Page 100 of Queen
Santino’s laugh slashes down from the balcony above. “On your knees, Emiliano. Or watch your Queen’s crown crack open.”
My teeth bare. “You don’t get to write my ending, fratello.”
He leans over the rail, hungry eyes gleaming. Flames lick behind him, throwing his shadow long over the tiles like a vulture’s wing. Around him, a cluster of turncoats in Rivas suits—our suits—train rifles on the courtyard. I clock positions without thinking: two at the archway, one on the fountain, a fourth in the citrus trees trying not to cough on cordite. My men still hold the gates, but they’re pinned; their fire comes in ragged bursts, buying seconds that bleed out too fast.
“Boss.” Romeo’s voice grates through the comm in my ear, breathless, close. “I’ve got three on the west wall. Give me your mark.”
“Hold,” I grind out. If he shoots now, the muzzle flash will light Zina’s skull. I won’t gamble with her breath.
The man with the gun—young, nervous, too clean—rests his cheek against her hair. I see the tremor in his trigger finger. Safety off. Slack taken up. He’s waiting for permission or amiracle. I can give him neither. I need a window. Half a heartbeat. The smallest breach between intent and action.
I step forward into the open, palms lifted just enough to look suicidal. My shirt sticks to my back, soaked with sweat and someone else’s blood. The courtyard lights throw my shadow across Zina’s chains, over Guido’s curls. I make my voice a razor. “Point that barrel anywhere but at her, boy, and you live an extra minute.”
His jaw flutters. “Back the fuck up!”
Zina doesn’t move. Doesn’t plead. Only tilts her head a fraction like a reminder: you promised me fire.
I sweep the edges again—angles, distances, exits. The fountain lip is slick; the statue base gives cover to the knee. The archway offers a ricochet I don’t want. The balcony is thirty feet and a lifetime away. Santino lounges against the iron like this is theater and I’m the understudy who finally got a scene.
“On your knees,” he repeats, sing-song, enjoying himself. “Make it pretty.”
“Count of three,” Romeo whispers in my ear. “I can smoke the balcony. Wind’s in our favor.”
I roll my shoulders, loosen my grip. My blade sits warm against my spine. My pistol weighs my hip like a promise. “On my mark,” I murmur. “Not before.”
The traitor shifts, and that’s when I see it: he’s set the muzzle wrong. Too tight against her temple. At that angle, recoil knocks the shot high; the flash will blind him for a blink. One blink is all a man like me needs.
I drag air into my lungs. It tastes like salt and old money burning. The courtyard wavers, then narrows until there’s only the tremor in that trigger and the white of Guido’s knuckles around his knight. My pulse slows. The noise recedes. I hear Zina inhale—steady, unafraid. I hear my own heart, heavy as a hammer.
“Emiliano,” Santino purrs, “kneel.”
I smile without humor. “I don’t kneel.”
The trigger twitches.
“Now,” I whisper.
A smoke canister clacks against iron above; bloom swallows the balcony in a choking gray. Rifles cough. Men shout. The young bastard at Zina’s temple flinches, eyes cutting upward, grip loosening a breath he can’t afford.
I’m already moving.
I launch low, boots sliding through blood, shoulder driving like a battering ram. My left hand tears the chain taut to pivot Zina clear; my right finds steel. Heat sears my cheek as a bullet kisses past, but the muzzle jerks off her skin, barked shot screaming into nothing. Guido drops, a small cry swallowed by the roar.
We collide—me, the gunman, the chain, the weight of every sin. Marble buckles my knees. His wrist bends. Something pops. The pistol kicks, harmless this time, and skitters across stone.
Through smoke, Santino curses. More men pour fire into the courtyard. My men answer, a chorus of thunder. The night becomes a strobe of flame and shadow.
I twist, find the bastard’s throat with my forearm, pin him to the tiles, and bare my own blade, the edge a thin, merciless moon.
“Touch her again,” I snarl into his face, “and I’ll teach your bones how to scream.”
The world snaps bright, hot, lethal.
And then I move again.
Breaking the Chain
The courtyard is a furnace of fire and gunmetal. Bullets scream through the night, carving the air with death. One clips past my ear with a hiss, another sears across my arm—hot iron tearing flesh—but I don’t stop. Pain is nothing. Pain is fuel. Because ahead of me, chained like a prize for jackals, are the only two souls I can’t lose.
