Page 24 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

“Call Santino,” I say. “If he doesn’t answer, call Romeo. If he doesn’t answer, call Dante. If none of them answer, start at their weakest soldier and climb the ladder with a blowtorch.”

Marco hesitates. “If Santino is involved—”

“If Santino is involved,” I say, and let the room feel what happens after the if , “I will bury him with his father’s teeth in his pocket.”

He doesn’t need the metaphor explained.

“Make a list,” I finish. “People who knew the boy’s habits.

People who knew the door code changed last week.

People who knew Zina would sleep through anything if she took the pills the doctor prescribed for ‘nerves.’ Find out who filled that prescription.

If the pharmacist is dead by morning, it’s because he insisted. ”

Men scatter like knives.

I stay. Watch the same clip again. The van slips. The fog eats it. The guard scratches his face as if he’s itchy where shame lives.

“Bring me Post B,” I say without turning. “And bring the electrician. Bring the tech. Bring them breathing.”

I feel, more than hear, Marco nod.

“You’ll find him,” he says, and for once, it isn’t a promise from me to a soldier. It’s a soldier to a king.

“No,” I answer. “I’ll take him back.”

On the wall, a new feed lights. A camera two blocks down from our outer fence.

A white panel van with a dent on the driver’s side rear where a stupid man kissed a bollard last month.

The time-stamp lands ten minutes after the breach, heading east, not west toward the freeways, bold as daylight in darkness.

Whoever took him wants me to see this. Wants me to know they can walk through my teeth and not get cut.

I feel my mouth curve. Finally, something that tastes familiar.

“They’re proud,” I say. “Good. Pride makes men careless.”

I point. “Freeze. Enhance the lower right of the rear door.”

Marco clicks. The image clarifies a fraction—enough to give me what I need. A sticker. Faded. A service company logo someone tried and failed to peel clean. Three letters, half a phone number.

“That’s our shadow,” I say. “Pull every permit for that company. Every address on their last two years of invoices. Every subcontractor they stiffed. Start at the unpaid debts; resentment talks first.”

The room surges again.

I touch the table, palm flat, as if the wood could hear me. The anger that started crisp starts to go quiet, deeper, hotter. Not a flare now. A furnace.

They moved a pawn.

They forgot what happens when you take mine.

Zina’s Collapse

The corridors of this house feel endless, carved from stone that was never meant to offer comfort. My legs move before I can think, carrying me toward the one man I should despise and yet can’t escape. My body trembles so hard I have to clutch the wall just to keep from collapsing.

He steps out of the war room, the door hissing shut behind him. His presence fills the space like smoke—heavy, suffocating, impossible to escape.

I throw myself in front of him, cutting him off before he can vanish again into his world of blood and orders. My throat burns as the words rip free.

“I trusted you!”

It’s not a plea. It’s an accusation.

His eyes snap to mine—black fire, unyielding. “You should have trusted me sooner.” His voice is a blade, slicing me open. “I told you this life demands sacrifice.”

My hand moves before my mind catches up. The slap cracks through the corridor, the sting rushing up my palm, echoing in the silence between us. For a heartbeat, I feel triumphant. Alive.

Then the strength drains out of me like water through a sieve. My knees buckle, the stone floor rushing up to meet me.

But he’s there before I fall. His arms lock around me, steel and heat, crushing me against his chest. His grip is bruising, unyielding, as though letting me slip would be more than failure—it would be death.

I thrash weakly, fists pushing at him, but it’s useless. His chest is solid beneath my palms, his scent a mix of smoke, leather, and fury. I can’t breathe around it.

“Let me go,” I rasp, though my body betrays me, sagging into him, too exhausted to fight.

His mouth dips to my ear, his breath hot, his voice darker than sin. “Guido’s not just your son now,” he whispers, each word deliberate, binding. “He’s mine, too.”

My heart shatters, the jagged pieces cutting deeper with every beat. Because I know he means it. Because I hate that part of me wants it to be true.

Tears burn my eyes, spilling hot down my cheeks. “Then bring him home,” I choke out, my voice breaking. My nails dig into his jacket, anchoring myself to him as if he’s the only thing keeping me upright.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t comfort. His hold tightens, crushing me against him, and I feel the rumble of his chest when he speaks.

“I will paint the streets with their blood,” he vows, his tone terrifying in its calm. “I will break their bones, burn their names, and feed their families their ashes if I have to. He will come home.”

His promises are knives, brutal and merciless, whispered into my hair like a prayer to a god I don’t believe in. But I clutch him harder, because right now, violence is all I have left to believe in.

And for one fleeting, horrifying moment, I let myself lean into it. Into him.Into the monster who might be the only one capable of saving my son.

The air between us is toxic—thick with grief and rage, impossible to breathe. His hands are still locked on me, iron bands holding me together when every piece of me is falling apart. I should pull away. I should claw free and scream until the walls drip with my fury.

But I don’t.

Because when his eyes burn down into me—black fire, merciless, consuming—I realize it isn’t only Guido’s life unraveling in this moment. It’s mine. It’s ours.

