Page 1 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

zina

The Crown and the Coffin

I sit at the head of Giovanni’s table like I belong here. Like I earned this fucking seat.

The marble beneath my palms is ice. The silverware is lined up like scalpels, gleaming under chandeliers that glitter like a mouth of diamond teeth waiting to bite.

This room has always been a stage for war disguised as breakfast—heavy drapes, colder air, portraits that watch without blinking.

Even the floor remembers blood. I can feel it in the stone, a hum under the soles of my heels.

Four sons. Four enemies.

Santino glares at me like he’s holding a knife under the table.

He sits straight-backed, shoulders squared, knuckles pale where his fist curls on linen.

Romeo slouches sideways, ankle hooked over a knee, eyes dancing like he’s watching a particularly entertaining execution.

Dante’s face is carved into something unreadable.

He breathes like a statue—slow, measured, dangerous.

And Guido—my son—won’t even look up from the edge of his plate.

He studies an invisible speck like it’s easier than seeing me.

I smooth a crease in my black dress, a widow’s silk that fits like sin and armor at once. Milan’s best. Giovanni would have approved just to disapprove. He used to say funerals gave the dead too much attention and the living too little truth.

Now he’s the one rotting in the ground, and I’m here, breathing his air.

No one touches the food. Eggs go cold. Coffee grows a skin. Crystal glasses catch the light and throw it back hard. The staff form a silent line along the wall—neutral faces, calm hands, fear leaking out at the edges of their posture. They’re well-trained. Well-paid. Paid in fear.

The stillness is a chokehold.

Santino leans forward, elbows braced like a judge about to deliver sentence. His voice breaks the silence like a hammer through glass. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I don’t blink. Don’t shift. I reach for the teacup with steady fingers, letting porcelain kiss saucer. Lift. Sip. Set it down. A ritual, not a tremor.

“What I should or shouldn’t do has never been up to you,” I say, my voice silk over razor. “Ever.”

A muscle jumps in his jaw—the same vein that used to throb in Giovanni’s temple when a deal soured. Lineage is a mirror that never lies.

Romeo lets a crooked grin slice his face. “Jesus, Zina. Couldn’t even wait a week to start playing queen?”

My fingers twitch toward the steak knife beside my plate. A breath, a promise. Just enough motion for him to notice—and enjoy.

“You want to talk timing?” I ask, soft enough to draw blood. “Let’s start with the will. Or have you already forgotten your father left all this to me?”

“Lies,” Santino spits.

“I have the papers.”

He slams his hand against the table. The crystal rings like a threat. “This house. That name. This empire. It was built for us. Not for you.”

“And yet,” I say, rising, letting the chair legs scrape back like the opening of a vault, “here I am.” I let the room feel the weight of each word. “Wearing the crown your father gave me. Sitting at his table. You want me gone? Do it like a man. Don’t bark across the fucking china.”

Romeo whistles low, delighted by the blood scent. “Careful, brother. Step-mama’s got bite.”

Guido shifts. He keeps staring down, lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. Won’t look at me. Won’t speak. That hurts worse than Santino’s rage.

I walk the length of the table. No one moves. No one dares. I stop behind Guido and rest a hand lightly on his shoulder—as much to anchor myself as to touch him.

“I’m still his wife,” I say. “You can hate me all you want. But I was the one holding him when he died.”

Silence falls a second time, heavier than the first. It’s a second funeral. It’s consent.

I leave the dining room with my head high and the weight of a kingdom pressed against my spine.

A Throne Built on Ashes

Santino doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe. Then: “You fed him to the wolves, didn’t you?”

He wants spectacle. He wants me to crack.

My spine stays straight. Chin high. Eyes locked. “If I had,” I say, folding my hands with careful elegance on linen that still smells faintly of starch and smoke, “you wouldn’t be sitting here accusing me. You’d be lying next to him.”

Romeo’s mouth curves, venom sweet on his tongue. “Tell us, stepmother. Are you going to cry? Or just fuck your way to the top again?”

My jaw ticks. My fingers shift on the napkin, a single betrayal I kill as soon as it starts.

Flash—Giovanni on the floor, body twitching, warmth bleeding through my silk blouse. His hand in mine, grip weak but intentional. His eyes, for once, not fire. Not command. Love. And resignation. The memory is a blade I keep in the dark because it cuts cleanest when I need it to.

“You think I killed him,” I say, voice cold enough to burn fingertips, “but none of you loved him. You didn’t know how. You only saw his power and waited for him to fall.”

