Page 6 of Queen (Shattered Pieces #2)

Emiliano moves like nothing happened. He walks to the decanter, unhurried, steady, pours himself a drink as if he didn’t just slice me open in front of his men. He doesn’t offer me one. Of course he doesn’t.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I say. My voice is low. Controlled. I won’t give him the tremor he wants.

He turns, glass in hand, gaze dark and cutting. “It’s only dangerous if you plan on losing.”

I step forward. Slow. Purposeful. He doesn’t move back. He never does. The bastard thrives on proximity.

“I’m not some fucking token you parade for power plays. Don’t confuse survival with surrender.”

His eyes narrow, slow as the turning of a blade. “Don’t confuse this arrangement with mercy.”

He takes a sip, calm as the devil, and the firelight paints his profile gold. He looks untouchable, saintly even. But I know better. Underneath, he’s the same ruin that kissed me in a safe house hallway with Giovanni’s blood still on my hands.

I close the distance in three strides. My pulse hammers, but my voice is steady. “Do you think I won’t destroy you if you betray me?”

His breath brushes my mouth. “Do you think you haven’t already?”

The words lodge like steel between my ribs. Not pain. Something worse—doubt.

“You talk like I broke you,” I whisper, sharp as glass. “But you’re the one who begged me to sign my soul away.”

He lifts his hand, slow, as if to brush hair from my cheek. I catch his wrist midair, fingers clamping tight. His pulse is steady beneath my grip, infuriatingly calm.

“You don’t get to touch me like that,” I snap.

He smiles. Not cruel. Not warm. Just certain. “I already did.”

My nails bite into his skin before I release him and step back. Rage burns through me, but he’s still unreadable, still standing like a wall I can’t knock down.

“This is the last time I play nice, Zina.”

“Then stop pretending,” I shoot back.

The silence that follows is heavy. Full of ghosts, unfinished wars, and years of unsaid truths.

“You’re mine now,” he says finally.

“I’m nobody’s.”

A long beat.

“You’ll be safer if you stop lying to yourself.”

My jaw tightens. “And you’ll be safer if you remember I don’t belong in a cage.”

He drains the rest of his glass in one swallow, then turns his back. Dismissal. Or retreat.

I walk to the door. My hand lingers on the knob. I should leave. I should save the last word. But I don’t. I throw it at his back, sharp as a knife.

“Play your game, Emiliano. But I bury kings, too.”

The Necklace: His First Claim in Public

The room hasn’t changed. Neither have the men lining the far wall, pretending they aren’t eavesdropping on every look, every word.

But something has shifted.

The air feels heavier. Charged. Like static before a storm.

Emiliano stands beside the hearth, backlit by flames like some dark king in his cathedral of violence.

He lifts one hand in the smallest of gestures, and immediately a soldier approaches—a man with a scar cutting down his cheek, eyes polished and dead like steel.

He carries a black velvet box as though it weighs the world.

It does.

My world. My freedom. My leash.

Emiliano takes it without looking at him. Doesn’t thank him. Doesn’t even acknowledge the man exists. The box opens with a quiet hiss of hinges, and inside lies the collar. Thin white-gold chain, tiny diamonds glittering like the teeth of a trap. Subtle. Refined. Cruel.

Not jewelry. Branding.

“This isn’t a gift,” Emiliano says, his voice slicing through the room. “It’s proof of loyalty.”

The men shift slightly, waiting—expecting my refusal, my humiliation. They want to watch me choke on it. He’s putting me on display like a prize he’s dragged back from the battlefield. Like property.

My nails dig crescents into my palms. Pride burns up my throat like bile. I want to spit, to laugh, to tell him to shove his diamonds down his throat. But then I glance at them—three soldiers watching me with calculating eyes, waiting for the queen to falter.

I can’t falter. Not here. Not now.

So I lift my chin, steady as steel, and I say, “Put it on me, then.”

The silence is absolute. Even the fire seems to still.

Emiliano’s expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes darkens—heats. He steps forward, slow and deliberate, like a predator closing in on prey. He doesn’t need to move this close. But of course he does.

The box remains open in one hand. With the other, he gathers my hair and drapes it over my shoulder, fingers grazing the nape of my neck. It takes everything in me not to shiver.

The collar is cold as it slides against my skin. His knuckles are warm. The contrast makes me burn inside.

He fastens it in silence. No tenderness. No romance. Just control. Possession.

The clasp clicks shut with a sound so delicate, it might as well be a gunshot.

His fingers linger at the hollow of my throat. Not caressing. Confirming. Claiming.

“Perfect,” he murmurs, lips brushing close enough to graze my ear. “Now everyone knows who you belong to.”

I don’t move. I don’t breathe.

Inside, I’m fire. A calm surface over a fucking inferno.

I square my shoulders, lift my chin, and face his men. The diamonds glint like a knife against my skin, and I let them look. Let them think he’s won.

Because the truth is simple: they’ll choke on this arrogance soon enough.

Marked for Everyone to See

The collar has barely settled on my skin when Emiliano moves again. Not violent. Not gentle. Just certain.

He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t warn.

He lowers his head like it’s his fucking right.

And then he marks me.

His mouth presses to the skin just above the collarbone. Not a kiss. Nothing romantic in the way he lingers there. His breath is hot and deliberate, his lips firm, and his hand curls lightly around my throat, thumb resting on the hammering pulse beneath the chain.

It’s not affection. It’s a brand. A public claim.

My body screams to shove him off. To drive my knee into his ribs. To spit in his face. But I don’t move.

Because behind him, they’re still watching.

Three men. Trusted lieutenants. Soldiers of the old guard, trained to kill without hesitation. Trained to follow the scent of weakness.

And right now, I am wearing weakness around my neck.

My fingers twitch at my sides, fists clenching so tightly my nails pierce skin. Pain shoots through my palms, grounding me.

I won’t flinch. I won’t.

Even as my breath tangles in my chest. Even as the heat of his mouth sears into my bones.

I force my spine straight, my face carved from marble.

They’re waiting to see if I fold. Waiting to see if the queen bows under her new crown.

But I don’t.

I rise into it.

Emiliano lifts his head at last, his lips dragging the faintest line against my skin before he pulls back. He lingered long enough to make sure they saw it. That they all know what I am now.

His.

Temporarily. Publicly. Strategically.

But not forever.

He steps back. I let the silence stretch. Then I turn my gaze on each of them—one by one—burning holes into their smirks until they falter.

My voice is low. Deadly. “Let them watch. I’ll bury every one of them if they touch me.”

The smirks fade. The weight of my fury fills the room.

The fire crackles behind us, but the real heat is mine now, rising through my blood like a vow.

I may wear his collar. But no one here fucking owns me.

Not yet.