Page 41 of Queen

Santino stands front and center, like he’s the one holding court now. His cassock is blacker than sin, buttoned all the way to the throat, but the look in his eyes isn’t holy. It’s judgment sharpened to a blade.

Romeo’s propped against the wall, rolling a toothpick across his teeth and flicking his lighter open and shut in lazy defiance, the small snap of metal echoing in the marble hall.

Dante says nothing. Doesn’t have to. The way his gaze cuts over me is enough to pin me in place, a predator deciding if I’m worth the effort to kill.

Santino steps forward, slow and deliberate. “You bring your bastard into our father’s house again, and I swear to God—”

I hold his stare, letting the venom in his voice wash over me. “Say his name.”

His nostrils flare.

“My son. Say it.”

The silence stretches until the lighter clicks again—open, shut, open—like a clock ticking down to something ugly.

Santino finally breathes the word. “Guido.”

It drips from his tongue like a curse. And God help me, the sound of it twists in my chest. I don’t know what cuts deeper—his hatred or the way his jaw clenches just like Giovanni’s when he wanted to make me bleed without laying a hand on me.

“You don’t get to talk about him like that,” I say, my voice low but steady.

Romeo laughs under his breath. “Touchy.”

Dante shifts, just enough for me to see his hand resting on the banister—his father’s ring glinting under the chandelier. Another reminder that everything in this house, even the air, belongs to them. Not me. Never me.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Santino warns, stepping in so close I can see the faint shadow of a cross pendant under his collar. “You don’t belong here. You never did.”

I lean in just enough for him to hear the bite in my voice. “Then maybe you should ask yourself why your father kept bringing me back.”

For a split second, his eyes flicker. Then it’s gone, shuttered behind the priest’s mask again.

Romeo’s lighter clicks shut. “Careful, brother. She bites.”

Dante still doesn’t speak, but his stare follows me as I turn away. I feel it burning between my shoulder blades, a silent promise that this is far from over.

And he’s right.

Because standing in front of Giovanni’s sons now, I realize something dangerous—coming back here wasn’t about ghosts. It was about war.

And the first shots have already been fired.

The Threat Behind the Blessing

The marble floor feels colder under my heels now, the chill rising like it wants to anchor me in place. My pulse is jagged from the exchange with Santino in the foyer, but I force my spine straighter. I won’t let him—or any of them—see me flinch.

“I didn’t come back here to fight with you,” I say, letting my voice carry just enough to reach all three of them. “Giovanni left everything to me—this house, this legacy—for a reason.”

Romeo pushes off the wall, rolling his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. The lighter clicks open and shut again, sparks flashing in rhythm with his smirk. “He also left us with a dead body and no explanation.”

The words hit like a sucker punch—part accusation, part bait. I refuse to bite. My gaze shifts back to Santino.

He steps forward, cassock whispering around his ankles, closing the gap until I can smell the faint trace of incense clinging to him. Not the kind they burn at weddings, sweet and harmless. This is the heavy kind—the funeral kind, thickand suffocating, the kind that clings in confessionals and never washes out.

His voice drops low, meant for me alone. “You’ll never be one of us. You were never our mother. You were his whore.”

The word detonates between us. For a moment, the house itself seems to echo it back.

My hand moves before my brain catches up. The crack of my palm against his cheek snaps through the vaulted ceiling like a gunshot. My skin burns with the impact, the sting buzzing up my arm.