Page 45 of Queen
The sound of his voice slices through every wall I’ve built, through every lie I told myself to keep moving. My throat tightens until it’s hard to breathe. My hand clamps the edge of the nightstand, gripping wood until my knuckles ache.
Behind me, I hear Emiliano exhale. Not relief. Not rage. Something else. Something darker, unreadable.
The screen fades to black, but Giovanni’s voice keeps echoing. It reverberates in my skull, repeating, growing louder, until it isn’t just his anymore. It’s mine. It’s Emiliano’s. It’s the whole damn house’s.
And in that moment, I know—this recording isn’t a warning.
It’s only the beginning.
10
emiliano
The Warning
The chapel sits at the far edge of the Rivas estate, tucked away like a secret no one talks about. It smells of dust, candle wax, and the faint bite of old incense—like the air has been holding its breath for decades. The door gives when I push, a groan rolling through the stone and climbing the ribs of the vaulted ceiling until it fades into colored light.
Stained glass pours reds, blues, and golds over the pews. Saints and martyrs watch from their niches, hands folded, eyes tipped toward heaven—stone witnesses that don’t have to choose between mercy and survival. They were never asked to love the way we do in this world: with knives, with lies, with skin.
Santino is at the altar, back to me, striking matches. One. Two. Three. He touches each flame to a waiting wick like he’sbaptizing it. The flare warms the edge of his collar, then settles into a steady halo. He moves without hurry, without noise. That’s always been his trick—stillness sharpened into threat.
My boots beat a slow, deliberate rhythm down the center aisle. Every step is a warning. My shadow stretches ahead of me, cutting the rainbow slashes in half, crawling over the rail and swallowing his.
“Lighting candles for your sins?” My voice is low, unhurried, a blade laid flat.
“Maybe I’m lighting them for yours.” He doesn’t look up when he says it. The words drift like ash.
“I see the way you look at her.” I come around so he has to face me. “You think I won’t gut a priest?”
His eyes lift at last. Flat. Unblinking. “You think this collar protects me? Or you?”
The corner of my mouth twitches—humor without heat. I pluck a spent match from the rail, roll it between thumb and forefinger. “That collar’s just fabric,” I murmur. “Burns easy.”
I take the last inch of space, and the chapel tightens around the two of us. The incense is a ghost in my lungs; the candles throw small, living hearts of flame between us. I can smell his aftershave, clean and cold, like a confession booth at midnight.
“Touch her again,” I whisper, and the whisper carries farther than a shout, “and I’ll bury you where your father lies. One stone. Two sons.”
His jaw ticks. He doesn’t break eye contact. Not challenge—calculation. He wants to see where the edge is.
“Zina doesn’t belong to you,” he says finally. The words are gentle, coated in the kind of righteousness that gets men killed. “No one belongs to you. Not here.”
I lean in until the heat of the nearest candle licks my cheek. “She does now.”
“She chose a cage,” he answers, soft as prayer. “You just painted it gold.”
“And you,” I say, “would chain her to a cross and call it salvation.”
Silence. We stand there while the saints pretend not to hear us and the wax softens into small white pools. I study him the way I study enemies I don’t want to underestimate: the barely healed split on his knuckle, the pale ridge of an old scar peeking from the cuff, the way his hands stay loose even when mine don’t. Priest, yes. But bred in this house—born to war in a collar.
“You’re playing with fire,” I tell him. “And I don’t warn twice.”
He smiles then, a thin, almost tender thing that doesn’t touch his eyes. “You’re right,” he says. “You don’t warn. You take.”
I let that sit between us, heavy as a dropped bell. The candle flames bow in a small draft; colored light slashes red across his cheekbone like a premonition. I could push him now. I could set a match to this room and call it justice. But justice is a story men tell themselves to make hunger sound holy.
I step back. One pace. Two. The aisle yawns behind me.
“Stay away from her.” I turn, and my voice climbs the stone and hangs there like smoke. “Or I’ll show you how fast heaven looks the other way.”
