Page 14 of Love Is A Draw (Check Mates #2)
T he day of the second tournament round came quickly, and Victor found himself seated again at the Pearler’s house at the long mahogany table, hands loosely clasped before him to tether the tremor in his fingers.
The room buzzed—footsteps, murmurs, the delicate click of pieces on the board—but to him, it formed a dense fog, pressing in.
He had faced worse before. Stranger places.
Harder opponents. But this… this wasn’t just a game.
Sir Anthony Forsythe sat across from Victor, composed in his tailored coat and embroidered waistcoat, the living portrait of belonging. He didn’t shift, didn’t tap. He smiled—easy in a way Victor could only mimic in private.
Victor’s pulse thudded in his throat because this wasn’t about victory anymore—not really.
It was about right . About walking into a room built for men like List and taking a seat anyway.
About making them watch as he played the game better.
Smarter. His blood, his name, the threadbare coat on his back—none of it mattered here, not in chess.
On the board, every truth revealed itself in black and white.
No whispers behind closed doors. No weighty titles or birthrights.
Only the geometry of conflict and choice, each square a silent reckoning.
And now that he knew who she was— Tarkov’s granddaughter —the weight of it doubled. Dmitry’s fire burned in her too. Which meant this wasn’t just his fight. It was theirs .
He could not afford to lose. Not with her watching. Not with her legacy now folded into his.
The steward called time. Forsythe began with 1.e4—predictable, by design.
Victor’s response came automatically—Sicilian. He braced himself on Dmitry’s long-ago lesson: breathe in on the opponent’s move, breathe out on your own. Heart. Mind. Align. But the borrowed coat scraped at his resolve; the room’s scrutiny weighed upon him.
Gail’s thoughts drifted back: You react brilliantly. But your opponent defines the fight.
Not tonight. Tonight, he would define it himself.
He nudged his knight into place—the first shiver of a trap four moves deep, disguised as misdirection. He thought of Dmitry—aged, wasted brilliance, denied an audience. Am I redeeming his legacy, or writing my own?
Forsythe flickered in hesitation. Enough.
Victor seized the rook with a knight’s sacrifice. A murmur rippled. A rare sequence—Dmitry’s line. Subtle. Obscure. Brutal.
Let them see who taught me. Let them wonder how.
He glanced up, seeking her.
There she was at the perimeter. Arms folded, body still. Eyes locked on him. She saw it—not only the move, the show. She saw him .
In six precise quiet moves it closed. Checkmate.
Forsythe blinked, lips tightening into a brittle smile. “Well played.” His words wobbled on the air like a restless pawn.
Victor didn’t respond. He let the official mark the game.
No applause followed. But something unspoken rippled—respect. A recognition.
He lingered a moment longer, palms steady on the wood. Then he stood—deliberate, not triumphant—and met Gail’s gaze again.
She was unmoving. Not proud. But present . And for the first time in many nights, he felt seen as the chess player he always wanted to be.
When the last player left and Gail and Victor had been listed as victors, moving on to round three, she found Victor standing alone in the corridor outside the dining room, where the footmen had gathered the remaining chess boards and cleaned the table.
Victor was half-shadowed beneath the flickering light of a gas sconce.
He hadn’t moved since the match ended—he hadn’t shed his coat or unfastened the second button he always tweaked when nerves ran high.
Inside, the hall murmured—chairs scraped, discussions lingered—but he stood still. Tense. Withdrawn.
“You won,” she said softly, stating both the obvious and necessary.
His gaze slid toward her, sharp but unreadable. “Yes. You forced a draw with Sofia von List. Again.”
She waited. After a moment, she added, “You played beautifully.”
“Did I?” His words came low, taut. “Or did I play well enough not to be dismissed?”
She knew he knew that was what she’d done. She stepped a measured pace closer, the distance closing as deliberately as a calculated opening. “They saw you.”
“That’s not the same.” His eyes darkened—not with anger, but flat with raw fatigue. “They saw the line. They saw the win. But they didn’t see me.” His laugh was short, hollow. “Only you do.”
“You wanted to be seen?”
“I wanted to matter.” The words escaped like a confession into the silence. “To win in a room that never expected me to be anything more than an oddity.”
Gail closed the final inches between them. “And did you?”
His jaw shifted, but he did not answer.
“Victor, I saw you.” Her eyes held his, unwavering. She listed every detail he tried to hide. “I saw how you trapped the knight before anyone else. The shift in your posture when you chose risk over safety. The tremor in your hand before the final move.”
He swallowed, eyes flickering.
“You didn’t play just to win the game,” she continued. “You played to claim your place.”
He looked away briefly, the raw emotion flickering across his face. “I’m not sure I belong.”
“You do. Not because of what you proved tonight. Because of who you are when no one else is watching.”
Victor closed his eyes. His breath evened. “People like List… they won’t accept us. Even when we win.”
“Then don’t play for men like Baron von List.”
He opened his eyes and took her in as though the world had narrowed to this.
“I play for the man who never left the Pale. For the boy with only notebooks instead of a father. And… sometimes, I play because I think you’re watching.
And none of it was ever supposed to be tainted by someone like List.”
“Men like List made the Pale, and they are why Grandfather hasn’t come to England yet.
They are the reason people watch Jews play and not masters moving pieces.
None of this is different, you’re just experiencing it more acutely now.
” Gail’s breath caught. She met his eyes without wavering.
“I always experienced it acutely. When they killed my parents, when they forced me out of school as an orphan, and when they sent me to Bassarabia, where I didn’t know anyone.
Until Grandfather found you, he saw your talent. ”
“If anyone knows how the Pale wasted talent, it ought to be him.” That stung, and Victor sucked his lips in as soon as he’d said it. But sometimes, the truth stings, and it’s not the fault of the person observing it.
“So we’re not in the Pale. If they watch us, let’s show them what we need them to see.
That’s why Rachel Pearler asked me to play,” Gail said.
“But think about it, it’s a problem for List and all his supporters that the Black Knight is a friend of the Jews.
If the title goes to a Jew, it would be worse.
But you are strong. Just imagine the absurd trouble it would cause if the title went to a female Jew who is in service. ”
Victor pursed his lips. “The title should go to the best player. Anything less would devalue what it stands for.”
How sweet that a man with his history had the idealism to say this. “So what if you don’t win?”
“Then I go back to my notebooks and keep practicing.”
Is that so?
Gail had thought it too good to be true—that she might win openly without consequence.
But she knew better. Beating Sofia wouldn’t only weaken Victor’s path through the tournament; it could draw attention she could not afford.
A Jew had vanished after defeating List, and everyone knew why, even if no paper dared to print it.
Gail would not gamble Victor’s life—or her own—for a single match.
She’d keep forcing draws, no matter how it gnawed at her.
She had to tell him how she felt about living for chess, not dying for it. He needed to know.
They stood suspended in the half-lit corridor, between the noise and the hush, between the ambition of the tournament and something more enduring: recognition, shared resolve, budding hope.
Victor lifted his hand, his fingers barely touching hers—not with claim, but with invitation, anchoring. Her palm rested against his.
She let him keep his grip. The qualifiers for Round 3 were secured—placing both Victor and Gail in the final round against List and Sofia. Now the battle was not just for titles, but for places, for rights, for belonging.
In that quiet moment, amid gaslight and shadows, something deeper threaded between them—a promise. And each held tightly to it.