Page 13 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

I stare at the vase and think of all the years I’ve been told to behave. To smile when I wanted to scream. To bend instead of break. To be grateful for golden chains because they glittered.

Fuck that.

My fingers curl around the smooth neck of the crystal.

It’s cool, heavy, alive with the weight of a fortune.

Expensive enough to feed a family for a year, probably two.

I lift it, muscles flexing, my heartbeat roaring like a drum.

For a second, my grip trembles. For a second, I almost set it back down. Almost.

Then I let go.

The sound is glorious. A violent, shattering symphony—glass exploding across marble, glittering pieces skittering beneath the runner, sharp and gleaming like the aftermath of a war. The crash echoes down the corridor, a scream of defiance I couldn’t voice with words.

I don’t move. I stand in the storm of broken crystal, chest rising and falling too fast, drinking in the scent of dust and faint iron from my own blood.

A sliver of glass has bitten into the sole of my foot, sharp enough to sting, but I don’t flinch.

Pain is better than silence. Pain means I still control something.

Footsteps. Quick ones.

The staff appear first—two maids with wide, terrified eyes, hands pressed to their mouths like they’ve walked in on a murder scene.

Then the house steward, his face blanching as he freezes in the doorway, the calculation already flickering in his gaze—whether to clean this up before Emiliano sees, or to run and warn him.

Too late.

He comes slower than the rest, as if he’s had all the time in the world. Emiliano moves like the storm belongs to him, black suit, collar open, hands buried in his pockets like he doesn’t need them to keep order. His gaze slides over the wreckage, then up to me, sharp as the shards under my feet.

He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t demand.

“Explain.”

One word, sharp enough to draw blood.

I don’t.

Instead, I take a step forward. The glass crunches under my foot, slicing again into the already raw cut.

A bright spike of pain shoots up my leg, but I keep my face carved in marble.

I walk barefoot through the wreckage I created, the sound of shards grinding beneath my weight almost as satisfying as the crash itself.

I don’t look back. I don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing my face.

The silence behind me is heavier now, the kind that says this isn’t over—not by a long shot. And that’s exactly the point.

The Punishment is the Point

Time slips strangely in this house. An hour, maybe more—I can’t tell. The clock on the wall ticks too softly, the night outside too dark. I sit cross-legged on the edge of the bed, barefoot still, the sting in my cut foot a dull reminder of what I’ve done.

I haven’t turned on a light. The only glow comes from the city beyond the balcony doors, fractured into pieces by the glass panes. The air smells faintly of smoke and lilies, the scent Emiliano laces through every room as though it brands the walls themselves.

The door is already open when he appears.

I don’t hear his footsteps—just the subtle shift in the air, the faintest trace of cologne carried in before his shadow fills the doorway. He never knocks. He doesn’t need to. He moves like a man who already owns everything he enters.

He leans against the frame like it belongs to him. Like I belong to him.

No storm in his face. No raised voice. Just stillness. Controlled. Dangerous.

“You didn’t run,” he says finally, his tone almost conversational.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“That makes one of us,” he mutters, stepping further in.

I brace myself for the explosion—rage, shouting, threats.

Instead, he claims the armchair across from my bed, settling into it like he has all night to dismantle me.

He doesn’t cross his arms. Doesn’t raise his chin.

Just looks at me, steady and unblinking, like I’m a puzzle he’ll break apart piece by piece.

His eyes find mine in the dim light. “Do you know what that vase was worth?”

I don’t answer. Silence is my rebellion.

He nods slowly, as if that’s exactly the response he expected. “Figures. You think breaking something proves you’re in control. You think it means you can still make choices in a place where most of your choices have already been stripped away.”

My jaw tightens.

His voice drops lower, colder, each word slicing clean. “But what you really smashed wasn’t mine. It was yours.”

The words hit harder than the slap I gave him in the garden.

I blink, caught off guard.

“Your dignity,” he says, his tone sharp as a bullet.

“You think you’re making a statement, Zina, but all you’ve done is bleed for nothing.

You’re standing in the wreckage you created, proving to everyone watching that you don’t know how to survive in this world without tearing yourself apart first.”

It’s a clean strike. Below the belt. I feel my lip tremble before I can stop it, and I bite down hard until I taste blood, forcing the weakness back.

