Page 20 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

Her words knife clean through me. Every I miss you is a scar reopened, deliberate. She thought these words vanished into nothing. She thought she was safe once she crumpled the pages, tucked them out of sight, forgot them. But I didn’t let them go. I never let them go.

They’re mine.

I lower the page, my thumb brushing her signature like I could feel the heat of her pulse in the curve of each letter. “She was never yours,” I murmur, the words too soft for anyone but the shadows to hear. Then my voice hardens. “But she will be.”

I set the letter down with care, then push the pile aside.

The laptop hums to life, casting its pale glow across the desk.

Surveillance fills the screen—angles of corridors, staircases, corners of the Rivas estate rendered in grainy grayscale.

My eyes flick past them all until they land on the balcony.

Zina sits in the light of the fading day, Guido in her lap. She brushes his hair with slow fingers, gentler than I’ve ever seen her move, like she’s terrified of breaking him. He leans into her hand, head tipped back, eyes closed, trusting.

The sight punches a hole through my chest.

It’s nothing grand. Nothing violent. Just domestic. Ordinary. The kind of moment most men are too blind to treasure. And it’s everything I’ve ever been denied.

That should have been mine. Years ago.

The glow of the setting sun paints her in gold, wrapping her and the boy in light that looks too soft for this house, this name, this war. My pulse hammers. My chest tightens—not pain. Heat. Pressure that has nowhere to go but forward.

I lean back in the chair, steeple my fingers beneath my chin, and watch. Watch until the shadows swallow the frame, until the balcony empties and the night pulls its veil across the picture.

“Soon,” I whisper into the dark, tasting the word like both promise and threat. “You’ll see.”

The laptop clicks shut. The letters slide back into their secret grave, the silk ribbon biting tight again. The false panel closes, sealing them in. Locked. Safe.

Some men fall in love. Some men beg. Some men wait.

I don’t fall.I don’t beg.I don’t wait.

I take.

Seduction and Surrender

The storm arrives in the form of a slammed door. The glass in the frame rattles as Zina strides in, heels sharp against marble, every step a shot fired.

The USB drive glints in her hand, small but deadly, clutched like a blade.

“What the hell did you think you were doing with this?” Her voice lashes the room. Sharp. But under the sharpness, I hear the strain.

I finish the sip of whiskey I’ve been rolling on my tongue, savoring it, then set the glass down slow. Calm against her storm. “Listening,” I say. “You’d be amazed at the truths people spill when they think the dead won’t hear them.”

Her grip on the drive tightens, knuckles white. “What did he promise you?”

I step closer, each pace deliberate, my shadow swallowing hers across the floor. “That you’d hate me forever,” I say. My tone is flat, final. “And so far, he was right.”

Her chest rises fast. Her pulse beats in her throat. “You think this is a game?” Her voice is lower now, but the fury in it is fraying at the edges.

“No, Zina.” I let my hand brush her hip, testing, daring. “Games end. This doesn’t.”

She shoves me hard enough to rock me back, but not break me. Her eyes flash. “You’re a bastard.”

“I’ve never lied about that.”

The slap is faster than I expect. My cheek stings, burns. The sound ricochets off the shelves of leather-bound books and polished wood.

Before the echo dies, I’m on her.

Mouth on mouth. Heat crashing into heat. She tastes like fury, like fire, like the danger I’ve been chasing since the moment I let myself want her. Her hands tangle in my shirt, tearing at fabric, yanking me closer.

I grip her waist, pulling her close. She gasps, half protest, half surrender, and that sound ignites me.

The air between us crackles with unspoken truths, with desires we’re both too afraid to name.

I rip her dress down, the silk tearing with a sharp sound that echoes in the silence. Her breasts are freed, full and heavy, her nipples tight peaks begging for attention. I tug and pinch, rolling them between my fingers, listening to her moans, feeling her body arch into my touch.

She bites my lip, her anger warring with her need, but I tighten my grip on her throat, spinning her around to kneel on the cold marble.

She struggles, but I drag her back, ripping her panties, positioning her ass in full view of her pink lips.

Her skin is flushed, her breath coming in short gasps as I position myself behind her.

My cock plunges into her, deep and relentless, her screams a mix of pleasure and fright. The scent of her arousal heavy in the air. Her eyes are wild, her body trembling, but she doesn’t beg for mercy. She never does.

Her tightness gripping my shaft like a vice.

She cries out, gripping the edge of the desk, her body meeting my every thrust with a desperation that matches my own.

We thrust repeatedly towards each other.

My cock is a steel rod, pulsing and twitching with the need to be sheathed within her wet heat.

I slap her ass, once, twice, three times watching my cock thrust in and out of her wet lips. My finger finds the eye of her ass and begins to rotate around her opening, rubbing, circling, pushing inward until her anus gives in to my probing.

The sensation of her twitching side to side, arching, then going limp, coming undone, is intoxicating, a drug that mainlines to my cock, making it throb with the need to dive inside deeper.

I can feel her muscles fluttering around my cock, the telltale signs of her impending orgasm. I reach around, finding your clit with my fingers, and I work you mercilessly, until she’s shaking, screaming my name, until her pussy is convulsing around my cock, milking me.

I smile, a dark, predatory thing, as I pull her up to face me.

I grab her arms as she straddles my cock, her hips rocking back and forth with a rhythm that’s both urgent and deliberate.

Her hands grip my shoulders, her nails digging in as our climax builds, explosive and simultaneous.

I grip her hips, pulling her down hard onto me, my cock buried deep within her, her cunt still milking me with relentless greed.

