Echoes of a Steel Queen

Jocelyn

The smell of gasoline is the first thing, sharp and sickening. Then the cold, seeping through my coat from the concrete floor. A voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. My husband’s voice.

“Leave her.”

“Logan, are you sure?” A second voice. Riccardo. Always the calm one. The calculating one. His consigliere.

“She’s a liability,” Logan says, his words clipping the air like shards of glass. “Her reputation, her ambition… it’s become a problem. This cleans the slate.”

A small, metallic click. The familiar sound of Riccardo’s Zippo lighter. A flare of light illuminates the darkness behind my eyelids. He’s lighting a cigarette. Or a fire.

The world burns, and I wake up with a gasp, the scream caught in my throat.

My eyes snap open. Not to a gritty shipping container, but to silk sheets, a thousand thread count, cool against my skin. Sunlight streams through a gap in the heavy velvet curtains, not a flickering bare bulb. The air smells of lavender and my own perfume, not gasoline and death.

The bedroom door opens. “Sera, my love. Another nightmare?”

Logan stands there, a vision of tailored perfection. His dark hair is immaculate, his jawline sharp. He wears a silk robe the color of blood, his concern a mask that doesn’t quite fit. He thinks I don’t see the flicker of impatience in his eyes.

I see everything.

A year. I have exactly one year until the Antwerp deal. One year until he leaves me to die for real.

I pull the sheet higher, my hand trembling. I make it tremble. “Logan,” I whisper, my voice a fragile, broken thing. “It was so real.”

He crosses the room, the plush carpet silencing his steps. He sits on the edge of the massive bed, his weight a suffocating presence. “Just a bad dream, my little bird. It’s over now.” He reaches out, stroking my hair. His touch feels like spiders on my skin.

I flinch, a genuine reaction I allow him to see. “Don’t.”

He pulls his hand back, a frown marring his handsome face. “It’s been a month since the… incident. The doctor said these episodes would fade.”

The incident. A rival family ambush. A car crash. A convenient head injury that explains my new personality. My own plan, executed from a hospital bed in a past life, now serves as the perfect cover story.

“I’m sorry,” I say, lowering my eyes. I focus on the intricate pattern of the lace on my nightgown. Submissive. Weak. “I’m just so tired.”

“Of course you are,” he coos, his voice dripping with condescension. “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. You just need to rest. Let me handle things.”

*You have it handled. The same way you handled the Antwerp deal. The same way you handled my life.* The words are a scream inside my head, but my lips remain parted in a silent, pathetic O.

“Riccardo is downstairs,” Logan says, rising from the bed. “We have a meeting about the new port tariffs. The usual boring stuff.” He pauses, watching me. “You used to love all that.”

I look up at him through my lashes, my eyes wide and vacant. “I… I don’t remember.”

A flash of something crosses his face. Relief. Pure, unadulterated relief. The Ice Queen, the woman who ran his logistics with terrifying efficiency, the strategist who won him his territory, is gone. In her place is this fragile doll he can finally control.

“It’s for the best,” he says, more to himself than to me. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I’ll have Maria bring you some tea.” He blows me a kiss from the doorway and disappears.

The door clicks shut. I don’t move. I listen to his footsteps fade down the grand staircase. I count them. Twenty-three steps to the first landing. Another seventeen to the main floor. I designed this house. I know its every secret, every hollow space, every sightline.

Slowly, I sit up. The trembling stops. The fear in my eyes recedes, replaced by a cold, clear focus. I look at my hands. They are steady. These are the hands that negotiated with cartels, that signed contracts worth nine figures, that could field strip a Glock in under thirty seconds. Now, they look delicate, pale against the white silk. A perfect disguise.

I need to see him. I need to see them both together.

I slide out of bed, my feet silent on the cold marble of the en suite bathroom. I ignore my reflection in the vast mirror. The woman in it is a stranger I’m learning to inhabit. I pull on a simple cashmere robe, a soft grey that makes me look washed out, invisible.

I don’t take the main staircase. I use the servants’ passage that runs behind the west wall, another of my architectural additions. The sound of their voices grows clearer as I approach the small grate hidden behind a tapestry on the main floor.

“…completely useless now,” Logan is saying. The sound is slightly muffled. He’s in his study. My study.

