don’t remember my childhood in colors. It comes back in shades of gray. Hospital white. Cigarette smoke yellow. The dull brown of unpaid bills stacked on a kitchen table. My mother used to sing to me when I was small. Soft, trembling lullabies in a voice that always sounded like it was about to break. Then she would disappear for weeks. Mental hospitals. Rehab. Relapses. The house would grow quiet in a way that felt unnatural, like the air itself was holding its breath. She was brilliant. Fragile, but brilliant. Schizophrenic. Addicted. Broken by things no one ever bothered to fix. They bullied her in high school for being “strange,” for being poor, for hearing things they couldn’t. And yet my father fell in love with her. He was the golden boy back then. Popular. The kind of man who didn’t need to try. Their story was legend — beauty and tragedy wrapped in teenage defiance. He chose her when the world didn’t. After graduation they married. Young. Reckless. In love. Then she started disappearing in a different way. Money vanished. Cocaine replaced lullabies. Men replaced promises. My father knew. Everyone knew. But he loved her like a drowning man loves oxygen — desperately, irrationally. He worked constantly. Construction. Logistics. Side deals. Anything. I barely saw him except at dawn, drinking black coffee in silence, eyes red, shoulders heavy. He was trying to keep us fed. Trying to keep a dream alive long after it had rotted. I was five when I realized adults weren’t gods. They were frightened children in larger bodies. My little brother was three. I packed his lunches. Walked him to school. Helped him with homework. When Mom screamed at voices no one else could hear, I sat beside him and told him stories about empires. I became a father before I learned how to be a child. I watched the news instead of cartoons. Read newspapers like other boys read comics. Politics fascinated me — not because I loved it, but because I understood it. Power meant stability. Control. And control was the one thing my home never had. In high school, while others chased girls and parties, I joined a political youth organization. They mocked me at first — too serious, too intense. But I listened. Observed. Calculated. Learned who wanted what and why. Business and political science followed. I didn’t just want to understand systems — I wanted to build them. Bend them. By twenty-seven, I led the Red Dawn Movement. Radical, they called it. Revolutionary. Necessary. Within years, it became one of the most powerful parties in the Russian Federation. I didn’t shout. I spoke calmly. Clearly. People trust calm. At thirty, I became Prime Minister. Funny, isn’t it? The boy who packed his brother’s lunch now signs energy and defense agreements. My life became tailored suits and crystal glasses. Five-star hotels. Elegant women who smelled like expensive perfume and ambition. Dinners where deals were made between bites of imported caviar. Soon, I flew to America. Meetings with presidents. Corporate giants. Men whose names move markets. That night, we dined in a private room of a restaurant so exclusive it didn’t even have a sign. Gold lighting. Marble floors. A table long enough to resemble a battlefield. I was seated beside one of the most powerful figures in the Western world. And on my other side — her. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-three. She wasn’t dressed to impress or provoke. No glittering desperation. No hunger for attention. She simply existed — composed, quiet, deliberate. She ate politely. Spoke little. Watched everything.Strange.No one under fifty sits at tables like this unless they’ve already reshaped something important. Except me. And her. While the men debated tariffs and security strategies, she didn’t interrupt or fidget. She observed. Measured. Calculated. The way I used to. And for the first time in years, surrounded by power and polished egos, I felt something unfamiliar.Curiosity.Because I recognize that look — the look of someone young who already understand how the world truly works. And I'm almost certain she does