Page 43 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

emiliano

Storm of Blood

T he gun at her temple freezes me mid-stride. My lungs seize; my boots slip on blood-slick marble, and still my eyes never leave hers. Zina—my Queen, my ruin, my fucking salvation—held in chains like an offering to gods I don’t believe in.

“Let her go!” My roar splits the courtyard.

The traitor jerks the pistol harder against her skull, his lip curled like he’s already tasted my defeat.

Smoke claws the night. Brass shells ping across stone like angry hail.

Somewhere to my left a man gurgles his last breath; to my right, a statue of Giovanni shatters, marble skull blown clean off.

The villa is a battlefield dressed in velvet.

But I only see her.

She stands with her wrists shackled, chain bitten into skin, chin high enough to cut.

Blood paints her mouth where someone dared to strike her.

She doesn’t look at the gun. She looks at me.

Calm. Commanding. As if the barrel to her temple is a minor inconvenience and the only thing that matters is whether I blink first.

At her skirts, the boy—our boy—clings like a shadow.

Guido’s eyes are wide, unblinking, a shocky glass blue.

His little fist is wrapped white-knuckle around something I recognize even from ten paces: the carved wooden knight he won’t release, the one they made him play with in hell.

He presses it to his chest like it can stop a bullet.

Santino’s laugh slashes down from the balcony above. “On your knees, Emiliano. Or watch your Queen’s crown crack open.”

My teeth bare. “You don’t get to write my ending, fratello.”

He leans over the rail, hungry eyes gleaming.

Flames lick behind him, throwing his shadow long over the tiles like a vulture’s wing.

Around him, a cluster of turncoats in Rivas suits—our suits—train rifles on the courtyard.

I clock positions without thinking: two at the archway, one on the fountain, a fourth in the citrus trees trying not to cough on cordite.

My men still hold the gates, but they’re pinned; their fire comes in ragged bursts, buying seconds that bleed out too fast.

“Boss.” Romeo’s voice grates through the comm in my ear, breathless, close. “I’ve got three on the west wall. Give me your mark.”

“Hold,” I grind out. If he shoots now, the muzzle flash will light Zina’s skull. I won’t gamble with her breath.

The man with the gun—young, nervous, too clean—rests his cheek against her hair. I see the tremor in his trigger finger. Safety off. Slack taken up. He’s waiting for permission or a miracle. I can give him neither. I need a window. Half a heartbeat. The smallest breach between intent and action.

I step forward into the open, palms lifted just enough to look suicidal.

My shirt sticks to my back, soaked with sweat and someone else’s blood.

The courtyard lights throw my shadow across Zina’s chains, over Guido’s curls.

I make my voice a razor. “Point that barrel anywhere but at her, boy, and you live an extra minute.”

His jaw flutters. “Back the fuck up!”

Zina doesn’t move. Doesn’t plead. Only tilts her head a fraction like a reminder: you promised me fire.

I sweep the edges again—angles, distances, exits.

The fountain lip is slick; the statue base gives cover to the knee.

The archway offers a ricochet I don’t want.

The balcony is thirty feet and a lifetime away.

Santino lounges against the iron like this is theater and I’m the understudy who finally got a scene.

“On your knees,” he repeats, sing-song, enjoying himself. “Make it pretty.”

“Count of three,” Romeo whispers in my ear. “I can smoke the balcony. Wind’s in our favor.”

I roll my shoulders, loosen my grip. My blade sits warm against my spine. My pistol weighs my hip like a promise. “On my mark,” I murmur. “Not before.”

The traitor shifts, and that’s when I see it: he’s set the muzzle wrong. Too tight against her temple. At that angle, recoil knocks the shot high; the flash will blind him for a blink. One blink is all a man like me needs.

I drag air into my lungs. It tastes like salt and old money burning.

The courtyard wavers, then narrows until there’s only the tremor in that trigger and the white of Guido’s knuckles around his knight.

My pulse slows. The noise recedes. I hear Zina inhale—steady, unafraid. I hear my own heart, heavy as a hammer.

“Emiliano,” Santino purrs, “kneel.”

I smile without humor. “I don’t kneel.”

The trigger twitches.

“Now,” I whisper.

A smoke canister clacks against iron above; bloom swallows the balcony in a choking gray. Rifles cough. Men shout. The young bastard at Zina’s temple flinches, eyes cutting upward, grip loosening a breath he can’t afford.

I’m already moving.

I launch low, boots sliding through blood, shoulder driving like a battering ram.

