Page 1 of The Queen
1
ELIZA
Blood pounds in my ears,a deafening roar as I stare down the barrel of my gun at my dead mother’s twin sister, Lila Foster. She stands there, calm as you please, like she hasn’t just caused immeasurable destruction at a university where the next generation of mafia learns how to play the game while maintaining an outward appearance of an exclusive, private collegiate setting.
She smirks at me from across the few metres where we stand on the quad, surrounded by chaos.
“Never took you for the brains behind this mess,” I snap.
Aunt Lila tilts her head, her familiar smile curving her lips in a condescending twist. “Oh, Eliza. If only you knew the half of it.”
“Half of what?” Rage flares in my chest, hot and vicious. I thought I knew the player in this twisted game, fucking Felix, my half-brother, but here stands my dead mother’s mirror image, mocking me with her existence. After she died, I couldn’t look at Lila without bursting into tears and running away. It was too painful. I thought Lila understood and kept her distance for my sake, sending a card in the mail on my birthday and atChristmas, but now I wonder what the fuck she was doing. She clearly pulled away because she hates me. “Do you really hate me this much?” I croak, fighting back the tears of a betrayal that cuts pretty deep despite the distance between us.
“Hate you?” she says with a sarcastic laugh that sets my teeth on edge. “Did you really think this is about you?”
“Fuck you,” I spit out, my grip on the gun tightening. It feels like an extension of my will, cold and deadly. “You want my dad, so you come through me?”
“Not just him,” she spits out viciously, gesturing wildly. “All of them.”
“All of them?”
I step forward, determination replacing the shock that had momentarily frozen me. I won’t let this woman, blood or not, rip apart the kingdom of Castle.Mykingdom. Not while I can still pull a trigger.
“End of the line, Aunt Lila. This ends now.”
I’m a breath away from pulling the trigger, from ending this nightmare she’s orchestrated, when someone crashes into me from behind, and before I can react, the ground rushes up to meet me, the impact wrenching a grunt from my lips as I hit the concrete floor, pinned and struggling for breath.
“Motherfucker! Get off, you fucking cunt,” I roar, swinging my elbow back and connecting with a satisfying crunch.
My training, ready to go, surges through my veins like adrenaline. I roll when my attacker’s weight falls away, and I’m back on my feet in an instant. He is holding his nose, his gaze furious.
“Come on then,” I growl, muscles coiled, ready.
The assailant charges, a silent promise of violence. But I’m a Hughes. I’m made of brutal stuff, forged in fire and blood, and all that. I sidestep, pivot, and my arm hooks around a neck, pulling him down with me. We’re a tangle of limbs and grunts,his strength against mine, but I’ve been fighting big boys since I could walk.
His response is a desperate attempt to overpower me. But it’s not enough—not against me. I twist, leverage on my side, and he ends up pinned beneath me now, gasping for air as I press my advantage.
“Enough playing,” I mutter—time to end this. Yanking Flick out of my belt holster, I slice the blade across his throat and get off him in my next breath, looking for the gun he knocked out of my hand and Aunt Lila.
She’s gone, vanished into the havoc from which she slithered out. I curse, my voice an acidic hiss slicing through the bedlam that now blankets Castle University.
“Fuck,” I spit out. The revelation that Lila, my own blood, could engineer such destruction—it twists in my gut, a sharp betrayal that refuses to settle. I’m reeling, but there’s no time for shock. There is no time for the sickening drop in my stomach at the thought of family waging war against family.
Clutching my side, which still hasn’t healed properly after the combat contest, I bend down, and my fingers tighten around the gun I’d dropped to deal with the asshole at my feet, its weight a cold reminder of what’s at stake. Every instinct hones in on the hunt, the need to end this madness. I clench my jaw tightly, giving myself a headache.
“Slippery bitch,” I murmur, fury simmering in my blood as my mind races to piece together her next move. The air is still charged with the remnants of her battle against us, and my pulse hammers against my temples, keeping time with the raging beat of my heart. This is far from over. I know it in my bones—the gritty realisation that this is only the beginning sinks in, and it makes me wonder if Felix is part of her vengeance organisation or if he is just another player who needs to be taken down.
Either way, the game has changed, and Aunt Lila has made her play. But she hasn’t seemed to realise I’m not that sad little girl anymore. I’m the Queen of this fucking board she tried to destroy, and she just made a severely wrong move against me.
Lowering the gun as Oliver stumbles over to me, battered and bleeding, I stare at him and then back to the man a few feet away.
“Fuck,” I murmur. His chest rises and falls with laboured breaths, and for a moment, the world spins, and I lose my sure footing, but Oliver is there to hold me up. My eyes sting, vision blurring as tears of frustration and anger well up. I blink them back, refusing to let them fall. “You okay?” I ask Oliver, though I know he’s far from it.
“Seen better days,” he grunts. There’s blood, his shirt torn, and I feel something primal flare up inside me. Protectiveness? Rage? Both?
“Shit.” The word is a bullet, fired off with all the venom I can muster. Lila’s gone, vanished like smoke, and it’s a kick to the gut. I’m fucking furious, and it feels like I’m burning from the inside out.
“Eliza,” Ollie starts, but I cut him off with a sharp gesture as I drop to my knees next to my fallen King.
