Page 5 of The Cruel Heir
The air dipped. Electric. Cold. Like the ancestors were whispering,run.
Sterling Kingsley stepped into the room like black generational wealth incarnate.
The tailored black suit that didn’t just fit, it obeyed. Fresh lineup. Dark skin gleaming under glass chandeliers, like it had never known struggle. And those eyes; sharp enough to cut, rich enough to drown in.
Tattoos slid out from beneath his cuff, like secrets. Art. Story. Warning.
He looked like a man who could burn the world down in silence, and write it off as a tax expense.
He didn’t smile when he saw me. Didn’t flinch.
Just looked.
Like I was a song he hadn’t finished writing. Or a threat he hadn’t decided whether to keep alive.
My tray suddenly felt heavier. My pulse did too.
He moved toward me, quiet, deliberate. Like something bad was about to happen, and the room hadn’t figured it out yet.
I didn’t know if I wanted to cry, or kiss him. That was the danger of surviving trauma; you never stopped yearning. Even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.
And then, his voice; low, intimate, weaponized.
“Is this really how you plan to spend your life, Zara?”
His voice wrapped around me like velvet, dipped in threats.
The brunch table behind me stilled, every coral Chanel and mimosa flute hanging on the moment.
I didn’t look up. Didn’t flinch. But I felt every inch of him in the room.
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion, Sterling.”
A pause. Then his laugh, low and dark, like thunder in a silk room.
“Yet here I am. Speaking anyway.” Because even when I say no, it never means anything to them. Not when they’ve already decided what I’m worth.
He stepped closer. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to burn.
The table went quiet. The Rosé-drunk socialites were practically drooling.
I moved to step away, but his fingers brushed my wrist. Barely a touch. A promise.
“We’re not done,” he murmured.
A fork clanged two tables over, and rosé sloshed against crystal. I nearly bolted. Exit left, service corridor ten paces, security nowhere. Heart battering bone, I pressed a thumbnail into my palm, one sharp point of reality, while naming everything I could touch: linen, glass, breath.
“Stay here, stay now,” I chanted silently inside, until the room steadied.
I yanked away. “We were never anything.” The words reminded me of when I thought we could be.
I’d spent years behind velvet ropes, and private tutors; my childhood a parade of masterclasses, not school assemblies.
Months before the winter recital at Saint Bipal Prep, where I’d been sent on a full scholarship, to match Mother’s reputation, someone swapped my marked Vivaldi for blank staff paper. I walked onstage, holding silence disguised as sheet-music, while Sterling lounged in the wings, twirling the bridge he’d snapped off my violin.
I played from memory anyway, bow trembling, and when the first ‘boo’ boomed through the gilded hall, a salvo of jeers swallowed every note. The sound crashed into me like a tidal wave, my ribs constricting until breath burned, and the polished marble walls echoed with my humiliation. That night I learned genius can’t survive, when cruelty wears a trust-fund smirk.
I focused on Sterling in front of me. His eyes flickered with something unreadable. Something ancient. Dangerous.
