Page 63 of Queen
The command slices their doubt clean in half. They scatter like wolves unleashed, boots pounding stone, the hunt already begun.
My hand slips into my pocket, closing around the wooden knight I carried since last night. The edges bite into my palm until blood prickles my skin. Giovanni taught me cruelty, but he never let me wield it. Emiliano thinks he’s the only one who understands war.
They’re both wrong.
I am not their pawn. I am the board.
Tonight, the first rat squeals. And by dawn, Matteo D’Orsi will learn what it means to betray a mother’s vow.
The Interrogation
The wine cellar reeks of damp stone and oak, but tonight it carries a sharper note. Iron. Blood.
Matteo sits tied to a heavy chair, wrists bound tight behind him, ankles lashed to the legs. His mouth bleeds where someone introduced him to the back of a fist. A bruise blossoms under one eye, ugly and purple. Yet when I step into the circle of light cast by the single bulb overhead, he smirks.
That smirk lights something feral in me.
I circle him slowly, my heels echoing against stone. Each strike sharp, deliberate—the rhythm of a predator closing in. He watches me with cocky detachment, as if the ropes make him untouchable. As if I haven’t already decided he’s dead.
“You think this is a game?” My voice is calm, but inside my chest my heart hammers like a war drum.
He spits blood onto the floor. “You wouldn’t dirty your hands. Queens never do.”
The corner of my mouth curves, but it isn’t a smile. It’s rage honed to a blade. “Then you never knew Giovanni.”
At the name, his eyes flicker—just for a moment. That’s all I need. I step closer until I can smell the sour tang of his fear beneath the blood. My hand closes on the knife I stole from the guard’s belt. The handle is already warm, as though it knows what it’s about to do.
Without hesitation, I press the blade to his bare shoulder and carve slow, deliberate strokes into flesh. The letters form in silence but echo louder than any scream:GIOVANNI.
Matteo chokes on a hiss, jerking against the ropes, but the smirk dies on his lips. Blood trickles in thin lines down his arm, dripping onto stone.
From the shadows, Emiliano watches. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His silence is heavier than the cellar walls. It tells me everything—this is my stage.
I don’t askwhyhe betrayed us. I don’t need to. Greed. Weakness. Fear. It’s always the same. Instead, I lean in close, my voice silk and steel.
“How many?”
His breath stutters. “W-what?”
I slam the knife flat against the carved wound. He screams, the sound ricocheting off stone.
“How many touches did it take to lure my son into that van?” My voice slices sharper than the blade. “How many steps did you follow him? How many times did you smile at him, speak to him, make him believe you were safe?”
His body shakes. Defiance fractures. Tears cut channels through the blood on his face. His sobs tumble out in panicked fragments—numbers, apologies, pleas. His voice breaks until there’s nothing left but raw panic.
I step back, my own tears hot, spilling unchecked down my cheeks. The knife trembles in my hand, but my smile is steady. Cold.
“That’s how you save a child,” I whisper, lifting my eyes so he sees the truth in them. “Not with mercy. With fear.”
Matteo collapses forward, broken, words reduced to incoherent sobs.
The knife falls from my hand with a metallic clang that echoes through the cellar like a death knell.
That’s when Emiliano steps from the shadows. His face is unreadable, his eyes darker than the blood dripping to the floor. He stops beside me, his presence a wall at my back.
“You’re not just wearing the crown,” he says finally, voice low, reverent, dangerous. “You forged it.”
My chest heaves, tears streaking my face, the knight still clenched in my other hand. I turn toward him, trembling with grief, fury, and something far more dangerous than either.
