Page 27 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

emiliano

The Ride to Damnation

T he engine hums like a confession I don’t want to hear.

Low. Steady. Relentless. My hands grip the wheel hard enough to crack bone, and still they shake.

Every bump in the road jolts the car, a dull thud that echoes through the trunk—where Matteo lies wrapped in blood-soaked linen.

The bastard’s silence weighs heavier than his body.

Beside me, Zina doesn’t say a word. Her gaze fixes on the window, but she isn’t looking at the trees. Her thoughts are knives, cutting deeper than any blade. She hasn’t cried. She hasn’t cursed. That silence is worse than either.

The night stretches black, the headlights slicing through it like twin blades.

The road narrows as we climb higher into the hills, the forest crowding closer, branches clawing at the car.

Every mile takes us further from the city, deeper into old ground—territory most men in our world never knew existed.

Giovanni knew. I knew. The blood brothers knew.

The “true” grave.

I hear his voice like he’s riding in the back seat. Every empire needs its altar, Emiliano. Every king needs his tomb.

I glance at Zina. Her hands are folded tight in her lap, leather gloves still stained with Matteo’s blood.

She hasn’t taken them off. A part of me wants to tell her she should.

That no woman should sit with that kind of stain clinging to her.

But she isn’t just any woman. She cut her way into Giovanni’s throne room and never left.

She feels me watching. Her head turns, slow and sharp, her eyes catching mine in the dim dashboard glow. No words. Just that look—cold, defiant, daring me to break the silence first.

I don’t.

Because there’s nothing left to say. Matteo betrayed us. Matteo died for it. And now I’m driving his corpse back to the place where we first buried Giovanni’s legacy, as if betrayal itself needs to rot under the same soil.

The road jolts us again. Another hard thump from the trunk. My jaw tightens. Every sound feels like Matteo mocking me from the grave, like his blood is seeping through the steel, staining the car, staining me.

I force my eyes back to the road. Branches arch overhead like a cathedral, moonlight bleeding through jagged leaves.

The weight of history presses down, the ghosts of men who swore oaths on this same path.

We carved our names into the dirt here once, swore our blood to Giovanni. Tonight, I carve betrayal out of it.

My chest feels tight, the air too thin. My mind flickers between past and present—Giovanni’s hand gripping my shoulder, his voice iron in my ear: Loyalty is everything, figghiu. Betrayal is worse than death.

I whisper into the silence, not sure if it’s for me or for her. “Every empire has its altar. Tonight we bury betrayal in the same ground we once buried honor.”

Zina doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t speak.

But out of the corner of my eye, I see her lips part, the faintest tremor of breath slipping out—like she heard the vow, like it lodged itself in her ribs whether she wanted it there or not.

The car eats the last mile of road. Gravel crunches beneath the tires as the trees split open to reveal the clearing ahead. My grip tightens one final time on the wheel.

The King’s grave waits.

Deeper Than Blood

The forest is a cathedral of shadows. Moonlight bleeds through bare branches, carving silver bars across moss and stone. Every breath tastes of earth and rot, thick, like the dead themselves are waiting to witness what we’re about to do.

The old grave is nothing more than a crumbling slab of stone, Giovanni’s name carved by a hand that once thought eternity belonged to him. No flowers. No offerings. Just the cold, raw truth of soil and time. I stare at it, and the weight of years crashes down, chains across my shoulders.

Every empire has its altar. This one, I realize, has always been mine.

I strip off my jacket, then my shirt, down to the sweat-soaked undershirt clinging to my back.

The cold bites, sharp as teeth, but I welcome it.

Pain sharpens me. Reminds me what’s at stake.

I dig with my hands, then with the old spade hauled from the trunk, every thrust into the earth a punishment.

My arms burn. My lungs seize. Dirt cakes my palms, slides under my nails, mixes with the raw cut from earlier.

Behind me, Zina stands with her arms folded tight across her chest, her face carved from something unreadable. Not grief. Not mercy. Something harder. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t shift. Just watches, like she’s measuring whether I’ll falter.

I don’t.

The hole grows deeper, black as sin under the moonlight. My body aches, but I refuse to slow. Betrayal deserves no gentleness. Matteo drank our wine, shared our table, wore our trust like armor. Now he’ll rot with Giovanni.

When the pit yawns wide enough, I drag Matteo’s body from the trunk.

The linen is soaked through, stiff with blood.

His face is mangled, jaw twisted, like he died trying to swallow the truth.

