Page 50 of Queen

My hand drifts across the pillow, searching for something to ground me. That’s when I feel it—the edge of paper, sharp against my skin. My stomach knots as I pull it free.

It isn’t sealed. No envelope. Just folded once, neat.

A letter.

The handwriting makes my chest seize. Not his. Mine.

No. Worse.

It’s my fucking journal. Pages I scrawled at fifteen, hunched on a cot in the Calabrese orphanage, trying to bleed my loneliness onto paper before it devoured me whole. Words I swore no one would ever read. Words that belonged only to me.

But they aren’t alone anymore.

Dark ink curls through the margins—his ink. Emiliano’s handwriting, precise and merciless, dissecting every confession I ever made to myself. Mocking some. Answering others. His thoughts like barbed wire threaded through mine.

My eyes snag on one entry, one I remember scribbling through tears:I feel like a ghost in my own skin.

His note beside it:Not a ghost. A queen in the making.

The air vanishes from my lungs. He’s had this all along. He’s had me all along.

“Motherfucker,” I whisper, my voice ragged. The page trembles in my hands as fury coils hot and fast inside me. He’s been inside my head since before I knew what love was. Before I knew whathewas.

The rage surges so sharp my vision blurs. I shove the door open, heels striking the marble like gunshots as I storm down the hall. The letter burns in my grip, proof of a violation that makes me want to claw my skin raw just to erase his touch from it.

And of course, he’s there—leaning against the balustrade like he’s been waiting for me to detonate. Shadows carve his face into something cruel and beautiful, the kind of face that dares you to strike it.

I slam the paper against his chest. “How long?” My voice is raw, shredded. “How long have you been watching me?”

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even glance at the words. His eyes pin me, dark and fathomless.

“Since before you even knew what danger was,” he says, calm. Too calm.

The bottom drops out of me. The air leaves my lungs like a punch, but I force steel into my spine.

“You—” My throat burns. “You had no right. That was mine. My thoughts. My life.”

His mouth curves, not into a smile but into something worse. A dare. “Your life has never been yours, Zina. Not since the first time I saw you. You just didn’t know it yet.”

My pulse hammers so loud it drowns everything else. Betrayal. Rage. The memory of a girl who once thought words on paper were the only safe place she had.

“Fuck you,” I spit, because it’s all I have left.

His reply is soft. Lethal. “Already did.”

The world tilts. I don’t know if I want to run—or tear him apart with my bare hands.

The Past Resurfaces

I don’t wait for him to follow. I march ahead, the letter still clenched so tight it crumples under my grip. I need distance. Walls. A door. Anything to close between us before I shatter.

But Emiliano doesn’t chase like a man desperate to explain himself. He prowls. Slow, silent, letting me feel the weight of him even when I can’t see him.

By the time I shove into his office, the air already feels poisoned. Smaller. Thicker. Like the room itself bends to him.I throw the letter onto his desk. It lands bent and battered, my handwriting staring up at me like the ghost of the girl I used to be.

“You stole this from me,” I snarl, my voice raw. “You’ve been in my head since I was a child.”

He shuts the door behind him, deliberate, then strides to his chair and lowers himself into it like a king on his throne. His gaze doesn’t flicker to the letter. It stays locked on me.