Santino’s chair claws the marble as he surges to his feet, fists clenched. “You goddamn bitch—”

Dante’s hand clamps on his forearm before he clears the table. “Sit down,” he growls—the first words he’s offered all morning. Gravel and command. “This is still Father’s house.”

I rise, unhurried, every inch a coronation. “No,” I say, and watch the word hit them. “It’s mine now.”

Flame meets gasoline. They look at me like I just declared war. Maybe I did.

Santino’s stare tries to cut me in half.

Romeo sinks deeper in his chair, entertained, feeding on chaos like it’s dessert.

Dante releases Santino but doesn’t relax; his stillness is calculation, not peace.

Guido keeps his eyes on the edge of his plate, boy-small, man-quiet.

He isn’t inside this room. He’s somewhere no one can follow.

I don’t sit again. I take the untouched goblet by my place, tilt it. Red wine spills across Giovanni’s pristine white tablecloth—slow at first, then greedy—staining thread like a wound opening up.

“I’ll have the staff replace it,” I say. “You can keep pretending this house belongs to him. The deed says otherwise.”

“You think that makes you queen?” Santino sneers, hate making him ugly.

“No,” I say, letting the words harden to iron. “I buried the king. That makes me something much worse.”

A Widow Among Wolves

The hallway stretches like a mausoleum, every step echoing, every wall hung with a version of a history that does not include me.

Giovanni’s face stares back—smiling in one frame, scowling in the next, crowned in another—caught mid-laugh with a cigar, mid-whisper with a bishop, mid-lie with a rival he turned into a friend.

The further I walk, the heavier the silence gets, as if the house itself has decided I’m an infection to wall off.

Guido’s door is cracked. My fingers graze the painted wood—blue, chipped near the handle—before I push it wider.

He’s sitting cross-legged on the carpet, back to me, hunched over a sketchpad. Pencils spread like fallen soldiers. The late morning light slants in across his shoulder, catching dust motes that turn the air soft. He doesn’t flinch when I step inside. He’s learned how not to.

“Guido,” I say softly.

He doesn’t answer. He draws a line. Slashes it with another.

The room still smells faintly of Giovanni’s aftershave—amber and cedarwood—and the plastic of new toys no one has touched. The bed is made too tight. The window latch is secured with a second screw—my addition. Bars beneath the sill—Giovanni’s. I taste metal at the back of my throat. Memory. Fear.

I kneel behind him, careful, a predator trying to be a mother. “You didn’t eat,” I say. “You didn’t come to the table.”

“They hate you,” he mutters. Quiet voice, sharp words. “They said you were just a whore who tricked him.”

The words land. They always do. I swallow the sting. “Your uncles are angry,” I say. “They want someone to blame.”

He turns his head a fraction. I see one eye, dark as his father’s. “Is it true?”

My throat locks. “No,” I say. “I loved your father.”

He looks back to the paper. I see it now—black lines like prison bars, a square that could be a window, could be a door, could be a chessboard. A knight scratched half-formed in the corner. My chest tightens. The past is a patient hunter; it knows every way back.

I reach for him. My hand hovers, then rests on his hair—gentle, careful not to spook him. “I love you,” I whisper, bending to press a kiss to the crown of his head. He doesn’t lean in. He doesn’t pull away. Neutral is a victory now. I take it and pretend it feeds me.

When I leave, I pull the door almost closed, leaving that same small crack. A promise. An apology.

The master suite breathes out cold as I walk in. Luxury doubles as isolation: too much bed, too much closet, too much silence poured over every surface until it shines. The balcony doors are shut, sea light diffused through glass. The world outside keeps moving. The world in here has stopped.

Giovanni’s black suit still hangs where he left it—pressed, waiting for a meeting he never kept. His favorite. Palermo on our skin at midnight, the balcony below us hot with the city’s pulse, his hand at my waist while he lied beautifully about forever. We danced to a song only he could hear.

I run my fingers down the wool. The scent hits me—warmth, power, smoke, him—and something inside me shatters clean.

I bury my face in the jacket and collapse, the sob tearing loose before I can strangle it, wrung from the deepest part of me like blood from an open wound. I clutch his sleeves and curl on the closet floor, silk grinding against tile.

“I hate you for dying,” I breathe into the lapel. “I hate you for leaving me to clean up your mess.”

Minutes pass. Or hours. Time collapses into the sound of my breathing and the drum of my heart.