Page 37 of Queen
The fog thins just enough to reveal the shape of the headstone ahead, tall and cold, cut from dark granite. Giovanni’s name catches the pale morning light—sharp lettering meant to outlast every man who ever spoke it.
Zina slows first. She doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t ask permission. She just kneels, her dress pooling like spilled ink around her on the damp ground. Her hands touch the earth the way a woman touches a memory she doesn’t want to remember.
I stay standing.
From inside my coat, I pull the single red rose. Fresh. Its scent faint under the weight of rain in the air. I roll the stem once between my fingers before setting it against the base of the stone.
“He hated flowers,” I say, my voice low but steady. “But I always left him one. Even when we were enemies.”
Her head turns slightly, just enough that I catch the edge of her profile. Her voice is soft, but it carries. “You were never just enemies.”
No. We weren’t.
I let my gaze rest on the stone a moment longer before I speak. “We met in Naples. Two boys with nothing but ambition, each convinced the other was the only one worth measuring himself against.” I shift my weight, the gravel under my shoes crunching in the quiet. “He was a crown in the making. I was a shadow he couldn’t shake.”
The fire flickers in my chest, not from anger, but memory. “We stole together. We bled together. We built something neither of us could have built alone. And we destroyed it the same way—together.”
I glance down at her. She’s still staring at the stone, but I can see the way her jaw tightens, the way her shoulders draw a fraction closer, as if bracing against the truth she doesn’t want to hear.
“I called him my brother,” I continue. “Some days I meant it. Some days I wanted him dead more than I wanted to breathe.”
Her fingers curl into the damp grass, and for the first time since we arrived, she looks straight at me. “And now?”
“Now,” I say, “I remember him as both. My greatest mistake… and the only man I ever thought I could trust.” I let the pause linger, heavy, dragging through the fog like a blade. “Until you.”
Her breath catches—quiet, but I hear it. I always hear it.
The fog drifts between us, curling around her like smoke. I don’t move closer. Not yet. Because here, in front of Giovanni’s grave, I’m not interested in pretending we’re just two peoplevisiting the dead. This is war. A war fought in silences, in glances, in words that cut sharper than any blade.
And in this moment, I can’t tell if she’s praying for him… or for the strength to outlast me.
Confession and Chaos
Her fingers dig into the damp grass, knuckles white, shoulders rigid. For a long moment she doesn’t look at me—until she does. And when she does, it’s not the silence that cuts. It’s the question.
“If you loved him,” she says, her voice shaking but sharp enough to draw blood, “why did you kill him?”
I don’t flinch.
“Because love doesn’t make a man weak,” I say, each word deliberate. “But loyalty to a man who’s already gone? That does.”
She stares at me like I’ve just stripped the last illusion from her. I let her sit with it, let it burn. Then I lower myself to one knee beside her, my coat brushing the edge of her dress, the damp seeping through the fabric.
“I gave Giovanni my youth. My secrets.” My voice drops until it’s barely above the wind. “And he gave me exile. Do you understand that? I bled for him. I fought for him. And when it suited him, he cast me out like I was nothing.”
Her breathing quickens. I can hear it over the faint hum of wind moving through the stones, the distant creak of a tree branch.
“You were always mine, Zina,” I say, leaning in, close enough to see the tremor in her lashes. “Even when he claimed you. Especially then.”
Her hand moves before I see it coming. The slap lands hard, the sharp crack echoing against stone. My head turns with the force, but I don’t retaliate.
Her tears follow fast, spilling down her cheeks, glinting in the morning light.
I catch her face in my hands before she can pull back, my thumbs pressing just enough to hold her there. Her skin is damp, hot with grief. “Your grief,” I murmur, my eyes locked on hers, “tastes like devotion.”
Her lips part in a soundless breath, confusion and fury mixing in her gaze. She wants to scream at me, claw me apart, but there’s something else beneath it—something dangerously close to surrender.
I tilt her head just enough to bare the curve of her neck and press my mouth there—not with tenderness, but with claim. My lips are warm against her skin, my breath slow, measured. This isn’t seduction. It’s ownership. It’s the reminder that no matter how hard she fights me, I will not release my hold.
