4. Cat #3
“Competent strategy is an aphrodisiac. There’s a difference.” I roll onto my side, looking at him. “You didn’t just survive. You understood how I think and used it against me. Forced me into a position where winning wasn’t possible. That’s… attractive.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for future games.”
“Please do.”
We’re quiet for a moment, the fire crackling, the whiskey warm in my chest. This is the most relaxed I’ve been since the wedding. Maybe longer.
“Tell me something real,” he says. “Something you don’t tell people.”
“Like what?”
“Like anything. We’ve been playing chess for two weeks and I know you had a grandfather who was a grandmaster and a grandmother with a farm. That’s it. That’s the full extent of my knowledge about your life before you became my wife.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” He turns his head to look at me. “But start with the farm. You mentioned it twice now. Both times your voice changed.”
“Changed how?”
“Softer. Sadder. Like you were remembering something that hurt to remember.”
I consider deflecting. I consider making a joke and changing the subject. But he’s looking at me with those blue eyes, patient and curious, and something in my chest unlocks.
“My grandmother had a farm upstate,” I say. “In the hills, about three hours from the city. Woods at the back, no neighbors for miles. She called it her piece of heaven.”
“Tell me about it.”
“She had lemon trees. Six of them, in these huge clay pots my grandfather made. Every winter she’d bring them inside, line them up in the sunroom, and the whole house would smell like citrus until spring. I used to do my homework in that room just to breathe.”
“That sounds beautiful.”
“It was. The light came through these old windows, original glass, wavy, imperfect, and it would make patterns on the floor. I’d sit there for hours watching the light move.”
He’s watching me like the story matters, like I matter, and the words keep spilling because for once someone’s actually listening.
“What else?”
“A pizza oven in the backyard. She built it herself, stone by stone. It took her three summers because she kept changing the design. My grandfather thought she was crazy, but she said perfect things were boring. She wanted it to look like something that had always been there.”
“Did it work?”
“Eventually. The first few pizzas were basically charcoal, but she figured it out. By the time I was old enough to remember, she could make this pizza with fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden and mozzarella she’d drive two hours to get from some guy in Brooklyn who made it fresh every morning. Best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
Max is quiet, listening, and I realize I’ve never told anyone this much about Nonna’s place. Not even Enzo, who visited with me every summer until the war made it impossible.
“There was this swing,” I continue. “Hung on the back porch, right by the kitchen window. Nonna said my grandfather put it up when they first bought the place, before they even had furniture inside. She said he wanted me to have somewhere to sit before I was even born.”
“He sounds like he loved you very much.”
“He died when I was sixteen. But yeah. I think he did.” I swallow past the tightness in my throat.
“And the pantry door was crooked. It never hung right; the frame was warped or the hinges were wrong, I don’t know.
My grandfather wanted to fix it every single visit, and Nonna wouldn’t let him.
She said the crookedness was character. That a house should have personality.
That flaws were what made something feel lived-in instead of just built. ”
“She sounds remarkable.”
“She was. She died the winter after him, when I was seventeen, and the farm just… sat there after. We couldn’t go back because the war got bad, and then she was gone, and there was no point anymore.
” I stare at the ceiling, blinking back something I refuse to call tears.
“It’s probably falling apart now. The lemon trees are definitely dead.
The pizza oven’s probably crumbled. But sometimes I dream about it, the crooked door, the swing, the way the light came through those old windows, and waking up feels like losing it all over again. ”
“Cat.”
His voice is so soft I barely hear it. I turn my head to find him watching me with an expression I can’t name.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That you lost that place. That you can’t go back.”
“It’s just a building.”
“We both know that’s not true.” His hand finds mine in the dark, warm and steady. “It’s where you were happy. It’s where you learned what home was supposed to feel like. That’s not just a building. That’s a foundation.”
I don’t know what to say. Nobody’s ever understood it like that before, the way a place can be more than walls and roof, can be a whole world you carry inside you even after it’s gone.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“For what?”
“For listening. For not telling me to get over it or move on or whatever people usually say.”
“People who say that have never lost anything that mattered.” He squeezes my hand. “Besides, I like listening to you. You tell stories like they’re sacred.”
“That’s a weird thing to say.”
