Page 30 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

emiliano

Ambush in the Rain

T he rain starts as a whisper. By the time Zina’s convoy pulls out, it’s a war drum—water hammering rooftops, clawing at the pavement, rattling steel bones. The storm feels wrong. Too sudden. Too heavy. My chest tightens with the kind of warning you don’t ignore.

The radio crackles, static cutting jagged through the air. Then two words snap the night in half: “Target engaged.”

Everything inside me stops.

Gunfire thuds through the receiver. A muffled scream. Then silence.

I crush the radio in my fist until the casing cracks. “Where the fuck is she?!”

Static. Then a ragged choke, the dull smack of a body hitting pavement—and the line dies.

I don’t think. I move.

The Maserati tears free like a beast unchained, tires screaming through rivers that swallow the streets.

Neon smears across the windshield, rain slicing down like knives.

Every flash of light paints her in blood inside my head—her body broken across wet asphalt, her voice lost to the storm. Rage claws my ribs raw.

By the time I find them, the street’s a graveyard. One of mine lies face down in the gutter, blood bleeding into the flood, his pistol still clutched like he died mid-prayer. The convoy is twisted metal, flames hissing where rain fights fire. Steam rises like ghosts.

Then—her scream.

Zina.

The car door slams behind me, the storm punching into my skin, soaking me in seconds. I run, boots breaking water, until I see them. Two masked men dragging her from the wreckage, rifles dangling loose, laughter jagged in the dark. Her hair clings to her face, lip split, dress torn.

“Touch her again,” I snarl, voice low, vibrating with murder, “and I’ll skin you alive.”

They turn. Too slow.

The first doesn’t even fire. I wrench his rifle free, slam the butt into his nose until bone bursts, then ram his skull against twisted steel again, again, until it caves and his body folds.

The second lifts his weapon. I shove the barrel skyward and hammer my fist into his throat. He gags, stumbles. My boot drops hard on his windpipe. He writhes in the mud, then stills.

The world quiets but for the storm.

And then—her.

She’s on her knees, mud caked, body shaking, eyes glazed and unmoored. My hands tremble as I grab her shoulders, her face, her blood mixing with rain on my palms.

“Zina.” Her name rips out of me—a curse, a prayer, a plea. “Look at me. Fucking look at me.”

Her eyes blink, hazy, then focus. Recognition sparks. Her lips part, soundless, but alive.

I drag her against me, crushing her to my chest. She’s limp, dazed, but warm. Still warm.

I bury my face in her soaked hair, the scent of smoke and iron carved into me. My hands shake. I’ve never shaken. Not once.

I almost lost her.

I built an empire on the promise that love was weakness, that no woman would ever own me. But holding her now, her blood in my hands, her breath shallow against me, I know the truth.

I was wrong.

And if the world thinks it can take her from me, I’ll salt the fucking earth until nothing grows but ash.

Unleashed

The rain follows us home. It drips from her hair, from my hands, from the scorched hem of her dress as I carry her through the villa’s marble halls. The storm may be locked outside, but I feel it pounding in my veins—relentless, merciless.

Medics rush forward. Their voices blur into static, background noise I can’t hear. I lower Zina onto the leather couch in the great room, the dark surface swallowing her whole, making her look like a war-torn queen on a throne she never asked for.

They work quickly—scissors slicing fabric from her shoulder, antiseptic stinging where glass cut her temple, bandages wrapping too-clean against skin that should never have been marked.

Their gloves are steady. My fists aren’t.

My knuckles ache from the men I crushed, and still they clench, hungry for another throat to break.

Rage thrums like lightning under my skin, begging for release.

She hisses when the alcohol bites, then—God help me—she smirks. “Don’t tell me this is what finally breaks you. Me, with a scratch.”

The words gut me. I don’t smile. Don’t breathe. I just stare, until one of the medics clears his throat and murmurs, “She’ll live.”

She’ll live.

The phrase should soothe me. Instead, it detonates.

I step forward, storm breaking loose. “You think this is a fucking game?” My voice ricochets off marble, sharp enough to slice skin. The medics flinch. One drops his kit, bottles rattling across stone. “You think I can survive if you die?”

Her eyes widen. Then narrow. Defiance—always defiance. “You’ve survived worse.”

The words dig under my ribs, twist deep. Survived worse? She doesn’t see it. Doesn’t feel the hole already torn through me at the thought of her bleeding out in the street.

“Not you.”

It rips out of me, raw, unguarded. My fist slams into the wall. Plaster shatters, fragments raining like broken teeth across the floor. “Anyone else, Zina. Anyone. But not you.”

