Page 2 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

When I can move, I crawl to the safe tucked behind a row of ties the color of bruises. My hands still shake as I punch in the code. 0-8-0-1—my birthday. His favorite joke, a way to keep me near while pretending it meant nothing.

The door clicks.

Passports. Cash. The .38 revolver with a new polish. A velvet box with a ring I don’t wear. Papers that say what everyone already knows but refuses to admit.

And a letter.

An envelope already torn where I opened it days ago. My nail traces the name on the front, a habitual sin. Emiliano Maritz . Even his handwriting leans like a man braced to strike.

I slide the letter out and hold it without reading, the way you hold a live wire you’ve already survived once. The paper hums in my hand. This is what power tastes like: ash in your mouth, guilt in your throat, and the devil waiting at your door.

“Not today,” I tell the empty room. The dead. The living. Myself.

I slide the letter back into its sleeve and return it to the dark, where it belongs—until I decide it doesn’t.

I close the safe. The metal seal thunks home, final, necessary. I stand in the quiet closet, fingers pressed to my sternum as if I can hold the new crown in place by force. The queen they think I am is only the shadow of the one I need to be.

Down the hall, somewhere I cannot reach, Guido turns a page. In the dining room, Santino plots the shape of my execution with his coffee spoon. Romeo laughs at a joke he hasn’t told yet. Dante counts the exits with his eyes.

And in the ground outside, the king sleeps beneath marble while the chandeliers upstairs keep pretending they’re stars.

I square my shoulders. Wipe the wet from my face with the back of my hand. Fix the line of my dress like I’m smoothing the surface of a blade.

Let them come.

I will meet them all at the door.

The Devil’s Handwriting

The letter feels heavier than it should—just paper and ink, yet it pulses in my hand like a living vein cut from the devil himself.

I sit on the edge of the bed, the silk sheets cool against my thighs, the whole room pressing in like a trap. I unfold it again. The paper is creased, soft at the edges, worn thin from how many times I’ve read it. From how many times I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t.

His handwriting slants, sharp and elegant, just enough to make you wonder if he was smirking when he wrote it. Each line whispers arrogance, temptation, command.

You always knew how this would end, Zina.

My name—written like a curse. Or a vow carved into stone. The sound of his voice overlays the ink in my head, that low, predatory timbre that wraps around your throat and squeezes until you can’t breathe, until you’re nodding even when you should be screaming no.

He goes on about protection. About legacy. About keeping the families from tearing each other to pieces. Empty scaffolding to disguise the truth.

At its core, it isn’t an offer. It’s a claim.

Come willingly, or be consumed by the fire already at your feet.

The memory forces its way in, uninvited. His hands on my waist, calloused and unrelenting. Giovanni’s blood still drying beneath my nails. Emiliano’s shadow filling the doorway of the safehouse, his stare eating me alive.

“You’re not the good man he was,” I had spat, venom on my tongue.

He’d only laughed. “Exactly.”

And then he kissed me like a man who intended to break the world in half just to make me crawl back to him.

My grip tightens until the letter crumples in my hand, knuckles white, pulse hammering in my throat. Every line reeks of him—arrogance, seduction, violence wrapped in silk.

Marry me, Zina. Not for love. For legacy.

“Fuck you,” I hiss to the empty room.

I lurch to my feet and cross the room, tearing the paper straight down the middle. Then again. And again. The shreds scatter across the rug like ashes, like broken teeth. My breathing comes ragged, shallow. My hands don’t stop shaking.

It isn’t just a letter. It’s a leash. A noose slipped around my throat before I even realized I was standing in the gallows.

I stare at the scraps.

And then—like the fool he knows I am—I drop to my knees. One by one, I start pulling the pieces together. One strip of tape. Then another. My fingers tremble with every press.

Because I need it. Because I need him. Because the wolves are already clawing at these walls, and the devil, at least, keeps his promises.

When the last strip seals the page back into a fractured whole, I sit frozen, staring down at it. My crown might be made of silk and ash, but the truth is worse: Emiliano still owns a piece of me. And I fucking hate him for it.

Shadows Whisper

The phone feels heavier than the gun in Giovanni’s safe. I stare at it for a long time before dialing. Not him. Not yet.

The line clicks. “Ms. Rivas,” the lawyer says, clipped and professional, as if I’m nothing more than another client.

“It’s Mrs. Rivas.” My tone cuts like glass. “Giovanni never divorced me.”

A pause. “Of course. And per the will, the estate—both the mansion and controlling interest in Rivas Holdings—were left entirely in your name. No dispute there.”

“Then why the fuck am I getting notices that his sons are challenging it?”

Another pause, heavier this time. “They’ve filed an emergency injunction. They’re claiming undue influence. That you coerced Giovanni while he was medicated.”