“It’s true. You don’t just describe things. You make them real. The lemon trees, the crooked door, the light through the windows. I can see it. I can almost smell it.” He pauses. “You should write it down. All of it. Before you forget.”
A warning bell rings somewhere under my ribs, a recognition I don’t want yet. I push it away.
“Maybe I will,” I say.
“Same time tomorrow?”
“You know where I’ll be.”
The night the brace comes off, we play for stakes.
“If I win,” I say, “you stop canceling meetings for me. I’m healed. I don’t need supervision.”
“And if I win?”
“You won’t.”
“Hypothetically.”
“What do you want?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, watching me across the board. The firelight catches the angles of his face, and I’m struck again by how different he looks when he’s not being the don. Softer. More human.
“If I win,” he says slowly, “you stay tonight, here, with me.”
My pulse kicks up. “That’s a big ask.”
“It’s been a long three weeks.”
“I noticed.”
“Did you?” He holds my gaze. “Because I’ve been trying to figure out if you noticed.”
“Hard not to notice when someone rearranges their entire schedule to cut your frittata.”
“The frittata was an excuse. I already told you that.”
“You said it was an excuse to be near me.”
“It was. Everything’s been an excuse to be near you.
” He leans forward, elbows on knees. “The chess. The tea. The conversations about farms and grandfathers and crooked doors. All of it. I’ve been looking for reasons to be in the same room as you, and you’ve been letting me, and I’ve been trying to figure out if that means what I want it to mean. ”
“What do you want it to mean?”
“I want it to mean you feel this too. Whatever this is. I want it to mean I’m not the only one who’s been going slowly insane for three weeks, wanting something I was afraid to ask for.”
“Don’t say something you’ll take back.”
“I’m not going to take it back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes. I do.” He’s looking at me like I’m a chess problem he’s finally solved, and the intensity of it makes my breath catch. “Play me, Caterina. Win, and you walk out of here with your independence intact. I’ll stop hovering, stop finding excuses, stop all of it.”
“And if you win?”
“Then you stay. And we see what happens.”
A wall comes down between us, or a door opens; I can’t tell which. I should be careful. I should protect myself. But I’ve spent weeks protecting myself, and all it got me was lonely.
“Fine,” I say. “Set up the board.”
We play. It’s our best game yet.
He’s learned from three weeks of losses, really learned.
He doesn’t just attack anymore; he thinks, he waits, he sets traps I don’t see coming.
I have to fight for every advantage, every piece, every inch of territory.
The clock ticks past midnight, past one, past two.
Neither of us speaks except to announce moves.
By three in the morning, we’re locked in an endgame that could go either way. He has position; I have material. It’s going to come down to one mistake, one moment of brilliance, one move that tips the balance.
I find it.
“Checkmate,” I say softly, moving my queen into place.
He stares at the board for a long moment, verifying, seeing the trap close around his king. Then he looks up at me, and he’s smiling.
“Best game I’ve ever played,” he says.
“You lost.”
“Did I?” He stands, moves around the board, stops in front of my chair.
“I got three weeks of your company. I learned how your mind works. I found out about the crooked door and the lemon trees and the swing your grandfather built before you were born.” He reaches down, takes my hand, pulls me to my feet.
“If that’s losing, I’ll lose every time. ”
“The bet was-”
“The bet was if you won, I’d stop hovering. You won. I’ll stop.” He’s close now, close enough I can see gold flecks in his eyes. “But you didn’t say I couldn’t start a new game.”
“That’s-”
“Strategy.” He smiles. “I learned from the best.”
“That’s cheating.”
“Is there a difference?”
He kisses me.
Nothing like the wedding night, tentative, careful, two strangers negotiating boundaries.
This is desperate. Real. Three weeks of tension snapping all at once, three weeks of chess clocks and almost-touches and the particular agony of wanting someone who already wears your last name.
His hands are in my hair and mine are fisting his shirt and I’m not thinking about protection or politics or the thousand reasons this is complicated.
I’m just thinking finally.
He backs me across the study without breaking the kiss until my hips hit the edge of the desk. Papers shift. A pen rolls and clatters to hardwood. Neither of us looks down.
“Here?” I gasp when he mouths along my jaw.
“Here.” His voice is wrecked already. “Unless you want upstairs. I’ll carry you. I’ll crawl. Just, Cat-”