Page 61 of Queen
zina
The Queen’s Reign Begins
Morning tastes like metal. Bitter, sharp, clinging to the back of my throat. I don’t sleep—I molt. I peel myself out of the shell of yesterday, strip off grief, and armor up. Black. Slick. Severe. Nothing soft. Not mourning. War.
At the mirror, I pull my hair into a knot so tight it won’t move even if I bleed. The dress is plain, but it cuts like a blade—made for utility, not beauty. Stockings. Boots. I strap the sheath along my thigh and slide the dagger home. Not Giovanni’s. Mine.
The house hums beneath me, a low, feral vibration. Doors open and close. Radios hiss with clipped orders. Men shuffle, pretending the world hasn’t already shifted under their feet. I leave my room without a word.
The knight I dropped last night still lies face-down on the nursery floor, as if ashamed to meet my eyes. I don’t pick it up. I don’t need talismans. I need obedience.
The war room waits under the bones of the estate, cool and damp, a bunker carved into stone. Two guards stand at the door. They know better than to question me. I push through before they can salute.
Inside, the air stills. Voices die mid-sentence. Screens glow with camera feeds and maps, red lines crisscrossing the city like arteries. A table the size of a coffin dominates the center, cluttered with files, shell casings, and the bloodstained pawn sealed in plastic.
Marco falters mid-report when he sees me, words choking back down his throat. Men shift, their eyes sliding away. Emiliano stands at the head of the table, jacket open, sleeves shoved up, veins carved down his forearms. His eyes find me first. They track the black. The boots. The blade strapped high on my thigh. His pride sparks quick and dangerous.
He looks like a king who just realized the throne was never his.
I don’t slow. I don’t ask. My heels strike stone, sharp, cutting through their huddle.
“Everyone out,” I say. My voice is calm, low, the kind of calm that gets people killed. Then, with a glance at him, “Except him.”
No one argues. Chairs scrape. Maps fold. Boots shuffle. Men who could break necks with two fingers file out like chastised schoolboys. Marco hesitates, torn between loyalty and the ice in my tone. I look at him once. He’s gone.
The door shuts. Silence—thick, heavy, a silence that carries weight.
Emiliano doesn’t move. He’s a storm on the horizon, inevitable. “Your timing is shit,” he says dryly.
“My timing saves lives.” I grab the pawn from the table, hold it to the light. The dried smear of blood looks weak now. Brown. Brittle. “Yours should’ve.”
His face flickers with something ugly before it vanishes. He’s used to men bowing with words even when they bite. I don’t bow.
I drop the pawn. Plastic cracks against wood. Then I draw my dagger and drive it into the table, steel slicing through maps and paper until the hilt kisses stone. The sound rings like a bell.
“If you’re not going to raze the world,” I lean on the blade, “I will.”
For a beat, water murmurs through the pipes in the walls—steady, indifferent. Emiliano doesn’t step closer. He steps back.
“Then take it,” he says.
I circle the table and claim the head like I was born to it. Maybe I was. My palms flatten over the maps. The city lies beneath my hands like a throat I’m ready to crush.
“Here’s how this goes,” I tell him. “I want access to every feed you control. All calls in and out of this house for the last seventy-two hours. Visitor logs. Gate cams. Deliveries—down to the fucking milk.”
“You’ll have it.” His reply is immediate.
“And your men stop preening for your approval. They answer to me now. If they don’t like it, they can explain that to a mother who just lost her son.”
The corner of his mouth curves. Admiration lingers in the room, hot and quiet. “Done.”
I tap the dagger’s hilt. Let the hum of steel remind us both who holds the blade. “Lock the compound. No one in or out without my say.” I point at a grainy camera feed—south perimeter, fog pooling at the fence line. “That blind patch? Fix it. I want a lens in every shadow that thinks it’s safe.”
Emiliano follows my gesture. His eyes glint. “You missed your calling.”
“No,” I say coldly. “I was never allowed to answer it.”
We stand there—me with the city beneath my hands, him watching like he’s never seen anything more dangerous than the woman he tried to cage. It should scare me that he looks proud. Instead, it fuels me.