My stomach lurches, breath leaving me sharp and fast. “That’s bullshit and they know it.”

“I agree. But it will take time to resolve. Court hearings. Discovery. It won’t be pretty.”

Pretty. The word grates like rust on bone. Nothing in this empire was ever pretty. Blood and glass—that’s the Rivas inheritance.

I end the call without another word, the silence flooding in. My grip on the phone is tight enough to snap it in half. I walk to Giovanni’s safe and punch in the code—1224. Christmas Eve. The night he bound me to him with vows in Latin and lies in Italian.

The door opens with a slow, traitorous groan.

Files. Bank keys. Passports.

And at the back, a silver frame facedown. My pulse spikes as I pull it free.

It’s older than I remembered. The colors are faded, but the faces are burned into me.

Me. Giovanni. Emiliano.

All three of us smiling. Glasses raised. Arms slung like lovers in some cruel pantomime of family. Back then, only one of them had touched me. The wrong one. The right one. Both truths scrape at my ribs.

The edges of the photo are worn. Someone looked at this often.

My fingers tremble. My throat tightens. Maybe I was the traitor first.

I shove the frame back, slam the safe shut, lock it.

But ghosts don’t stay buried.

At the vanity, I catch my reflection in the soft light. I look haunted—not by Giovanni’s death, not by Emiliano’s letter, but by the choices that make me exactly who they think I am.

The number sits in my phone, unmarked. But I know it like I know the shape of his hand on my skin.

I tap it.

One ring. Two.

My thumb hovers over End Call .

Before the third, I delete it.

Gone. But not gone. Because he’s already winning. Not with the letter. Not with the will. With the fact that I can’t delete him from my mind.

The Widow Makes Her Move

The storm rolls in like an omen.

It’s past midnight, and sleep has abandoned me. I don’t even try. The house is silent in a way that isn’t peace—more like a warning. The kind of stillness that comes in the eye of a hurricane, when you know the real violence hasn’t hit yet.

Rain pounds the glass in relentless bursts, each drop sharp as a bullet casing.

Wind claws at the windows, howling like the ghosts Giovanni left me with.

Lightning splits the sky, skeletal and merciless, washing the city skyline in stark white flashes.

The view looks less like a city and more like a morgue lit by police cameras.

I stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of the master suite—Giovanni’s sanctuary, his throne when the boardrooms bored him. Now it’s mine. I hate how cavernous it feels when I’m alone in it, how the silence exaggerates every inch of distance between me and the man buried in the ground.

The letter sits on the table behind me. Torn once. Patched back together with shaking fingers. Its jagged edges sneer at me whenever I glance back.

You always knew how this would end.

The words hover in the air like cigarette smoke.

I raise the glass of scotch to my lips. The liquor burns, searing all the way down, but the fire inside me doesn’t settle. My hand looks steady from the outside—perfect, unshakable queen—but inside, I am vibrating, rattling apart thread by thread.

All day, I wore the crown. Sat at Giovanni’s table. Faced his sons without bowing, without blinking. Every breath coated in venom, every word a blade. I kept the kingdom on my shoulders like it weighed nothing.

But here? Alone in this mausoleum? There’s no mask thick enough to hide the fracture lines.

I turn toward the table. The phone lies beside the letter, its black screen pulsing in my peripheral vision like a dare. My reflection ghosts across it, pale, unsleeping, hungry.

This is the moment that separates the broken from the ruthless.

And I was never built to stay broken.

My hand closes around it. One tap, and his number surfaces. Of course it’s there. I never deleted it, not really. Erasure is a lie I tell myself when I want to sleep.

I press call.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

Then his voice.

“I’ve been waiting.”

Smooth. Calm. Too calm. Like he already knew I’d fold. Like he always knows.

Lightning flashes again, so close it bleeds through the glass, bleaching his phantom into my vision.

I close my eyes. My pulse is a war drum in my throat.

“I’ll do it.” The words fall out bitter as rust.

Silence. I can see his smirk without needing to. He’s savoring it. Victory, possession, inevitability.

But I don’t let him breathe it into triumph.

I hang up.

The screen goes black, but my hand lingers. My heart is a storm in my chest, every beat daring me to regret.

I walk back to the window and drain the glass. Scotch swallows me like smoke and fire.

Another flash of lightning. This one so bright it blinds, thunder rolling hard enough to rattle the floorboards beneath my bare feet.

I set the glass down, harder than I intend. The crystal trembles against the wood, refusing to shatter. I almost wish it had.

My fingers press to the cold window, tracing the rain-blurred city. The glass fogs under my breath, clouding the skyline.

Tomorrow, everything changes.

Let them whisper. Let them plot. Let them sharpen their knives.

I’ve already signed my pact with the devil.

But they’ll learn soon enough—I don’t sign to surrender.

This time, I’m the one coming for blood.