Page 56 of Queen
A strip of paper is tied around the pawn’s neck in a neat little strangulation. Ink slashed hard into the fibers:
The Queen can’t protect her piece.
The world tightens to a point.
Behind me—Zina’s scream. It splits the corridor open. She comes like a storm, hair unbound, bare feet slapping marble, nightdress twisted. Two guards reach instinctively for her; she rips free before their fingers graze cloth.
“Where is he?” She hits the doorframe with her shoulder and would go through it if bone could cut oak. “Where the fuck is my son?”
Useless statues in suits. None of them answer. The closest one looks like he might be sick.
I grab her. Hands to shoulders, anchoring her with the same force I use on men who forget who pays them. She fights—nailsscore tracks across my chest, a sting that argues I’m still human. Good. Let it burn.
“Let me go!” She’s trying to bite through the words. “I’ll find him—”
“Zina.” I lock her in with my stare. “Look at me.”
She does. Eyes like wet glass. Terror, rage, and something that goes darker when it remembers the camera I tore out of her wall and didn’t apologize for. She’s shaking, all fight and no air.
“I will bring him back,” I say.
“You don’t—”
“I understand everything.” I don’t raise my voice. I don’t have to. “But you stay here.”
I ease her backward and shove a blanket at a useless maid until the woman remembers how arms work. Zina sags only enough for breath to find her again. Not surrender. Nothing about her is that soft.
I step inside the room. Take inventory in a glance:
Window latch undisturbed. No glass, no pry marks. Vent grate unscrewed and re-screwed; the heads are too clean. The faintest scuff on the sill—rubber, not leather. The nightlight is dead though the bulb isn’t burned; someone killed the power to this room alone, then brought it back. The boy’s favorite book open spine-down on the carpet; he was taken gently, or fast by a hand that knows children. No overturned furniture. No struggle. In and out like a surgeon.
A thin smear of blood on the sheet, near the pawn. A needle prick’s worth. The piece is bait; the stain is message. They want us to think about queens and boards and all the wrong wars.
I hold the pawn. It’s warm from the room, tacky where the red sits. I pass it to Marco without taking my eyes off Zina.
“Have the lab tell me if the blood is his,” I say. “And if it is, how much I’m going to make the city pay.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lock the estate. No one in, no one out. Anyone tries a phone call without my permission, break their fingers.”
The guards finally wake up. Orders give frightened men a spine. Feet thud down stairs. Radios crackle.
Zina sways once like the floor fell an inch. I’m there before she drops. She claws at my forearms to hold herself up. Her mouth opens; no sound comes. When her voice finally scrapes free it’s sand and glass.
“Please.”
I’ve heard that word a hundred ways. From enemies begging, from soldiers bargaining, from bankers who think cash can buy them back their lives. From her, it’s different. It’s a blade, and I deserve the cut.
“I’m bringing him home,” I say again, and make it a vow I can hang men from.
I brush past her into the hall, call over my shoulder without looking. “Get Santino on the phone. If he doesn’t answer, find the church he thinks God is listening in today and burn it to the fucking ground until he crawls out.”
“Sir—” Marco’s caution.
“Do it.”
I spare the pawn one last look. It sits on a white pillow like a bone.