“At least Giovanni…” I start, but the words tear through anyway. “At least Giovanni didn’t try to rewrite who I was.”

His head tilts, slow, deliberate, the faintest gleam of something cruel in his eyes. “No,” he says finally. “He just kept you in a smaller cage and let you believe the leash was your idea.”

My chest tightens, but I don’t look away. I won’t give him that.

The quiet between us stretches like glass about to crack.

And I know he isn’t finished.

A Shift in the Power

His gaze changes. Not softer—nothing about Emiliano is ever soft—but deeper, like he’s peeling back a layer I never agreed to shed. The weight of it makes my skin feel too tight, my heartbeat drumming loud in my ears, every pulse a countdown I can’t control.

He rises from the armchair with a slowness that feels deliberate. No rush, no sound beyond the whisper of his shoes sliding against the rug, and still the air seems to thicken with each step he takes toward me.

I don’t move. I tell myself it’s defiance—that I’m rooted here to show him I won’t flinch—but the truth coils in my stomach like smoke. It feels more like paralysis.

He stops just close enough that the heat of him seeps into my skin, the faint trace of whiskey curling from his breath like temptation and threat in one. His eyes drop—not to my face, but to my hand.

I’d forgotten about the cut until now. The sting flares fresh when his fingers close around mine. His thumb turns my palm upward, slow and deliberate, like he’s claiming a piece of me I hadn’t realized I’d exposed.

The blood has dried into a thin red line, stark against the pale of my skin. He brushes it with the side of his finger, and the touch is so light it almost feels kind. Almost. But nothing with him is ever without purpose.

Our breathing matches without meaning to, the air between us pulled tighter, wound sharp as a wire ready to snap.

When he speaks, his voice is lower, stripped of the mocking edge from before. “Why do you want to hurt?”

The question lands deeper than I expect. I hate that it sounds genuine. I hate more that I don’t have an answer ready on my tongue.

Because pain is easier than being numb? Because it reminds me I’m still alive? Because if I bleed on my own terms, maybe no one else gets to decide when I break?

The thoughts twist through me, dangerous and unspoken. My silence becomes its own confession.

He studies my face for a long moment, eyes mapping every flicker I try to bury. Then he lifts my hand higher.

And kisses my palm.

It isn’t gentle. His mouth is warm, his breath hot against my skin, the pressure firm enough to make my pulse leap in my wrist.

I flinch, instinctive, but I don’t pull away. And he doesn’t let go.

His eyes lock on mine as he lowers my hand. Something sharp and unspoken threads between us, knife-edge dangerous, yet carrying a weight I can’t name. Possession. Promise. Maybe both.

Then he turns, heading for the door without a single parting shot. No lecture. No threat. Just the latch catching behind him, final and heavy in the silence.

I sit there long after he’s gone, staring at my hand like it doesn’t belong to me anymore. The skin burns where his mouth touched, a mark invisible but undeniable.

Something in me has cracked again—but this time it isn’t the kind of break that lets the anger spill free. It’s quieter. Deeper. And I know it’s far more dangerous.

Bargaining with Ghosts

I find him in the library.

Not pacing. Not reading. Just sitting at the far end of a leather sofa, elbows resting on his knees, eyes fixed on the fire like he’s waiting for it to answer questions no one else will ever hear.

The room smells of old paper, tobacco, and smoke. The kind of stillness that presses heavy on the ribs, warning you that any step forward could disturb something best left untouched. But I don’t hesitate. If I stop moving, I’ll start thinking. And I’m not ready for the weight of those thoughts.

“Emiliano.” My voice is clipped, even. Each syllable pressed flat until it almost passes for polite.

His eyes lift slowly, like I’ve intruded on a conversation he wasn’t having out loud. He doesn’t speak. Just watches me cross the rug, gaze moving over me as if he’s taking measurements, deciding where I fit into his design.

“I want to visit Giovanni’s grave.”

The words fall into the space between us like coins dropped onto marble—small, but loud enough to be impossible to ignore.

His expression doesn’t shift, but the air tightens, invisible wire stretched between us. “Why?”

“Because if I’m going to play the part you’ve written for me,” I answer, folding my hands in front of me like I’m standing in court, “then I need to close the last chapter first. Giovanni was my husband. That doesn’t disappear because you’ve decided to rewrite the story.”