Page 75 of Queen
Her eyes widen. Then narrow. Defiance—always defiance. “You’ve survived worse.”
The words dig under my ribs, twist deep. Survived worse? She doesn’t see it. Doesn’t feel the hole already torn through me at the thought of her bleeding out in the street.
“Not you.”
It rips out of me, raw, unguarded. My fist slams into the wall. Plaster shatters, fragments raining like broken teeth across the floor. “Anyone else, Zina. Anyone. But not you.”
The room freezes. Even the storm outside seems to wait.
She studies me, lips parted, her breath caught mid-rise. And I see it—the fracture. Not in her, but in me. The monster I’ve hidden bleeding out—not in violence, but in confession.
Her voice is barely a whisper, but it cuts deeper than my rage. “Why me?”
Why her.
The question coils tight in my throat, choking. I swore I’d never give this answer. That weakness would never live in me. But tonight, I can’t lie. Not after I nearly lost her to a bullet, a fire, a nameless street.
I move closer, fists trembling, storm clawing inside me. “Because you are the only thing I can’t bury.”
Her breath stutters. My chest heaves.
And for the first time, Emiliano Maritz knows what it means to fear something he can’t kill.
The Confession
The study is a cage. My cage. Dark oak walls, shelves of books that were never meant to be read—only to intimidate. A desk heavy enough to crush a man if it fell on him. This room has always been my sanctuary, my war table, the place where I plotted and bled empires dry. But tonight, it feels like an execution chamber, and I’m the one walking to the block.
I pour two glasses of scotch. My hand doesn’t tremble, but my chest does. The burn of the liquor cuts through my throat when I drink mine down in one swallow. The other glass I set on the edge of the desk. Hers. I don’t hand it to her. I can’t.
She sits in the chair across from me, silent, her body still wrapped in gauze and fresh bruises from the ambush. She’s watching me with those eyes that make the floor tilt beneath my boots. Eyes that see too much.
The walls seem to breathe, closing in. I pace. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rug muffles my steps, but the storm outside rattles the windows like bones in a coffin. I feel it pressing against me, the same way her gaze does.
“I didn’t plan this,” I mutter, the words breaking out of me before I can stop them. “Not the marriage. Not Guido. Not you.”
Her head tilts, just slightly. Not pity. Not forgiveness. Just listening. The restraint of it shreds me open.
I slam my hand down on the desk, the sound echoing through the study like a gunshot. “Do you hear me, Zina? None of this was supposed to happen. You were supposed to be another piece on the board. A move. A fucking trophy I’d mount to prove I’d won the game Giovanni started.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak. That silence is worse than any curse. It leaves me alone with my own voice, my own ruin.
I rake a hand through my hair, dragging nails across my scalp until I almost draw blood. My chest heaves. My lungs fight me. “But then you bled for your son. For my war. And I—” The words die, clawing at my throat.
Memory slices through me—her body collapsing in the rain, my hands red and useless, the taste of panic on my tongue. It takes my knees out before I realize I’ve fallen. The rug scrapes my palms, the desk looming above me like judgment.
Me, Emiliano Maritz, on the fucking floor.
She leans forward, her face shadowed in lamplight, her voice steady as steel. “Say it.”
The two words gut me. I should be able to lie. I should twist them into power, make her bend. But tonight, I can’t.
My voice is hoarse, raw, torn from a place I never let anyone touch. “I love you.” The words taste like blood. Like surrender. “And it’s destroying me.”
Her breath catches, sharp. I see it—the flicker in her eyes. Not victory. Not cruelty. Something more dangerous. Something I’ve spent my life avoiding, because if she claims it, I’m finished.
My fists press into the floor, shaking with rage I can’t direct at her, only at myself. “I swore I’d never need anyone. And now I can’t fucking breathe without you.”
The study holds the silence like scripture, heavy and damning.
