Page 104 of Niccolo

I shook my head in admiration.

What a woman…

I didn’t have any proof, though – and I didn’t want to go to Dario with mere conjecture, not after I’d shut down Adriano’s suggestion to kill Fausto – so I resolved to find out more.

I slipped away from the wedding and retired to my office, where I fired up my computer.

I googled ‘Aurora chess,’ but that only turned up an online chess program.

Ha!

I wondered if that was why she’d chosen it? To amuse herself?

Probably.

It was somethingIwould have done.

It was a dead end, though, so I tried ‘Italian female chess players.’

And there she was – the number one entry.

Sofia Toscani…

The subject of international scandal, no less.

Former chess grandmaster… one of the highest-ranked players in Italy…

Until she was accused of cheating and stripped of her ranking.

And what was this…?

Vibrating anal beads?!

I burst out laughing and immediately began plotting what to say to her at our next meeting.

Then, after reading a bit more, I changed my mind.

Sofia had been accusedof cheating after trouncing the number two player in the world, who had been previously unbeaten.

That was the first sour note.

Then the article saidthat the International Chess Federation found incriminating evidence – butnot on her person.

I knew a setup when I smelled one.

All the articles kept referencing ‘Hans Niemann,’ so I looked him up as well. After that, I was even more convinced that Sofia had been framed.

In 2022, Niemann had beaten the world champion, who later accused him of using vibrating anal beads to get signals from an accomplice. The vibrations were apparently coded to tell him which moves to make.

Real life was stranger than anything in fiction, that was for sure.

The allegations destroyed Niemann’s career and made him a laughingstock. (And the ‘butt’ of a million jokes – sorry, I had to.)

Niemann claimed he had been framed, and he may well have been –

But I was absolutely convinced that Sofia had.

The situations were too similar.

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