Page 97 of Queen
We hit the kitchen. Flames already lick the curtains, smoke curling thick. I shove the back door open with my shoulder. The sea wind punches in, cold and violent. For one heartbeat, relief claws at me. We’re outside. We’re free.
Then I see them.
Headlights. Lining the coastal road. Three cars at least. Engines idling low like predators crouched in grass. They’ve circled us.
“Fuck.” The word tears from my throat.
I bolt across the back courtyard, the gravel shredding my bare feet. Guido whimpers, but I squeeze him tighter. My pistol barks once, twice, dropping a silhouette that rises too quick from behind the stone wall. Another dives, firing wild, sparks snapping inches from my skull.
The sea crashes below, black and endless. The cliff looms ahead. Nowhere else to run.
I skid behind an overturned cart, shoving Guido down. His eyes shine huge in the dark. “Mama?” His lips tremble. “Are we going to die?”
“No.” The word is sharp, absolute. A lie carved into a vow. “Not tonight. Not ever.”
Another round of gunfire shreds the stone above our heads. Dust rains down, stinging my eyes. I peek, fire back, one shot catching a man in the throat, his body jerking before he collapses into the gravel.
And then—over the roar of engines, the spit of rifles—I hear it. A voice. Low, mocking, familiar enough to gut me.
“Run faster, Zina!”
My blood ices. Santino.
He’s not hiding. He’s leading them. His laughter cuts through the chaos, cruel and unshaken. My stomach knots. Emiliano’s son. Giovanni’s heir. My stepson. My executioner.
Guido hears it too. His head whips toward the sound, confusion etched into his fear. “Uncle…?”
I seize his chin, forcing his gaze back to mine. “No. Not anymore.” My voice breaks but holds. “Never again.”
A flare arcs overhead, exploding in red fire, bathing the courtyard in blood-colored light. Shadows stretch monstrous across the walls. The trap has snapped shut.
I grip Guido’s hand, knife flashing in my other. My voice is a growl that tastes of iron. “Stay behind me, baby. If the night wants to eat us, it’ll choke on my fucking bones first.”
And with the flare burning down, painting the world in fire, I rise to meet the storm Santino brought to our door.
The Face of Betrayal
The flare sputters above us, raining sparks like molten tears. The courtyard is blood-red, and in the middle of it—he steps forward.
Santino.
He’s taller than Giovanni in my memory, broader in the shoulders, but it’s the eyes that stop me cold. That same storm-dark gaze, the one his father used to pin me to marble walls. But Santino’s aren’t tempered with age or restraint. They’re wild. Fevered. Hungry.
He carries no mask tonight. Just a pistol in one hand, the swagger of blood-borne entitlement in the other.
“Drop the knife, Zina,” he calls, voice smooth as glass dragged across skin. “You’ll cut yourself before you ever cut me.”
Guido shudders behind me. I shift my stance, shielding him fully with my body, my dagger catching the firelight. My voice shakes—not with fear, but with rage sharp enough to slice the night. “You came for a crown. You’ll leave with a corpse.”
Santino smirks, cocking his head, like a boy amused at a stray dog snapping at his boots. “You really think Emiliano’s protection makes you untouchable? He’s not even here. And you…” His gaze dips, lingers on Guido, then rises again, colder. “…you’ve always been a pawn. Nothing more.”
Guido gasps. The sound rips through me. My son—his nephew by blood, the boy who trusted him once—is trembling like prey under a wolf’s shadow.
“You dare,” I snarl. My hand tightens on the dagger. “You dare stand there, with your father’s blood still fresh in the ground, and tell me my son means nothing?”
His smile vanishes. His jaw flexes, and for the first time, I see it—the crack. The war in him between Giovanni’s ghost and the hunger to eclipse it. “Giovanni built an empire, and Emiliano stole it. You…” His lip curls, spit flying. “…you just spread your legs to whichever king wore the crown.”
The words slice deeper than any blade. My breath hitches, my chest tight. But the fury roars louder. “Better a queen who bleeds for her child than a son who spits on his father’s grave.”