My body trembles, not just from fear, but from something darker, hungrier. His vow still echoes in my ears, promises drenched in blood, and I know what this man is capable of. What he’s about to unleash on the world for my son.

And still, I want to hurt him. I want to scar him the way his obsession has scarred me.

I slam my fists against his chest, the impact sharp, pointless. “I hate you,” I hiss, though my lips betray me, trembling too close to his.

He snarls, low and feral, the sound vibrating through his chest into mine. His hands tighten on my face, rough, bruising. “Then hate me,” he growls, breath hot against my mouth. “But don’t you fucking dare doubt me.”

His mouth crashes down on mine, a collision of fury and need. My nails rake down his neck, catching the edge of his collar, dragging until I feel the sting of skin beneath. I want blood. I want proof he bleeds. Proof he isn’t untouchable.

He bites back. His kiss is brutal, unrelenting, punishing me for every ounce of resistance. His tongue tangles with mine like a fight neither of us intends to win, and the taste of whiskey and rage fills my mouth.

My back slams against the wall, the stone cold enough to steal my breath, his heat searing through the front of me. I gasp into his mouth, the sound breaking, betraying me. My legs buckle, but he’s there, pressing his weight into mine, refusing to let me fall.

The corridor disappears. The house disappears. There is only this—our grief, our fury, our desperate need to feel alive.

I claw at his shirt, ripping fabric, dragging him closer, because I need to feel his skin. I need proof he’s flesh and not the devil he pretends to be. His hands tear at the silk of my dress, fabric shredding between his fists like it was made for ruin.

Buttons scatter against the stone. Silk rips. My breath comes ragged, my chest bare under the bruising heat of his grip.

We are chaos, devouring each other in the shadows, fury and grief turned savage.

This is not soft love. This is war—fought with lips, teeth, and tongues.

I give myself over to him—not because I trust him, not because I forgive him—but because there is nothing left of me to hold back.

I stop fighting.

And God help me, it feels like drowning and resurrection all at once.

When it ends, I am raw, breathless, scraped open in ways no blade could ever achieve. My forehead presses to his chest, his heartbeat a thunder that matches mine. He doesn’t speak. Neither do I. Words would ruin what just burned between us.

But deep inside, I know nothing will ever be the same again.

The Clue in the Pawn

The silence after her storm still clings to me—heavy, suffocating, like the smoke of a house already burned to the ground. Zina lies tangled in the sheets, her body trembling in a way I can’t fix—not with words, not with promises, maybe not even with blood.

I should stay. I should hold her until she believes me. But my eyes keep drifting to the pawn.

That fucking pawn.

It sits on the table where I dropped it hours ago, blood dried to a rusty crust in the grooves. Its carved edges are too sharp, too deliberate. I pick it up, rolling the weight in my palm. Heavier than it should be. Heavier than coincidence.

At first the scratches on the base look meaningless, the kind of scuff a piece of wood gets passed hand to hand. But I know better. My thumb follows the marks, tiny strokes buried deep in the grain. Latin. Letters etched so fine they’d vanish to anyone who wasn’t trained to look for them.

I tilt it into the lamp light. Three letters burn through: S.V.M.

The breath stills in my chest. This isn’t random. This isn’t just a threat. It’s a signature.

“They want me to know,” I mutter, voice low, more to myself than to the room. “They want me to know it was personal.”

A name crawls out of memory. One of Giovanni’s old ghosts. Smart. Calculated. The kind of man who slips through the cracks when bodies fall and debts get buried. We never found him. I told myself he’d gone to ground, or maybe someone else had put him in the dirt for me.

But maybe not. Maybe the bastard’s been waiting. Watching.

Giovanni’s voice cuts through memory like broken glass: The ones you don’t bury right, they come back to choke you later. Don’t forget that.

My jaw locks tight. He was right. The fucker was always right.

“Lorenzo!” I bark, my voice ripping through the quiet like a gunshot.

My second-in-command appears in the doorway within seconds, chest heaving from the sprint. His eyes flick to the bed—Zina half-bare beneath the sheets—but he’s smart enough to keep his stare pinned to me.

“Bring me the list,” I order, voice cold steel. “Every one of them we put in the ground but never saw rot. Names. Dates. Places. I don’t care how far back—don’t fucking stop until you have it.”

Lorenzo nods once, sharp, and disappears without a word.

I set the pawn back down, staring at it like it’s a riddle carved from my own sins. My pulse pounds harder, steady as a war drum, each beat promising violence.

From behind me, a voice cuts the quiet.

“How many enemies do you have?”

She’s framed in the doorway, robe pulled tight, hair wild, eyes darker than the night itself. She looks at me like she can’t decide whether to scream or beg.

I turn fully, letting her see all of it—all the fury, all the ghosts, all the rot in me that refuses to die.

“All of them,” I say flatly.

For the first time, she doesn’t argue. She just stares, and in that silence I see it—acceptance. Not surrender. Not forgiveness. Just understanding. She finally knows what it means to share my war.