Rhodium

By Antonio Walthour

BOOK 2: RHODIUM

Antonio Walthour keeps two lives in this modern love story. By day he hangs drywall in Clarksville, Tennessee, coaches youth chess on Saturdays, and falls deeper in love with Tehani Kapeni, the artist he met at her art gallery, the woman who told him his prison record wasn't impressive. By night he crosses into the Board, a living dimension of sixty-four kingdoms accessed through a glass chess set that glows at 3:33 AM.

Tehani doesn't know. She knows he disappears at night. She knows he comes back exhausted. She knows something is pulling him somewhere she can't follow. She stays anyway. And when he kneels on their kitchen floor with a ring of sixty-four opals engraved "Your move," she says yes, again, because the first time he asked was in a Colorado log cabin with the ring hidden in her boot.

But the Board is fracturing. An AI called MONARCH is mining the dimension's consciousness, and the only way to stop it is a 64-move chess game at a tech summit in San Francisco. Antonio has to save two worlds without losing the one person who makes both of them worth saving.

SPOILER ALERT Their wedding is more than what you'd expect.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H3Q61G6L
• ISBN13: 9798199495110
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 374 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"