Page 42 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

He’s taller than Giovanni in my memory, broader in the shoulders, but it’s the eyes that stop me cold. That same storm-dark gaze, the one his father used to pin me to marble walls. But Santino’s aren’t tempered with age or restraint. They’re wild. Fevered. Hungry.

He carries no mask tonight. Just a pistol in one hand, the swagger of blood-borne entitlement in the other.

“Drop the knife, Zina,” he calls, voice smooth as glass dragged across skin. “You’ll cut yourself before you ever cut me.”

Guido shudders behind me. I shift my stance, shielding him fully with my body, my dagger catching the firelight. My voice shakes—not with fear, but with rage sharp enough to slice the night. “You came for a crown. You’ll leave with a corpse.”

Santino smirks, cocking his head, like a boy amused at a stray dog snapping at his boots. “You really think Emiliano’s protection makes you untouchable? He’s not even here. And you…” His gaze dips, lingers on Guido, then rises again, colder. “…you’ve always been a pawn. Nothing more.”

Guido gasps. The sound rips through me. My son—his nephew by blood, the boy who trusted him once—is trembling like prey under a wolf’s shadow.

“You dare,” I snarl. My hand tightens on the dagger. “You dare stand there, with your father’s blood still fresh in the ground, and tell me my son means nothing?”

His smile vanishes. His jaw flexes, and for the first time, I see it—the crack. The war in him between Giovanni’s ghost and the hunger to eclipse it. “Giovanni built an empire, and Emiliano stole it. You…” His lip curls, spit flying. “…you just spread your legs to whichever king wore the crown.”

The words slice deeper than any blade. My breath hitches, my chest tight. But the fury roars louder. “Better a queen who bleeds for her child than a son who spits on his father’s grave.”

For a heartbeat, silence reigns. Even the sea stills.

Then he lunges.

The gun lifts. My body moves before thought. I shove Guido down into the dirt, roll to the side, and the shot cracks, deafening, shattering stone where my head had been. The recoil stuns Santino for a blink—just long enough for me to close the distance.

I slash. Steel bites into his arm. He curses, staggers back, blood spraying across the gravel. His eyes flare wide, shock breaking into something darker—admiration.

“You’ve got fight,” he growls, clutching his wound. “Good. I want it to hurt when I kill you.”

Boots thunder at the far end of the courtyard—his men, closing in. Guido whimpers my name.

I stand, chest heaving, blade dripping red. My voice is low, lethal, meant only for him. “You’ll have to cut through a mother first.”

Santino licks blood from his lips, eyes blazing. “Gladly.”

The flare dies, plunging us back into shadows. The courtyard becomes a battlefield of ghosts.

And I realize—the real war isn’t just at the gates anymore. It’s inside the family. Inside the bloodline itself.

The Siege Ignites

The first bullet cracks through the courtyard lantern. Glass rains like jagged stars. Guido screams, and the sound splits my chest open. I shove him flat to the ground, my dagger useless against the storm that erupts from the walls.

Gunfire answers in volleys—rifles barking like thunder, echoing off marble and iron.

The gates crash inward, metal shrieking like a wounded beast as they buckle under the ram.

And pouring through—wolves. De Luca soldiers.

Betrayers wearing the crest of Maritz. Faces I’ve seen across dinner tables, now twisted with greed and lit by muzzle flashes.

I drag Guido to the nearest column, pressing him into the marble as shards pepper the ground.

His body trembles against mine, heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird.

His breath comes in short, ragged sobs. “Don’t look,” I whisper fiercely, cupping his head against my chest. “Don’t you fucking look. ”

Across the chaos, Santino steps into view like he owns the stage. My husband’s son. Giovanni’s heir. His pistol gleams, black and holy in the firelight, lifted like a priest holding up the host. His mouth curves in a smile I want to carve off with my blade.

“Take them!” His voice cuts the night in half, sharp as a guillotine.

The courtyard erupts.

Men collide in a storm of screams and steel. Muzzle flash lights the air in bursts of orange, each one burning ghosts into my eyes. Emiliano’s loyalists surge from the villa doors—black suits, rifles, every one of them baptized in blood. Their boots pound the stone like war drums.

