Page 3 of Queen
The master suite breathes out cold as I walk in. Luxury doubles as isolation: too much bed, too much closet, too much silence poured over every surface until it shines. The balcony doors are shut, sea light diffused through glass. The world outside keeps moving. The world in here has stopped.
Giovanni’s black suit still hangs where he left it—pressed, waiting for a meeting he never kept. His favorite. Palermo on our skin at midnight, the balcony below us hot with the city’s pulse, his hand at my waist while he lied beautifully about forever. We danced to a song only he could hear.
I run my fingers down the wool. The scent hits me—warmth, power, smoke, him—and something inside me shatters clean.
I bury my face in the jacket and collapse, the sob tearing loose before I can strangle it, wrung from the deepest part of me like blood from an open wound. I clutch his sleeves and curl on the closet floor, silk grinding against tile.
“I hate you for dying,” I breathe into the lapel. “I hate you for leaving me to clean up your mess.”
Minutes pass. Or hours. Time collapses into the sound of my breathing and the drum of my heart.
When I can move, I crawl to the safe tucked behind a row of ties the color of bruises. My hands still shake as I punch in the code. 0-8-0-1—my birthday. His favorite joke, a way to keep me near while pretending it meant nothing.
The door clicks.
Passports. Cash. The .38 revolver with a new polish. A velvet box with a ring I don’t wear. Papers that say what everyone already knows but refuses to admit.
And a letter.
An envelope already torn where I opened it days ago. My nail traces the name on the front, a habitual sin.Emiliano Maritz. Even his handwriting leans like a man braced to strike.
I slide the letter out and hold it without reading, the way you hold a live wire you’ve already survived once. The paper hums in my hand. This is what power tastes like: ash in your mouth, guilt in your throat, and the devil waiting at your door.
“Not today,” I tell the empty room. The dead. The living. Myself.
I slide the letter back into its sleeve and return it to the dark, where it belongs—until I decide it doesn’t.
I close the safe. The metal seal thunks home, final, necessary. I stand in the quiet closet, fingers pressed to my sternum as if I can hold the new crown in place by force. The queen they think I am is only the shadow of the one I need to be.
Down the hall, somewhere I cannot reach, Guido turns a page. In the dining room, Santino plots the shape of my execution with his coffee spoon. Romeo laughs at a joke he hasn’t told yet. Dante counts the exits with his eyes.
And in the ground outside, the king sleeps beneath marble while the chandeliers upstairs keep pretending they’re stars.
I square my shoulders. Wipe the wet from my face with the back of my hand. Fix the line of my dress like I’m smoothing the surface of a blade.
Let them come.
I will meet them all at the door.
The Devil’s Handwriting
The letter feels heavier than it should—just paper and ink, yet it pulses in my hand like a living vein cut from the devil himself.
I sit on the edge of the bed, the silk sheets cool against my thighs, the whole room pressing in like a trap. I unfold it again. The paper is creased, soft at the edges, worn thin from how many times I’ve read it. From how many times I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t.
His handwriting slants, sharp and elegant, just enough to make you wonder if he was smirking when he wrote it. Each line whispers arrogance, temptation, command.
You always knew how this would end, Zina.
My name—written like a curse. Or a vow carved into stone. The sound of his voice overlays the ink in my head, that low, predatory timbre that wraps around your throat and squeezes until you can’t breathe, until you’re nodding even when you should be screaming no.
He goes on about protection. About legacy. About keeping the families from tearing each other to pieces. Empty scaffolding to disguise the truth.
At its core, it isn’t an offer. It’s a claim.
Come willingly, or be consumed by the fire already at your feet.
The memory forces its way in, uninvited. His hands on my waist, calloused and unrelenting. Giovanni’s blood still drying beneath my nails. Emiliano’s shadow filling the doorway of the safehouse, his stare eating me alive.
