“It is,” I agree.
We play like that for a long time. He explains his system. The rules. The order of things. Which cars can be near each other and which cannot. I listen like his logic matters, because it does. The boy is building safety out of a pattern. He’s shaping a world he can control.
I know exactly what that’s like. I remember being small and sitting in the corner of a room while men yelled, arranging objects into rows because if I could make something obey me, it felt like the house might not swallow me whole.
Nico adjusts a car, scowling harder. His hand lifts to his ear again. Brief touch. My stomach turns. I look away, too fast. The only outward sign that I felt it at all is the way my jaw tightens once.
But inside, something is cracking open with every small motion he makes.
A child.
Mychild.
Here. Now. Breathing the same air as me.
No one told me what this would feel like. They warned me about enemies. About bloodlines. About heirs.
No one warned me about this. About sitting at my desk while a boy lines up cars and my chest aches with something that feels like grief and joy at the same time.
At some point, the door opens quietly. Lucia appears. She doesn’t come in. She watches from the threshold, careful and tense, like she doesn’t want to interrupt the spell. Her eyes flick to the cars. Then to Nico. Then to me.
I feel her gaze on my skin. Heat crawls low in my gut before I can stop it. A physical response that has nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with the memory of her mouth and her hands and the way she looked last night when she thought she’d ruined everything and still stood upright.
She’s wearing simple clothes today. Soft fabric. No armor of silk. Her hair pulled back. The bruise at her wrist faint under her sleeve.
Seeing her in my house, in daylight, makes something in me shift. Possession rises instinctively. I crush it down. She flinches at possession. I saw it in the hotel. I saw it in the courtroom. She’s lived through it.
I won’t be the next man to do it to her.
Lucia’s gaze stays fixed on Nico. Her fingers curl against the doorframe like she’s holding herself in place. I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.
Because if I were her, I wouldn’t trust me, either.
Nico doesn’t look back at her. He’s too busy. He pushes his boss car forward.
“Now they go to work,” he says.
“What kind of work?” I ask, because my voice is the only thing I can offer him that might not break this moment.
Nico considers. He touches his ear again. Then he decides, “Important work.”
I nod. “Of course.”
Lucia’s mouth twitches, almost a smile, then gone again like she caught herself. She steps away silently, leaving us alone.
And I realize, too late, that she just gave me something. Space. Time. Trust, if only in inches.
It sits in my stomach like a weight.
* * *
Later, Nico finds the chess set. It’s an old one, heavy pieces, carved in Italy. A gift from a man who wanted to impress me. I’ve never used it because chess is for men who enjoy pretending strategy is clean.
But Nico is drawn to the pieces like magnets. He holds the rook in his small fist and turns it over, inspecting the base.
“This one is tall,” he says.
“It goes straight,” I tell him.
