Yeah, I won the chess game. Of course I did.
Nicky is still chuckling as he gets into the driver’s seat. Donnie was surprisingly okay with me beating his ass roundly. It only took ten moves the first time; I tried to be a gentleman and suggested best-of-three, but then I beat him in the second game even faster. At first he was outraged, but then he saw the funny side. He insisted I take his damn shoes, although I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. I only included them in our terms becausehewantedmine.
Nick grabs them from me now and throws them in the back seat. “I feel kind of guilty that I took the man’sshoes,” I say. Donnie had pressed them on me.Always pay your losses, little peacock. And always, always collect your wins.
“Don’t worry, he’ll just ask someone from his staff to run a new pair of shoes down to him at the club.”
“He has…staff?”
Nick gives a contemptuous snort at my ignorance. “Yeah, he has staff; he’s a fucking billionaire.”
I take in that information. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me that before the game. I might have beat him faster if I’d known the old asshole was living large.”
“Oh, big tough guy now we’re walking away, huh?”
“You got that right.”
Nick laughs. “Did you think about throwing the match?”
“I’m not going to throw a match just because someone could have me killed,” I say, dead serious, and Nick laughs again. “That was quite a gamble on your part, Nicky. What if I had no idea how to play chess?”
“Oh, Bianchi. If there is one thing I was ever sure of in this life it was that you knew how to play chess. You got that look about you.”
“Are you kidding me right now? I have thatlookabout me?”
“That’s the kind of fancy game you Harvard types like, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t exactly president of the chess club at Harvard, you know,” I snipe back. “Plus you couldn’tknow—”
“I knew.” He gives me a wink.
“You—how did you know?”
“Your dad. There are two things I know about him. One, he runs the law firm that keeps my ass out of trouble. And two, he once won a chess game against Tino Morelli. Once in his whole damn life, but he brags about it like he won the Super Bowl or some shit.”
I have to chuckle at that. Nick’s right; Papa tells that story alot. Tino Morelli was the kind of player who could have been a Grand Master if he’d ever bothered to take it more seriously, and my father was always proud of beating the Don just that once. Sometimes I wonder if Don Morellilethim win, but I don’t think the old Boss was like that. He didn’t seem the type to let someone get one over on him just for ego’s sake.
“Then once he’s finished jerking off over winning a chess game,” Nick continues, “he starts talking about how great his son is at chess, too. How he taught you since you were five years old.”
I hated it when I was a kid, being made to sit there at the board and move pieces around. It was never a game to my father. It was alwaysserious. He liked to brag that he’d developed both my logical and creative thinking through regular chess sessions, but all he did was make me fucking hate chess.
And him.
I’m still damn good at chess, though.
“Finally came in handy,” I mutter. “So riddle me this, Nicky. How come you never told me you were a Gee yourself?”
He squints at me, lips slightly pursed. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“That you were a Gee? Nope.”
He turns his whole body to me, his left wrist hooked over the steering wheel, and gives an incredulous smile. “You don’t remember the first time we met.”
“Sure I do. It was that time I got you off that criminal mischief charge, with the headlights you definitely didn’t smash in.”
“No, Harvard.”
“No?”
