Page 30 of Queen

We don’t speak in Italian. Not in these walls. Not when I don’t know who’s listening. We speak in Sicilian—low, sharp,each syllable cutting between us like a blade passed hand to hand.

“U lupu si movi.” The wolf moves.

I lean back, fingers steepled, watching him over the tops of my knuckles. “Chi l’ha vistu?” Who saw him?

“U me amicu di Palermo.Says the man’s been in Messina… asking about the night Giovanni died.”

The night Giovanni died is a lockbox no one’s supposed to have the key to. A night sealed in blood and shadow.

“Nomu?” My voice doesn’t lift, but the air feels heavier for it.

Vittore’s mouth tightens. “Isadora.”

The name lands like a drop of oil in water—dark, spreading, impossible to contain. I haven’t heard it in over twenty years, not without venom or warning following it. And yet here it is, alive in the room again.

From behind Vittore, I catch it—a whisper of movement.

I don’t turn. Don’t need to. She’s there. Zina.

She must’ve come back for something—maybe an argument she’s been polishing like a knife. Instead, she’s walked straight into something sharper.

I shift my gaze to the glass balcony doors. In the reflection, she’s a shadow framed by the hall light—back straight, head tilted just enough to tell me she’s listening. That stillness is dangerous.

She knows the name.

Her eyes find mine through the reflection, a silent demand burning there. No questions—yet. But they’re building in her, heavy as a storm pressing down on the air.

Vittore keeps talking—details about Messina, movements, whispers in back rooms—but my focus is on her. On the way her fingers curl against the doorframe, as if holding herself there takes effort.

I stand slowly, and that tiny motion makes her retreat. She slips away without a sound, leaving only the faint scent of her perfume and the echo of the name between us.

Isadora.It doesn’t belong in this house. But now it’s here. And it’s not leaving.

7

zina

Defiance Meets Surrender

Itell myself I won’t go back. That I’ll stay in the guest room at the far end of the hall, lock the door, and put as much distance as I can between us.

But my feet betray me.

The house is quiet, shadows stretching long across the marble as I cross the corridor. My hand hesitates at his door—not because I’m afraid of him, but because I’m afraid of myself.

The man is poison. And I’ve already swallowed too much.

When I push the door open, he’s there—shirtless now, sprawled in a leather chair like he owns the night. The lamplight paints gold across his chest, the dark ink on his skin shifting with the slow movement of his breathing.

“You couldn’t stay away,” Emiliano says, voice low, like velvet dragged over gravel.

“I’m here because I want answers,” I snap, though it sounds weak even to me.

He doesn’t get up. He just crooks a finger, and somehow I’m walking toward him. “You already know the answers Zina.You just don’t want to admit them.”

I stop in front of him, but he closes the space for me, his hands gripping my hips and pulling me between his knees. Heat radiates from him, a pulseI can feel through the thin silk of my dress.

“This,” he murmurs, sliding a palm up my side, fingers brushing just under my breast, “isn’t hate.”