Page 90 of Queen
We step into the courtyard. The air tightens, silence thick enough to suffocate. Every capo, every soldier, every whispering eye is on us.
Emiliano’s voice crashes like thunder. “Zina Rivas.” He spits my name like venom, like it poisons his tongue. “You shame this house. You disgrace this family’s legacy. You are unfit to stand beside me.”
Gasps ripple through the crowd, the sound sharp as blades leaving sheaths.
My throat burns, but I force my chin high. This is theater. A bloodied play staged for traitors in the shadows. They’ll believe it because we make it believable.
I rip the ring from my finger—his ring, Giovanni’s ring, the weight of two kings pressed into one—and fling it into the mudat his boots. The sound is small, a dull clink, but inside me it detonates like a bomb.
His face is carved from stone. Cold. Merciless. “You were never a Queen,” he snarls, stepping closer, towering over me like a storm that wants to break my bones. “Just a pawn dressed in silk.”
My knees almost buckle—not at the words, but at the look. Controlled. Empty. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t falter, doesn’t let the mask slip. And for one sickening moment, I almost believe it myself.
The crowd shifts. Guards avert their eyes. Some glance at me with pity, as if they’re watching a woman flayed alive. And from above, Santino watches from the balcony, his smirk slicing me open. He believes every word. He thinks the empire is fracturing—and that belief is exactly what we need.
But Romeo stands near the gates, fists clenched, jaw tight. His eyes flash with fury, with pity, with loyalty. He knows. He sees the act for what it is. His silence is a vow: he’ll guard the secret.
The weight of every gaze presses down. I make them believe it too. My voice cracks, breaking like glass for all to hear. “I regret ever stepping foot in this house.”
Emiliano’s roar shakes the air. “Then leave it!” He turns his back on me, his dismissal as final as a death sentence.
My heart splinters beneath my ribs, bleeding in silence. But my face doesn’t falter. I turn slowly, deliberately, every step echoing like execution. Behind me, the kingdom sees a Queen shattered.
Only Emiliano and I know the truth: today’s betrayal is our greatest act of devotion.
And yet, as Santino’s smirk widens above us, a chill cuts through me. Because performances have a price. And this one may cost more than either of us can pay.
Goodbye, My Kingdom
The car’s engine hums low as it devours the black road stretching away from the Rivas estate. The headlights carve pale tunnels through the dark, but all I see is the house shrinking in the rearview mirror. A ghost. A prison. My kingdom of ruin fading into night.
Guido’s hand rests in mine, small and cold, his fingers stiff as bone. He hasn’t spoken since Emiliano’s voice thundered across the courtyard, stripping me of a crown we both knew was never his to give. My boy doesn’t understand subterfuge. But he understands betrayal. Every lie, every barb, every staged curse—we didn’t just play it for the crowd. We carved it into him.
I squeeze his hand gently, but he doesn’t look up. His wide eyes are fixed on the glass, watching shadows flicker in the trees as if the monsters waiting in the dark might reveal themselves. His silence guts me more than the performance itself.
Inside, something fractures. Once I thought the crown on my head was armor. Tonight it feels like a noose wound tight around my son’s neck.
I bend, whispering into the dim space between us, my voice raw. “Goodbye.” Guido stirs but doesn’t speak. My throat burns. I’m not saying goodbye to Emiliano—not truly. What I’m leavingbehind is the woman I was forced to be: the widow dressed in ash, the queen they all feared but never loved.
“The queen you feared is dead,” I murmur, the words jagged glass in my mouth. “But the mother you provoked just woke up.”
The driver doesn’t speak. He’s one of Emiliano’s loyalists, chosen for this exile because silence is the highest form of respect. The tires hiss over wet asphalt, carrying us farther from the kingdom we staged a war to protect. With every mile, the estate vanishes deeper into the dark, swallowed by trees that look like soldiers standing guard.
For a heartbeat, I want to scream. To tear the air apart with grief, with rage, with every unspoken vow rotting in my chest. But queens don’t scream. Mothers don’t either—not when their child is trembling beside them like a hunted animal. So I bury the sound in my ribs. I become steel.
Guido leans his head against my arm. I stroke his hair, damp with sweat, sticky with fear, and my vow solidifies like iron in fire. They will never touch him again. Not the De Lucas. Not Santino. Not any snake crawling through Emiliano’s empire.
Let the world believe I’ve been broken, humiliated, cast out. Let them think I surrendered. I’ll wear exile like a cloak if it keeps Guido breathing.
But the truth is sharper. Simpler. I will burn every goddamn kingdom to ash before I let them take my son from me.
The car pushes on toward the coast, the night pressing close. Every mile strips away another piece of who I was. But with every mile, I become something more dangerous. Because I am no longer a queen trying to rule.
I am a mother preparing for war.
A Crown Buried in the Sand
The coastal air bites colder than steel. Each gust sweeps in from the black sea, lifting my hair like ghost fingers, carrying the salt-stink of rot and storms. The safehouse crouches behind us—a stone box built for hiding, not for living. Nothing about it feels like home. That’s the point.