My left hand tears the chain taut to pivot Zina clear; my right finds steel.

Heat sears my cheek as a bullet kisses past, but the muzzle jerks off her skin, barked shot screaming into nothing.

Guido drops, a small cry swallowed by the roar.

We collide—me, the gunman, the chain, the weight of every sin. Marble buckles my knees. His wrist bends. Something pops. The pistol kicks, harmless this time, and skitters across stone.

Through smoke, Santino curses. More men pour fire into the courtyard. My men answer, a chorus of thunder. The night becomes a strobe of flame and shadow.

I twist, find the bastard’s throat with my forearm, pin him to the tiles, and bare my own blade, the edge a thin, merciless moon.

“Touch her again,” I snarl into his face, “and I’ll teach your bones how to scream.”

The world snaps bright, hot, lethal.

And then I move again.

Breaking the Chain

The courtyard is a furnace of fire and gunmetal.

Bullets scream through the night, carving the air with death.

One clips past my ear with a hiss, another sears across my arm—hot iron tearing flesh—but I don’t stop.

Pain is nothing. Pain is fuel. Because ahead of me, chained like a prize for jackals, are the only two souls I can’t lose.

Zina. My Queen, my ruin. Her wrists bound, body dragged against stone, a pistol digging into her temple. And Guido, our boy, clinging to her skirts with tiny fists, eyes wide, trembling in terror he shouldn’t yet understand.

The traitor holding them thinks steel will make me hesitate. He doesn’t know who the fuck I am.

“NO!” My roar splits the heavens, raw and feral, louder than the gunfire around us.

I slam into him before the barrel steadies. My knife punches up under his ribs, slicing through muscle, bone, life. His gasp is wet, guttural, blood bubbling over his lips. His eyes widen in shock before rolling back.

His grip falters. The chain slips loose.

Zina doesn’t wait. She rips the pistol from his hand with a snarl, pivots, and smashes the butt into his skull. The crack echoes across marble like thunder. He crumples, boneless, his blood painting the stones beneath us.

Guido wails against her waist, sobbing into her dress.

His little body shakes so violently I can feel it from feet away.

Zina bends low, one arm crushing him against her chest, the other leveling the pistol outward, steady, unflinching.

Even in the middle of war—smoke thick, bullets hissing, bodies falling—she is sovereign. My Queen, painted in ruin and fire.

Relief surges through me, slicing sharp against the rage. They’re alive. I reached them. For now.

But then a laugh cuts through the chaos—cold, mocking, carried from above.

Santino.

He leans against the balcony’s iron railing, framed by the fire raging behind him. Smoke curls at his shoulders like wings, his smirk carved deep into his face. He doesn’t even bother to aim a weapon. He doesn’t need to. The rifles behind him lift as one, his soldiers already obeying.

“You think killing one dog breaks the chain?” His voice is silk stretched over steel. “You think saving her once saves her forever?”

I bare my teeth, my blade still dripping. “Step down here, fratello, and I’ll show you what breaking really looks like.”

His smirk widens. He raises a hand. The rifles above us tilt down, black mouths yawning wide.

The courtyard falls silent for a heartbeat, every shadow holding its breath.

This wasn’t the end of the chain. It was only the first link snapping.

And Santino is ready to tighten the rest around our throats.

Fire on the Balcony

The world narrows to fire.

Gunpowder hangs thick in the courtyard, the acrid smoke stinging my lungs as I drag Zina and Guido behind me, my blade still wet with the traitor’s blood.

Soldiers scream in the distance, the crack of rifles ricochets through the marble arches, but all of it blurs against the one sound I can’t ignore—Santino’s laugh.

I lift my gaze.

He stands framed in firelight on the balcony above, the stone rail glowing with the reflection of flames spreading through the west wing.

His suit jacket hangs loose, his tie gone, his shirt open at the throat like he dressed for war instead of dinner.

His grin cuts through the chaos like a blade, white teeth gleaming, the smile of a man who thinks he’s already won.

“Look at you,” he calls down, his voice amplified by the inferno. “Giovanni’s shadow pretending at a crown. You bleed for her, for the bastard boy, and you think that makes you a king? You’re nothing. You’re a man waiting to bury his family.”

My grip tightens on the dagger, knuckles splitting open again, blood dripping fresh onto the stone. “Come down here and say it, fratello.”

His smirk sharpens. “No. Tonight, the stage belongs to me.”

He raises a hand. The signal.