He'd just... watched me. Fed me. Sat with me in silence.
Like I mattered.
Like keeping me comfortable and safe was the entire point of this imprisonment.
The lock clicked at seven AM exactly.
My heart jumped. I hated that it did.
Matteo walked in carrying something I didn't immediately recognize. Not food. Not cleaning supplies. Something wooden and square.
A chessboard.
He set it on the table and began arranging the pieces with practiced efficiency. Black on his side. White on mine.
"Do you play?" he asked without looking up.
I stared at him. At the board. At the invitation implicit in the setup.
"Yes."
"Good." He finished arranging the pieces and sat down. "Your move."
I should refuse. Should maintain my distance and my anger. Should tell him to fuck off and take his chess set with him.
Instead, I found myself standing up. Crossing to the table. Sitting in the chair across from him.
The pieces were beautiful. Hand-carved wood, weighted perfectly, smooth from use. Someone had played with this set for years. Maybe decades. There were small imperfections in the carving—a knight's ear slightly asymmetrical, a bishop's miter chipped—that spoke of age and care.
I moved my king's pawn forward two spaces.
Matteo mirrored the move immediately.
We played in silence.
I'd learned chess from my grandfather. Nonno Giuseppe—my father's father, dead now for eight years. He'd been a grandmaster in his youth, competing in tournaments across Europe before age and family obligations brought him back to New York. He'd taught me the game when I was seven, showingme not just the moves but the strategy. The psychology. The art of reading your opponent and predicting their choices three moves before they made them.
Chess was the only thing my grandfather and I had shared. The only time he'd looked at me like I was worth his attention instead of just another pretty grandson to parade around.
I'd been good. Really good. Good enough that Nonno had talked about getting me a coach, entering me in tournaments, maybe seeing how far I could go.
Then he'd died, and my father had forbidden me from "wasting time" on games when I should be learning to look good at family events, since I clearly wasn't suited for anything else.
I hadn't played seriously in years.
But the strategies came back like muscle memory. The patterns. The rhythms. The way you had to think not just about your own pieces but your opponent's intentions.
Matteo was good.
Better than I'd expected. Better than most casual players. He didn't just react to my moves—he anticipated them. Set traps. Created pressure across the board that forced me to choose between defending and attacking.
We traded pieces carefully. A knight for a knight. Bishops. Eventually a rook.
The game stretched on. An hour. Two.
I forgot about the locked door. Forgot about being a prisoner. Forgot about everything except the board and the pieces and the man across from me whose dark eyes tracked every move I made.
Matteo played aggressively but not recklessly. He took risks but calculated ones. And he was reading me the same way I was trying to read him—watching for patterns, for tells, for the moment I'd make a mistake he could exploit.
