Roman doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Mostly it just reminds me that I’m still alive.”
“Anya said you used to play violin.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to cut.
“I did.” Roman’s voice is carefully neutral. “I can’t anymore.”
“Because of the hand.”
“Da.”
Mishka studies the board for a long moment, then moves his bishop to a square that doesn’t make strategic sense until threemoves later, when it pins Roman’s queen and forces a sacrifice that costs him the game.
“You let me win,” Mishka says flatly.
“Net.” Roman’s smile is tired but genuine. “You won fair. I was distracted.”
“By the violin thing?”
“By how much you remind me of your sister.” Roman tips his king over in surrender. “Also too smart for your own good.”
Mishka shows us his robotics project after that. Roman asks questions that reveal he’s done research, that he’s paid attention to more than just security reports, and my brother’s walls come down brick by brick as he realizes the monster from January might actually be interested in who he is.