I lower him in, and for a moment, I see us younger—the three of us laughing, Giovanni at the head of the table, Matteo raising a glass.

For a fleeting second, guilt claws at my chest.

Then Zina steps forward.

She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t cross herself. Instead, she pulls Giovanni’s old ring from her pocket—the signet he wore like a crown, the weight of his empire pressed into a single band of gold. Without hesitation, she tosses it into the grave. It lands on Matteo’s chest with a dull, final thud.

“I don’t want a ghost’s blessing,” she murmurs, her voice jagged glass.

Something inside me stills. She isn’t afraid of kings. She isn’t begging for permission from the past. She’s spitting in its face.

I look at her, chest twisting. The fire in her eyes is the same one that once burned in Giovanni’s, the same that nearly consumed me. But hers is different. It isn’t about ruling men. It’s about survival. Vengeance. Something deeper than blood.

The Ceremony of Fire and Salt

I crouch at the edge of the grave, salt clutched in my fist. Sweat and dirt cling to my undershirt, the cold biting into my skin, it reminds me this isn’t just ritual—it’s retribution.

Grain by grain, I scatter salt around the grave. Each motion is deliberate, the circle taking form with a precision that borders the dark hole.

Across from me, Zina watches. Arms folded, jaw set, her expression carved from obsidian. The flames from my match catch in her eyes, hard and unyielding, making her look less like a mourner and more like a weapon.

The line of fire hisses to life, crawling along the salted perimeter. Controlled. Hungry. A serpent circling the dead.

Without hesitation, she takes the second match from my pocket, strikes it against stone, and drops it. The opposite side ignites, completing the crown of fire. Heat rises between us, smoke wrapping upward like incense at an altar.

I bow my head. My lips move, the Sicilian words sliding out like smoke from an old wound:

“Ca si puttuni ruviri sutta lu rè, ca la Zina si susi di cenniri.” ( When the king rots beneath the earth, the queen will rise from ashes. )

The vow bleeds out of me, raw and guttural. Not meant for Matteo. Not even for Giovanni. For us.

Zina tilts her head, the fire painting her face in amber and shadow. “That wasn’t for him, was it?”

I raise my eyes. No mask. No strategy. Just the brutal truth. Slowly, I shake my head. “No. It was for us.”

The silence after is heavier than chains. Her chest rises once, deliberate. She doesn’t step closer, doesn’t retreat.

Flame crackles around the grave, devouring salt and soil. The stink of char and iron fills the clearing, mingling with the blood drying on our hands. This isn’t just burial. It’s ceremony. It’s coronation.

Something shifts—silent, savage. A bond forged not in mercy, but in fire and blood.

The queen isn’t rising. She already has.

The Warning in the Wind

The fire behind us still smolders, smoke unwinding into the trees like a vow we can’t take back.

I keep Zina close as we cut through the pines toward the car, boots whispering over needles, salt and ash slicking the air.

We don’t speak. Her silence is forged steel; mine is a blade I’m not done sharpening.

The sedan sits where we left it, blacked-out and breathing frost. The trunk feels heavier now that it’s empty—as if Matteo’s corpse left something behind that fire couldn’t cleanse. I unlock the doors. My phone buzzes.

A tremor in the palm. Bad news has a rhythm. This is it.

“Talk,” I say, answering.

“Boss.” Rocco. Clipped, loyal, a man who wastes nothing. The pause after my name isn’t hesitation; it’s respect for the hit he’s about to make. “You’re not alone out there.”

My gaze goes to the treeline. Shadows move if you stare hard enough. I stare harder. “Explain.”

“They left a message. At the grave.”

Cold slides beneath my ribs. We only just sealed the circle. Which means they were watching. Close.

“What kind of message?” My voice goes flat, knife-edge.

“A piece.” Another beat of silence. Then: “From the board.”

My jaw locks. “Which one.”

“A knight. Black.”

The line goes dead between us because I kill it. I stand there with the trees pressing in, listening to the wind thread through dead branches like a choir of broken bones. When I turn, Zina’s already watching me. She reads storms the way most people read clocks.

Her chin lifts, a small, lethal angle. “This wasn’t retaliation.”

She doesn’t guess. She states. It sinks into me like a steel pin, holding the moment to the wall.

“This was provocation,” she says, wiping a streak of soot across her cheek and leaving it like war paint.

“Someone wants a war,” I say. Not threat. Fact.