Romeo is there, carving a path with his blade. He plunges it into a traitor’s gut, the man folding around steel before dropping into the dirt. For a breath, Romeo’s eyes lock with mine across the carnage. He nods once—quick, sharp—before disappearing back into the blood tide.

I grip Guido tighter. My body is the only shield I can give him, but rage screams in my chest. I want fire. I want to cut my way to Santino’s smile and make him choke on it.

Bootsteps slam against stone behind me. A soldier—young, too young—charges with his gun raised.

Instinct shoves fear aside. I slash upward, and my dagger buries itself in his throat.

His scream gurgles into silence as hot spray coats my hand.

He collapses at my feet, twitching. Guido whimpers but doesn’t scream this time.

My boy is learning what it means to be born in blood.

“Stay down!” I hiss, shoving him flatter into the shadows. “No matter what. Do not move.”

I rise, dagger dripping, black silk of my dress whipping like a banner. The siege is swallowing everything—the villa, the gates, the loyal men screaming as they fall. But my voice slices through it, raw and savage.

“You want the Queen?” I scream into the night, fixing my eyes on Santino. “Come and bleed for her.”

His grin widens. He lifts his pistol again, pointing it directly at me.

The siege has begun.

The Treachery Revealed

The courtyard is fire and ruin. Gun smoke coils like storm clouds, screams ripping through the marble air. I clutch Guido’s hand, my dagger slick with blood that isn’t mine, and fix my eyes on the balcony above—where Santino waits like a king crowning himself in betrayal.

“Bring her!” he shouts, his voice thunder against the chaos.

And then the unthinkable—two of Emiliano’s men, men who wore his crest, break from the line and charge toward me. Traitors. My lungs seize. They shove through loyalists, one raising a rifle, the other dragging chains like they’d been waiting for this moment.

Guido whimpers, trying to fold himself behind me. My body is a wall, but a wall can only hold so long.

The first soldier lunges. I slash upward, dagger sinking into his arm. He howls, but doesn’t stop. The second swings the chains, iron screaming as it slices the air. The links catch my wrist, wrenching the blade from my hand. Pain rips through me.

“Zina!” Emiliano’s roar tears across the courtyard.

I whip my head—he’s fighting through the mob like the devil himself, every strike a death sentence, every man in his path falling broken. His suit is shredded, his chest streaked with blood, but his eyes burn on me. He’s coming. But not fast enough.

The soldier with the chains yanks hard, dragging me forward. My knees hit the stone. Guido screams my name, his tiny fists beating uselessly against the man’s thigh.

Santino’s laughter cuts down from the balcony, sharp as shattered glass. “The Queen of Fire—brought to her knees by her own throne!”

Rage floods my veins hotter than the blood trickling from my wrist. I spit into the traitor’s face, hiss through my teeth, “Queens don’t kneel.”

I twist, drive my elbow into his gut. He grunts, stumbles, but the chains hold tight. The second soldier cocks his rifle, barrel swinging toward Guido.

“No!” My scream rips my throat raw.

Time fractures. The world slows to a heartbeat, a single inhale. My boy frozen. The gun rising. Emiliano too far.

Then the shot cracks—

But not from their gun.

The soldier jerks, a spray of red blooming across his chest. He collapses, rifle clattering beside Guido. The shot came from the gates. A sniper’s perch. Shadows in the dark moving like ghosts.

Not allies. More enemies.

The courtyard turns again, soldiers dropping under unseen fire. Panic surges. Even Emiliano falters for a heartbeat, scanning the rooftops.

I drag Guido to me, my body covering his small frame, blood and dirt smearing into his hair. Around us, the kingdom fractures—steel, screams, betrayal.

And above it all, Santino’s smirk widens. He spreads his arms like a false messiah, the fire behind him turning his silhouette into a crown of flames.

“You wanted war,” he calls. “Tonight you choke on it.”

His soldiers surge. The traitor with the chains yanks me back up, gun jammed against my temple now.

Emiliano’s roar splits the sky. He’s close. So close. But the cold press of steel against my skull tells me the truth.

The Queen of Fire has one heartbeat left.