The room freezes. Even the storm outside seems to wait.

She studies me, lips parted, her breath caught mid-rise. And I see it—the fracture. Not in her, but in me. The monster I’ve hidden bleeding out—not in violence, but in confession.

Her voice is barely a whisper, but it cuts deeper than my rage. “Why me?”

Why her.

The question coils tight in my throat, choking. I swore I’d never give this answer. That weakness would never live in me. But tonight, I can’t lie. Not after I nearly lost her to a bullet, a fire, a nameless street.

I move closer, fists trembling, storm clawing inside me. “Because you are the only thing I can’t bury.”

Her breath stutters. My chest heaves.

And for the first time, Emiliano Maritz knows what it means to fear something he can’t kill.

The Confession

The study is a cage. My cage. Dark oak walls, shelves of books that were never meant to be read—only to intimidate.

A desk heavy enough to crush a man if it fell on him.

This room has always been my sanctuary, my war table, the place where I plotted and bled empires dry.

But tonight, it feels like an execution chamber, and I’m the one walking to the block.

I pour two glasses of scotch. My hand doesn’t tremble, but my chest does. The burn of the liquor cuts through my throat when I drink mine down in one swallow. The other glass I set on the edge of the desk. Hers. I don’t hand it to her. I can’t.

She sits in the chair across from me, silent, her body still wrapped in gauze and fresh bruises from the ambush. She’s watching me with those eyes that make the floor tilt beneath my boots. Eyes that see too much.

The walls seem to breathe, closing in. I pace. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rug muffles my steps, but the storm outside rattles the windows like bones in a coffin. I feel it pressing against me, the same way her gaze does.

“I didn’t plan this,” I mutter, the words breaking out of me before I can stop them. “Not the marriage. Not Guido. Not you.”

Her head tilts, just slightly. Not pity. Not forgiveness. Just listening. The restraint of it shreds me open.

I slam my hand down on the desk, the sound echoing through the study like a gunshot. “Do you hear me, Zina? None of this was supposed to happen. You were supposed to be another piece on the board. A move. A fucking trophy I’d mount to prove I’d won the game Giovanni started.”

Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak. That silence is worse than any curse. It leaves me alone with my own voice, my own ruin.

I rake a hand through my hair, dragging nails across my scalp until I almost draw blood. My chest heaves. My lungs fight me. “But then you bled for your son. For my war. And I—” The words die, clawing at my throat.

Memory slices through me—her body collapsing in the rain, my hands red and useless, the taste of panic on my tongue. It takes my knees out before I realize I’ve fallen. The rug scrapes my palms, the desk looming above me like judgment.

Me, Emiliano Maritz, on the fucking floor.

She leans forward, her face shadowed in lamplight, her voice steady as steel. “Say it.”

The two words gut me. I should be able to lie. I should twist them into power, make her bend. But tonight, I can’t.

My voice is hoarse, raw, torn from a place I never let anyone touch. “I love you.” The words taste like blood. Like surrender. “And it’s destroying me.”

Her breath catches, sharp. I see it—the flicker in her eyes. Not victory. Not cruelty. Something more dangerous. Something I’ve spent my life avoiding, because if she claims it, I’m finished.

My fists press into the floor, shaking with rage I can’t direct at her, only at myself. “I swore I’d never need anyone. And now I can’t fucking breathe without you.”

The study holds the silence like scripture, heavy and damning.

She doesn’t reach for me. She doesn’t soften. She just watches me kneel, the crown slipping from my head and shattering at her feet.

And still—I love her.

The Meal Before the War

The storm hasn’t passed. It’s only shifted. The confession still hangs in the air between us, sharp as glass: I love you. And it’s destroying me.

I carry the tray into the room like it’s a weapon, not a meal. The silver rattles with each step, a tremor I refuse to admit is mine. Zina sits upright in the bed, her body swathed in gauze, bruises blooming purple across her skin. She looks like ruin and regality stitched into one body.

I set the tray down on the low table beside the bed. Bread, olives, a cut of rare steak bleeding into porcelain. A bottle of red already uncorked. I pour, slow, deliberate, the dark liquid glinting like blood under the lamp.

“Eat,” I command.

Her brows arch, lips twitch. “So this is your grand love? Bread and orders?”

The words cut, but I don’t flinch. I slice the steak, spear a piece, and hold it out to her. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just watches me with those eyes that burn holes clean through armor.

“Don’t make me feed you.”