Page 108 of Queen
I don’t burn it. I don’t shred it. I fold it once, sharp and neat, and slip it beneath my palm like a card meant for a later hand. Because that’s what this is. His opening move.
The cellar door groans when I pull it open. The air is damp, heavy with the musk of stone and wine casks. My steps echo as I descend, the silence pressing in like confession walls. I kneel before the concealed safe, fingers working the seam only I know. When the lock clicks, the weight of history exhales.
The velvet box waits inside. Its crimson fabric is frayed, as though even time fears what’s inside. I draw it out, set it on the table. My reflection fractures in the tarnished silver latch.
When I lift the lid, the past breathes again.
My wedding dagger. Giovanni gave it to me the day he crowned me his bride. He called it ornament. We both knew it was prophecy. Blood would be demanded someday.
I strap it to my thigh with slow precision. The leather bites my skin, grounding me. My hand lingers there, pressing the steel into flesh. A reminder: I am not prey. I never was.
The house is too quiet when I climb back up. The kind of quiet before thunder splits the sky.
Guido is waiting on the porch, a puzzle piece clutched in his hand. His eyes are wide, but steady. My boy. My blood. My kingdom.
“Is it time?” he asks. His voice doesn’t waver.
I lower myself, brush his hair from his brow. Memorize him as a boy before war shapes him into something harder. “No, amore,” I whisper, my throat thick. “Not for you. Not yet. Your time is for living. Mine is for protecting.”
Because this—this love, this fragile, fierce bond of mother, father, son—is our happily ever after. It doesn’t look like anyone else’s, but it is ours. And I will kill anyone who dares to steal it.
Headlights crawl across the distant coastal road, unmarked, deliberate. A predator’s approach.
The car glints under the dying sun. Sleek. Black. Predatory. The same make Giovanni once favored for midnight meetings. The same shape Santino drove when he thought himself untouchable.
Not chance. Not coincidence.
They want me to see it.
I stand, the dagger warm against my thigh, my son’s small hand wrapped in mine. The letter still burns in my pocket. Emiliano’s vow still burns in my blood.
“It’s his turn now,” I whisper to the horizon. And for the first time in exile, I smile.
Because whatever waits on that road—Santino, De Luca, or the underworld itself—they still don’t understand.
I am not just a Queen in exile. I am a mother in love, a wife bound in blood, and a woman sharpened by ruin.
And I deliver judgment.
The headlights pause at the bend, idling like a beast waiting to pounce. And faintly—carried on the wind, too soft for Guido but sharp enough for me—comes a voice I know too well.
“Confess, Zina. Your Bishop has arrived.”