“It’s a pity,” Riccardo’s voice replies, smooth as poison. “She had a fine mind for business.”

“She had a mind for my business,” Logan snaps. “People were starting to say she was the real boss. Can you imagine the disrespect?”

“It was just talk, Logan.”

“Talk becomes truth. That crash was the best thing that could have happened. It broke her. Look at her now, she’s terrified of her own shadow. She’s like a porcelain doll. Beautiful to look at, empty inside.”

I press my forehead against the cool stone wall, my breath catching in my chest. *Empty inside? Oh, you have no idea what’s inside me now.* Rage is a furnace, and I am banking the coals, letting them glow hotter and hotter until they are ready to burn this entire house, this entire empire, to the ground.

“What about the Volkov situation?” Riccardo asks, changing the subject.

“Let them posture. Their new leader, this Travis, thinks he’s a ghost. He moves quietly, but he’s still just a Russian thug. Jocelyn would have had him tied in knots with legal and financial traps before he even knew what was happening.” Logan sighs, a sound of genuine frustration. “I’ll admit, I miss that part of her.”

“We’ll manage,” Riccardo says dismissively. “We always do.”

A heavy silence hangs in the air. I can picture them perfectly. Logan behind my mahogany desk, swirling a glass of scotch. Riccardo standing by the fireplace, one hand in his pocket, radiating a lethal stillness.

I need to push them. I need to see their reaction to me, up close.

Taking a steadying breath, I smooth my hair and compose my face into a mask of timid confusion. I walk out of the passage and drift into the study’s doorway like a ghost.

“Logan?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

Both men turn. Logan’s face softens into that familiar, patronizing smile. Riccardo’s remains impassive, but his eyes narrow for a fraction of a second. He is the danger. He is the one I have to watch.

“Sera, darling, you should be in bed,” Logan says, standing up.

“I heard voices,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself. “I thought… I thought maybe something was wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong, my love. Riccardo and I were just finishing up.”

“Jocelyn.” Riccardo inclines his head, a gesture that is almost a bow but holds no respect. “You look pale.”

“I’m alright,” I lie, letting my gaze drift around the room as if I’m lost. My eyes land on the open ledger on the desk. The Volkov shipping routes. So sloppy. A child could see the vulnerabilities.

Riccardo follows my gaze. He steps forward, a predator sensing a weakness. “We were just discussing the recent movements from the Volkov Bratva. You always had such an interesting perspective on their patterns. Anything come to mind?”

It’s a test. A small, sharp jab to see if the Ice Queen is still in there.

I look from the ledger to his face, letting my eyes fill with a blank confusion. I frown slightly. “Volkov? Is that a kind of wine?”

Logan lets out a short, sharp laugh. It’s a cruel sound.

But Riccardo doesn’t laugh. He just watches me, his eyes like polished stones. For a moment, I think he sees through it. He sees the fire behind the fog. My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage.

Then, he blinks. A slow, final assessment. He turns to Logan and gives a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.

She’s gone. The threat is neutralized.

Relief floods Logan’s posture. He’s won. He walks over to me, puts his arm around my shoulder, and guides me back toward the door. “Come, my love. Let’s get you back to bed. Leave the business to the men.”

His words are a match strike in the gasoline-soaked ruins of my soul. I lean into him, playing the part of the broken wife. I let him lead me from the room, my head resting on his shoulder.

“Yes, Logan,” I murmur into the expensive fabric of his shirt. “Whatever you say.”

He can’t feel the ice forming in my veins. He can’t see the intricate web of vengeance I’m already beginning to spin in my mind. He thinks he’s leading a doll back to her shelf.

He has no idea he’s walking a dead woman back to her tomb, and that she plans on taking him with her.

Once I’m back in the bedroom, the door clicks shut, sealing me in my gilded cage. I walk to the cheval mirror. The woman staring back is pale, her eyes wide and haunted. A perfect victim. A fragile piece of porcelain.

I let the expression hold for a long moment.

Then, slowly, I let it fall away.

The fear evaporates. The fragility shatters. What’s left is ice and iron, a queen in exile, staring out from behind a prisoner’s eyes. My lips curl into a smile that holds no warmth, only a promise.

“Let the games begin,” I whisper to my own reflection. One year is all I need. More than enough time to burn their world to ash. And I will enjoy every single second of it.