Page 4 of The Cruel Heir
ZARA
Seven Months Later
Seven months had passedsince Chadwick pressed his weight onto me in that room, stepping into the echo of my father’s cruelty. And now every whispered rumor through these marble halls carried the same electric promise. Sterling Kingsley, my high school bully, and Chadwick’s best friend, had returned.
Before everything, before the scars and silence, there was music. I used to play until my fingers blistered, until my soul stopped screaming. The violin wasn’t just an instrument; it was a lifeline.
The calluses that once armoured each fingertip were baby-soft now, proof my gift was dying. Every practice room I passed felt like a church that excommunicated me, and each day I refused to play was another candle snuffed out by his shadow.
When I played, I wasn’t the fat black girl, fighting for air in a sea of privilege. I was magic. Sound. Freedom.
And then Sterling snapped my bridge like it was nothing. I should have loathed him to ash, but the memory of those hands;precise, reverent, destructive, lit something shameful in my ribs. I wanted those hands on me, and the wanting felt like rot spreading under perfect skin.
I never played again.
I skipped lessons, refused solitary practice, but Mother’s tutors still dragged me back onto the risers, diploma and stipend dangling over my head. Each forced session felt like nails through my resolve. I still hear Mother’s laughter spilling through these halls, her charity galas, her name glittering on every marquee, before her death passed that empire into hands that only knew how to squander it.
The Johnston ledgers lay bare, the fortune gone dry the moment Mother was gone, a scandal no pedigree could survive.
Graduation came and went in silence, as Dad’s creditors froze every account, the morning the Johnston fortune unraveled. Seven months of washing dishes for rent later, the violin was still in its case, and I was still paying for that night.
I couldn’t stop thinking back to the past, like some kind of ominous sign from above. It didn’t help that my job was the worst place on Earth to work at. The Clear View Country Club still glittered, white linens, pastel dresses, and perfectly manicured lies. It smelled like polished crystal, and old money, like secrets sealed under silk napkins.
I used to rule these halls in rented Valentino, while Mother’s account footed the bill, until Dad’s lines of credit vanished.
A fallen princess.
No crown. No family. Just bruises where my dreams used to live. Now, I served shrimp skewers, in rubber-soled shoes that squeaked with every step.
I moved through the brunch crowd like a shadow; eyes down, tray balanced, smile fake.
If I didn’t make rent this week, I’d be out on my ass. Every tipped dollar stacked against my spiraling overdue notices. Sowhen Madeline Kingsley sneered at my spotless cloth, I tasted bile, and remembered that, on my side of the table, every cracked plate was another bill I couldn’t afford.
Laughter bloomed like poison roses: women in coral Chanel, and men who'd never heard no in their lives.
I spotted her before she opened her mouth.
Madeline Kingsley.
Ice-blonde bob, spine straight like a blade, lips lacquered the color of fresh blood.
Sterling Kingsley’s mother. A year ago, she’d pitched me as a suitable match. But that was before I reminded her that I wasn’t from the right kind of blackness; hers was heir to generations of institutional trust. Mine was the Johnston windfall, an inheritance Dad didn’t know how to hold.
“Zara, darling,” she purred, just loud enough for her friends to smirk. “You missed a spot.”
She pointed to a spotless cloth, like I was too stupid to see it.
I bent, blotting the spotless cloth.
“Of course, Mrs. Kingsley.”
My voice didn’t shake. That was something. My hands did, though, just a little. They always did, when she looked at me like I was gum scraped off her Louboutins.
Now, I wasn’t even worth eye contact.
I stood, adjusted my tray, and turned… and felt it.
I felthimbefore I saw him.