I fill her, my release a roaring wave that crashes over me, leaving me breathless, spent.

Her screams of delight echo through the hall, her body convulsing as she comes, her juices dripping down my throbbing cock.

Her laughter mingles with pain and pleasure, the sound vibrating through me, raw and unfiltered.

She collapses on top of me, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her heart pounding against mine. I run my hands up her back, my fingers tangling in her hair, holding her close as the silence settles around us. The air is heavy with the musky, earthy, heavy scent of sex and sweat.

She stares at me, eyes bright with hate—or maybe something far more dangerous. She’s trying to remember every reason she should despise me. But her body has already betrayed her.

And that, more than anything, is mine.

The Aftermath – Her Cold Retreat

The room still carries the weight of her—heat, perfume threaded into the air like smoke that refuses to clear.

My shirt hangs open, buttons straining where her hands tore at them, the fabric twisted like evidence.

The clock ticks in the corner, each second another reminder that what just burned between us can’t be undone.

She’s turned away now, spine straight as a blade, pulling her dress over her shoulders with surgical precision.

The whisper of velvet against skin is louder than the clock, louder than my pulse.

No fumbling. No hesitation. Zina is reassembling herself, piece by piece, like a soldier preparing for the next war.

“You hate me,” I say. It’s not curiosity—it’s calculation. I want her answer, sharp, clean, undeniable.

Her hands pause for only the briefest second before she zips the dress. Then she turns, her eyes cutting into me with the kind of precision only grief and fury can hone. “I hate what you’ve made me feel.”

The words land harder than a knife. I lean back on my elbows, pretending I’m unaffected, but the truth pulses behind my ribs. Hatred is simple. Hatred I can turn into fuel. But feelings ? Those are dangerous. Those are chains no blade can cut.

“Feelings are a choice, Zina,” I tell her, my voice steady, my smirk deliberate. “You chose this.”

Her laugh is short, brittle—like glass fracturing underfoot. “No. You cornered me into it. And you know it.”

She bends for her heels but leaves them, walking barefoot across the marble. Her hair is tangled from my hands, her cuffs half-buttoned, her lips still swollen from the violence of my mouth. Yet she carries herself like a queen walking into coronation—regal in defiance, untouchable.

She reaches the door. Her fingers rest on the frame.

For a moment I expect her to turn, to throw one final barb that will cut deeper than the slap she gave me earlier.

But she doesn’t. And that silence is worse than words.

The refusal to look back is an executioner ignoring a condemned man’s last plea.

“That’s how queens are forged,” I murmur, not for her but for the walls, for the ghosts who never leave me.

The words taste like victory, even though she believes she’s stolen one from me.

She hasn’t. Distance only sharpens the bond.

Give them space, let them believe they’re free, and the tether only grows tighter in their absence.

The door shuts softly, but the sound reverberates in my chest. I don’t move. I let the silence stretch, savoring it, because silence after battle is never peace—it’s only the space before the next strike.

And when she comes back—and she will —it won’t be because I pulled her. It’ll be because she’s realized the truth that’s already written into her blood. She can’t stay away.

The Second Betrayal

The corridor outside my office is too quiet. That’s how I know something’s wrong before I even see Rocco’s face. My consigliere doesn’t knock. He never does when it’s bad.

He’s waiting, coat still on, a slim leather dossier in one gloved hand. His mouth is a grim line, the kind that only forms when the news isn’t just bad—it’s personal.

“We have a problem,” he says simply.

I take the file without a word, its weight deceptively light in my palm. Back at my desk, the leather creaks under my shoulders as I flick the clasp open. The photos slide out, black-and-white, high-contrast, every shadow stretched long by the cemetery’s iron gates.

The first one hits like a blow.

Zina. Standing beneath the cypress, her head bowed, hair loose around her shoulders. Her hands—those hands that clawed at me hours ago—are steady now, passing something into another man’s.

The next photo sharpens the angle. Tall frame, dark coat. The scar over the brow catches just enough light to drag recognition out of me like a blade pulled from old flesh. My voice drops, low enough to vibrate against the wood.

“Who is he?”

Rocco doesn’t flinch. “One of Giovanni’s old guards. Loyal to him. Still.”

Still.

That word is the spike between my ribs. It isn’t loyalty to the dead that cuts—it’s what loyalty to a ghost can make a man do for the living.

I fan the photos across the desk. My pulse is steady, but my jaw aches from how hard it locks. She went to the cemetery. She met him. And she gave him something.

“What was it?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“We don’t know yet,” Rocco admits. His voice is careful, each syllable like a step on thin ice.

I close the dossier slowly, the way you sheath a blade you know you’ll draw again soon. My gaze stays fixed on the grain of the desk as I speak. “Find out what she gave him.”

Rocco waits, because there’s always more. There’s always a line I make him cross.

I lift my eyes, my tone iron-clad. “And if she lies to me…” I let the silence finish the thought, cold and sharp. “…remind her what it means to wear my ring.”

He nods once, the flicker in his eyes betraying what his face won’t—he knows exactly how far that command can reach. The door closes behind him.

Alone again, I rest my hand on the photos. The paper is cool, but the heat building in my chest makes it feel like tinder. Giovanni’s guard. Zina’s betrayal. The cemetery. It all smells of ghosts clawing their way back into the present.

Betrayal has a taste—metallic, bitter, unforgettable. I’ve swallowed enough of it to know it never goes down easy. It burns. It scars. And it changes everything.

She thinks she can play both sides. She thinks the dead give her cover.

She’s wrong.