Page 47 of Queen
I slide into the chair, lean back, then reach down. My fingers find the hidden latch beneath the lowest drawer—smooth wood giving way to the click of a secret I’ve kept longer than I should have. The false panel shifts, and there they are.
The envelopes.
Stacked neatly, bound together by a black silk ribbon, the knot tight enough to bite into the paper. Zina’s handwriting slants across every one—sharp, impatient, elegant. The kind of script a woman uses when she’s trying to outrun her own heart. Letters she never sent. Letters I made sure she couldn’t send.
I untie the ribbon slow, savoring the whisper of paper against paper. The first page trembles slightly in my hand. My eyes trace the opening lines, and I hear her voice in every stroke of ink.
Emiliano,
“I don’t know why I’m writing to you. I shouldn’t be. I told myself I was done.”
Her words knife clean through me. EveryI miss youis a scar reopened, deliberate. She thought these words vanished into nothing. She thought she was safe once she crumpled the pages, tucked them out of sight, forgot them. But I didn’t let them go. I never let them go.
They’re mine.
I lower the page, my thumb brushing her signature like I could feel the heat of her pulse in the curve of each letter. “She was never yours,” I murmur, the words too soft for anyone but the shadows to hear. Then my voice hardens. “But she will be.”
I set the letter down with care, then push the pile aside. The laptop hums to life, casting its pale glow across the desk. Surveillance fills the screen—angles of corridors, staircases, corners of the Rivas estate rendered in grainy grayscale. My eyes flick past them all until they land on the balcony.
Zina sits in the light of the fading day, Guido in her lap. She brushes his hair with slow fingers, gentler than I’ve ever seen her move, like she’s terrified of breaking him. He leans into her hand, head tipped back, eyes closed, trusting.
The sight punches a hole through my chest.
It’s nothing grand. Nothing violent. Just domestic. Ordinary. The kind of moment most men are too blind to treasure. And it’s everything I’ve ever been denied.
That should have been mine. Years ago.
The glow of the setting sun paints her in gold, wrapping her and the boy in light that looks too soft for this house, this name, this war. My pulse hammers. My chest tightens—not pain. Heat. Pressure that has nowhere to go but forward.
I lean back in the chair, steeple my fingers beneath my chin, and watch. Watch until the shadows swallow the frame, until the balcony empties and the night pulls its veil across the picture.
“Soon,” I whisper into the dark, tasting the word like both promise and threat. “You’ll see.”
The laptop clicks shut. The letters slide back into their secret grave, the silk ribbon biting tight again. The false panel closes, sealing them in. Locked. Safe.
Some men fall in love. Some men beg. Some men wait.
I don’t fall.I don’t beg.I don’t wait.
I take.
Seduction and Surrender
The storm arrives in the form of a slammed door. The glass in the frame rattles as Zina strides in, heels sharp against marble, every step a shot fired.
The USB drive glints in her hand, small but deadly, clutched like a blade.
“What the hell did you think you were doing with this?” Her voice lashes the room. Sharp. But under the sharpness, I hear the strain.
I finish the sip of whiskey I’ve been rolling on my tongue, savoring it, then set the glass down slow. Calm against her storm. “Listening,” I say. “You’d be amazed at the truths people spill when they think the dead won’t hear them.”
Her grip on the drive tightens, knuckles white. “What did he promise you?”
I step closer, each pace deliberate, my shadow swallowing hers across the floor. “That you’d hate me forever,” I say. My tone is flat, final. “And so far, he was right.”
Her chest rises fast. Her pulse beats in her throat. “You think this is a game?” Her voice is lower now, but the fury in it is fraying at the edges.
“No, Zina.” I let my hand brush her hip, testing, daring. “Games end. This doesn’t.”
