Queen of Hearts

That night haunts me, I still dream about it sometimes. Those nights are the worst because when I wake, sweaty, heart beating so hard it hurts, I swear I can still smell her mother’s roses. The look of utter betrayal on her face is burned into my mind, those big blue eyes hurt as she connects the dots and brands me a traitor. I rub my thumb over the scar on my hand absent-mindedly. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and they’re right. I tried to save her from the mess, to distract her, to keep her safe from my father and outside with me away from the gunfire. But it backfired.

It was a massacre that night, one that’s gone down in the history of this city as Newtown’s most violent homicide. Rosie should have been amongst the dead. She was supposed to be. Her death was intended to mark the end of the Gambino line but somehow, she emerged, covered in blood and has been a thorn in my side since then.

My father did everything he could to extinguish her in the following years, but the Gambino family still had powerful friends in rich circles. Her survival seemed to rally some of the others, and they saw her as an avenging angel. Furious, Felix did the only thing he could, he took away her money. Her home. He made the Gambino’s traitors and then he made her persona non grata. He thought this would make her crawl back and beg for forgiveness. He was wrong. It was a trick that’s coming back to bite me in the ass now that I can’t track her down and her name is nothing more than a whisper amongst my peers and my men. She’s a ghost Queen, a legend, tearing out hearts and hiding in the shadows as she rallies an army against me.

Creed comes back into the room, a card in his hand. He hands it to me with a pointed look, he wants to torture her. To break her into a million little pieces and scatter them off the nearest bridge for the problems she’s caused. A part of me wants that too, and the other part feels guilt. I turn the card over in my hands, knowing we won’t find any fingerprints or evidence on it. She’s too good for that. It’s white, and perfectly clean apart from one corner where blood has started to seep through the paper. It must have been in contact with the contents of the box at some point. I run my fingers over her neat calligraphy.

Jay,

I hope my gift finds you safely.

Enjoy.

Love, R x

I didn’t want to kill her, but if she didn’t stop with these attacks on The Family, then she’d leave me with no other choice. My Captains were already calling for her head on a platter as one of my Captains, Lawrence liked to remind me. Daily. Repeatedly. Like I was some naive little child, and not the head of a powerful organization, a billionaire, a businessman, a lawyer and an advocate for Newtown. To leave her unpunished showed weakness, and as the head of The Family, I couldn’t show any hesitation.

Even if Rosie Gambino was once almost my wife.

Even if I ruined her life.