Page 44 of Love Is A Draw
He watched her throat work.He’s keeping her grandfather out.Not by brute force—but by using Dmitry’s own legacy as a weapon. By sacrificing Gail’s inheritance on the board.
His world trembled.It was never just a match in a tournament.
The gaslight shimmeredon the board, casting long shadows over the carved pieces—but the cold knot in Gail’s stomach pinned her in place.
He’s keeping Grandfather far from me.The truth struck like a slap: deliberate, cruel, final. Not content with stealing Dmitry Tarkov’s notebooks, List meant to erase him completely—out of the country, out of the match, out of history.
Across the table, Sofia von List smiled as if she hadn’t just gutted Gail with a rook and a sentence.
Gail’s eyes flicked up. Rachel stood stiff by the fireplace, lips parted in alarm. Victor seemed stricken, his gaze locked on hers, as if asking a question he couldn’t bear to speak aloud.
She couldn’t breathe.
The bishop on the board waited. But her mind wasn’t on the position—it spun with the magnitude of what Sofia had just done. She’d used Dmitry. His brilliance. His legacy. And now she was burying him alive in a world in exile where he couldn’t grow nor escape—a plant growing in a closed glass vase.
Time to shatter that glass.
A low buzz filled her ears. Around her, other boards clattered with moves, soft murmurs stirred, but none of it reached her. She stared down at the gleaming rook sacrifice—a line she knew by heart. A line that had once belonged to her.
Her inheritance turned against her.
Sofia’s words sliced gently through the haze. “If you’re not ready to continue, Gail, we could adjourn.”
Gail. Like a maid. Not Miss Tarkov, because that would attribute her the greatest and most feared name in chess—the name her grandfather had given her, the one her father had been denied to live out.
The mask snapped back into place.
“No.” Gail’s fingers settled on the queen. “It’s a good move.”
Sofia’s smile deepened—but she misunderstood. Gail wasn’t complimenting her. She was remembering the afternoon Dmitry first showed her this sequence.“It’s a good move,”he’d said,“but not the only one.”
And she, breathless and eager, had asked—“What would you play instead?”
“One day,”he’d told her, eyes warm,“you’ll tell me.”
Her breath evened. She shifted a pawn. Not the textbook reply. Not from any notebook.
It was her move. Not Dmitry’s. Not stolen. Never played before.
A line of her own.
Sofia’s smile faltered.
Gail didn’t lift her gaze. Her fingers moved in rhythm now. The next three moves snapped into place—quiet, exact, unfaltering. The queen danced, the rook flanked, a trap set beneath the board’s gleaming surface. Something Dmitry had never taught. Something Gail had imagined years ago.
She saw it then—in the flicker of Sofia’s hesitation.
Victor’s words echoed.“Only a Tarkov can beat that.”
She was a Tarkov.
But more than that—she was Gail.
Her bishop slid into position.
Sofia’s hand hovered, then faltered. Her eyes swept the board once, twice. She didn’t see the trap until her fingers landed—too late—on the wrong square.
Three moves later, Gail pressed forward.
