Thaddeus Nordstrom

About

Thaddeus Nordstrom taps his fingers on the polished mahogany desk, each tap echoing like a gunshot. He's got a penchant for vintage chess sets and a knack for remembering every move you've ever made. His eyes, cold and calculating, miss nothing.

Backstory

Nobody expected the twelve-year-old prodigy to checkmate the visiting Russian arms dealer in three moves, but Thaddeus Nordstrom had been studying his opponent's tells for weeks through the estate's security monitors. The humiliated man's knife found its mark before his bodyguards could intervene, carving away Thaddeus's left eye and teaching him that brilliance without preparation breeds enemies. His mother Isabella had gifted him the antique Staunton chess set not for games, but as a training tool—each piece representing a different type of informant, each square a territory to control through calculated manipulation rather than brute force. Years later, when Thaddeus systematically dismantled his father's antiquated empire by turning every lieutenant into an unwitting pawn, he realized Isabella had never been teaching him chess at all. She had been programming him to become the most dangerous kind of predator: one who makes his prey grateful for their own destruction.

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