Page 82 of The Cruel Heir
Yes, bring cravings.
Ten minutes later,she breezed in with sesame bagels, honeyed goat cheese, and fresh strawberries. We ate cross-legged on the floor, sunlight striping the varnish between us.
She asked about the father, gentle curiosity, no judgment, and I told her the truth in slices: man I loved, man I feared, man who gilded cages until they looked like cathedrals. That I was glad he was dead. Her eyes widened, she didn’t know I was lying, mouth soft with sympathy rather than pity.
“Sounds like you miss him,” she said around a strawberry.
“I miss a version of him that might never have existed,” I answered. “And I miss… not being alone.”
Her gaze dropped to the invitation. “Fancy,” she said, fingers brushing the crest. “Are you going?”
I licked goat cheese from my thumb, heart jittering. “I don’t know. The moment I cross that threshold, I become property again.”
“Sometimes you gotta walk backin, so they remember you’re a queen, not a pawn.” Laila’s grin was half dare, half prayer. “Wear red. Make ’em bleed.”
Her belief in me cracked something open: a jar once labeled hope, that I thought I’d shelved for good. I tucked the card beneath a folded napkin, like burying a tendril of temptation. We spent the afternoon rearranging furniture: loveseat under the window, dining table angled to catch sunset, vanity beside the closet. Laila strung fairy lights across the ceiling beams, declaring no woman deserved bare bulbs. When she left at dusk, the apartment glowed like possibility.
Loneliness stalked in after midnight anyway, curling in the doorway like smoke. I stood by the window, watching rain paint the street in liquid neon, and pressed the invitation to the glass until condensation soaked the paper.
On Saturday, the crimson dress arrived from alterations, a bias-cut slip that skimmed my bump, defiant slit up the thigh, back cut low enough to scandalize a board meeting. I hung it on the closet door, and couldn’t stop staring.
Sunday, I tested it with black stilettos, practiced walking the hallway. My ribs tightened, but the baby kicked approval, or maybe impatience. Choice, Sterling had written. The word felt like a weight and a key, simultaneously.
Monday dawned clear and sharp. I made oatmeal, drizzled honey, ate half before loneliness tasted sour. I showered, moisturized, pulled on my thrifted jeans, then yanked them offand reached for the dress. Silk slid over my curves like a second skin, and the slit flashed thigh as I stepped into the stilettos. I left curls wild, swept on mascara, crimson lip gloss, and a hint of gold highlighter at my cheekbones. In the mirror, a stranger stared back, soft fullness at her belly, fierceness blazing in her eyes, loneliness transmuted into crown and scepter.
I tucked the invitation into a black clutch, beside the matte-black card that could buy nations, shrugged into my trench, and texted Laila:
Walking into the wolf den, wish me savagery.
Good luck, queen! You’ve got this!
Outside, dusk smeared burnt-orange over the river. I hailed a cab. The driver’s eyes lingered on the gown, then the swell beneath, and he opened the back door with a respectful nod. Riverside Hall glimmered in the distance, all glass wings and marble bones.
The closer we crawled through traffic, the steadier my pulse became, like my heart had rediscovered its metronome at the thought of Sterling’s gaze colliding with mine across a ballroom. I imagined the look in his eyes, shock, hunger, maybe terror, when he realized the girl who left now owned her shadow.
The cab rolled to the curb. Cameras flashed beyond velvet ropes, and reporters angled microphones at every rustle of silk. I paid with the black card, stepped onto rain-slick pavement, and lifted my chin to the floodlights.
Loneliness tried one last time to claw me back into the cab.
I left it on the curb.
STERLING
Iwoke Tuesday, to a vacancy so loud it rattled the windows.
Her pillow lay cold, the sheet beside me uncreased, and the gray hush of predawn clung to the manor like an indictment. I reached, half-dreaming, for the curve of her hip, habit born in stolen nights, then remembered she had left seven hours earlier, with nothing but a violin case, and a key I’d sworn would stay forever hers. My fingers closed on linen instead of skin, and the air tasted of copper.
I stood anyway, because power kept its own timetable. Scalding water hissed against my back, while I traced her name in the steam, and watched it bleed. By the time the mirror cleared, the house still hadn’t breathed. No kettle whistled, no staff tread dared echo, and even the chandeliers seemed to dim in deference to the space she’d evacuated.
In the study, the monitors cycled their feeds: the hallway outside her walk-up, the stoop slick with last night’s rain, a traffic cam following the rideshare that ferried her to a midwife on the Lower East Side. Twenty weeks, four days, anatomy scan normal, maternal vitals excellent, partner absent. The final phrase landed like shrapnel behind my ribs. I silenced the file,and signed three acquisition orders before noon, just to feel something other than that empty word.
Afternoon light found me prowling the garage, threatening to sack a driver for fingerprints on the Phantom’s chrome. Frankie hung back, watching me as one might watch a lion lick the bars of its cage. When he finally asked if I had slept, I told him sleep was for men who could afford dreams. He left me to the cold echo of my own footsteps.
Night draped the estate in velvet shadows. I poured Lagavulin into her teacup, the one painted with violets she never admitted she liked, and sat at her place at the dining table. Candlelight wobbled against the crystal, and the seat across remained a wound that refused to clot. At two a.m. I checked the shadow-car feed: she climbed her stairs alone, hand pressed to the small of her back, the way the midwife must have shown her. The urge to drive there, and carry her inside, nearly tore muscle from bone. Instead, I whispered her name to the dark, and the house did not answer.
Wednesday, I lasted eleven minutes in the boardroom. Directors rattled off quarterly returns, while my skull replayed the Doppler whoosh of our child’s heart. I excused myself, vomited into a marble sink, then wrote a check large enough to hush their curiosity for a month. Later, I stood in the nursery, moon-white walls, mobile still boxed, counting breaths until dawn seeped through the curtains, and found me on the floor, clutching a swatch of baby-blue satin. My eyes burned, but Kingsleys did not cry; they calcified.
Thursday, the tailor arrived with the tux for the gala: midnight wool that swallowed light, lapels keen enough to slice. He prattled about fit and I nodded, while my mind traced Zara in crimson. Had she chosen a dress? Did someone lift the zipper when her fingers shook? Had the baby fluttered while silk settled over her belly? After he left, I stalked the city in a black SUV,parking two doorways from her building, watching her window glow honey-warm against the rain. A woman’s silhouette, round curls, laughing, moved inside, stringing fairy lights. Joy that did not include me. I left before security threatened to drag me back.