Zina steps into my space until the smoke on my breath becomes hers. Firelight from the clearing licks the edges of her hair, setting stray strands to gold. She doesn’t look scared. She looks inevitable.

“Then let’s give them one.”

She threads her fingers through mine—blood to blood, oath to oath—then drags my fist to her sternum, pressing it there like she’s stamping me into the bone. The gesture isn’t tender. It’s a binding. For a second, I don’t know if she’s my partner, my queen, or the executioner waiting to swing.

The wind answers for her, rising, bending the pines until they hiss. Somewhere behind us a coal pops, bright as an omen, then dies.

I pocket the phone and scan the dark. Knight. Black. Not subtle. Not random. Whoever placed it knows our board, knows Giovanni’s old catechism: pawns test, bishops bless, rooks hold, but knights break lines you think are safe. Santino chose a collar; someone else chose the piece.

“Rocco.” I call him back, speaker off, voice low. “Tighten the outer ring. No headlights, no chatter. Sweep the approach we didn’t take and the one they did. Thermal first, then dogs. If you find a camera, follow its signal, not its lens.”

“On it.”

“Good. And pull the list of every soldier who ever called him King and still breathes. Start with the ones who know Latin.”

Zina’s mouth tilts—danger, not humor. “The board is live.”

“It always was.” I open the rear door for her. Courtesy is a language of power; tonight I speak it fluently. “They just forgot whose game this is.”

She doesn’t get in. Not yet. Her gaze slides past my shoulder to the black between trees. The wind shifts, carrying the last breath of our fire and something older, colder. For a heartbeat, I hear Giovanni the way I used to—inside the skull, not the ear.

Every empire needs its altar. Every altar draws witnesses.

“Let them watch,” Zina says, almost to the forest. “Let them see what they woke up.”

She climbs into the back. I close her door, circle to the driver’s side, and slide behind the wheel. The engine turns over, a low growl under my hands. As I pull onto the narrow track, smoke blurs the mirrors and the wind pushes harder, hunting the seams of the car for a way in.

Black knight. A clean signature. The kind of move men make when they think they know me.

I press the accelerator and smile without warmth.

Come closer, then. Bring your horses. Bring your ghosts.

We’ll meet you in the open—and feed you to the dark.

The Ghost King’s Challenge

The forest is too still when we reach the car, the silence dense, almost deliberate—like the trees themselves are holding their breath. I slide behind the wheel, key poised in the ignition, then stop. Something gnaws at me, a whisper that isn’t wind.

I kill the engine and push the door open. “Stay here,” I order, voice flat as stone.

Zina doesn’t listen. Of course she doesn’t. Queens don’t wait when the night itself is conspiring. She falls in step behind me, her presence an unspoken challenge.

The grave lies back in shadow, soil still smoking from our fire. But on the dirt track ahead—something waits.

A sliver of white against the earth.

I crouch, massive hands curling around it. Not random. Not careless. Placed with precision.

A chess piece.

The knight. Carved in black marble, edges worn but unbroken. Its horse head glares upward like it mocks us.

Beneath it—a scrap of paper. Rough parchment, ink thick as blood. I lift it, and the words punch straight through bone:

The King never died. You just forgot how to kneel.

My chest seizes, blood turning to frost. The cadence is too familiar—command I’ve heard a thousand times in boardrooms, alleys, over spilled wine and spilled blood. Giovanni’s cadence.

The note trembles in my grip, not from fear, but because rage coils so tight inside me my hands shake with the need to break something.

Zina steps close, her breath brushing my neck as her eyes rake the page. She reads once, then cuts the silence in half.

“This is Giovanni’s handwriting.”

Her certainty slams harder than the words themselves.

I stare at the note, refusing to blink, refusing to admit the impossible. Giovanni is dead. I felt the weight of his coffin. I saw the blood, the ruin, the ash. And yet—

The knight glowers from my palm. The words burn into my skull.

And Zina—Giovanni’s curse and his crown—doesn’t falter. She names the ghost aloud.

The wind surges, a savage gust rattling the pines, hissing through grave soil like laughter. The parchment slips free, whipping once before clinging to the blackened dirt as if it belongs there.

My pulse hammers. My breath rasps. For the first time in years, I feel it—not power, not command, but the raw edge of being hunted.

Zina’s hand slides into mine. Firm. Steady. No words, because she doesn’t need them.

The ghost of Giovanni Rivas has already spoken.