Page 73 of The Cruel Heir
Frankie adjusted the cuff of his charcoal suit, checking the luminous dial beneath. “ATC still thinks it’s a ferry hop to Newark. No one’s filed the revised plan.”
“Good.” I powered up the tablet, and loaded the ghost flight path I’d built in the simulator. “Autopilot lifts at 02:37, climbs to thirty-two thousand, then dead-heads east. Thirty-two minutes in… boom.”
I tapped the waypoint: EVR-004, a dead slice of international airspace, where radar painted ghosts, and the Atlantic swallowed wreckage whole.
Isaiah arched a brow. “And if the flight recorder survives?”
I tugged a blood-slick wedding band from Johnston’s finger, rolling it between mine. “It won’t.”
Inside the cabin, the air still tasted of gunshot and Chanel No 5. I recorded a voicemail in Mother’s lacquered accent, years of elocution lessons coiling around my tongue:
Darling board, John and I are headed to Italy tonight. Handle the numbers while I’m gone. Kisses.
Frankie overlayed soft cabin hum, and a distant safety-belt chime, then scheduled the message to hit Langford’s private line at dawn. Evidence was sweeter when it seemed to come from the victim herself.
We dragged the bodies into the cockpit jump seats. Malachi buckled them in, then strapped a five-kilo satchel of C-4 beneath the first-officer’s chair. Isaiah doused the aisle in fuel. The stench crawled up my nostrils, sharp enough to burn the memory of blood away.
I lifted the flight recorder from its cradle; orange, innocent, deceitful. My Zippo’s flame kissed plastic. Black goo ran down my wrist, while data screamed without a sound. When the casing collapsed, I pitched the molten brick into a fireproof satchel, and sealed it. God handles confession; I handle legacy.
Frankie paused at the top of the airstairs. “Sterling, once that taxi beacon blinks green, there’s no undo.”
“There was no undo the minute Mother raised her hand against Zara,” I answered. “Get off the plane.”
We cleared the stairs. Isaiah triggered the remote tug, and the Gulfstream rolled toward the threshold like a silver hearse. Twenty feet, fifty, a hundred, then its engines lit, howled, and the aircraft devoured the runway, until only red strobes faked a heartbeat in the mist.
Thirty-one minutes later, we were on a rise of crushed oyster shells overlooking black water. The Jet-A stink still clung to my coat. I watched time on my Breitling, counting heartbeats against altimeter math.
0:31:42.
0:31:55.
0:32:01;light bloomed on the horizon, an artificial sunrise that fractured the night. Metal confetti glittered, then vanished. The Atlantic kept secrets better than I ever could.
I exhaled, tasting jet fuel and absolution. “Release a statement: engine failure over Nantucket Sound. Playing honeymoon surprise, Florence, Amalfi, whatever screams romance.”
Frankie’s thumbs raced across his phone. “Legal will want to know who’s managing their trusts.”
“Tell them grief management falls to me.” I dropped the ruined flight recorder into the waves, and it hissed, then sank. “Draft condolence letters for the board, and every charity Mother courted. I want sympathy flooding inboxes before the sun’s up. Genuine tears optional.”
Malachi snorted. “You think flowers and platitudes keep vultures from circling?”
“Vultures circle carrion,” I answered, wiping soot from my cuff. “I’m very much alive.”
Isaiah nudged me with a sealed envelope. “Death certificates. They’re dated tomorrow. The county coroner owed us a few favors.”
“Good, I can always collect on the others.” I tucked them into my inner pocket.
Frankie pocketed his phone. “Langford’s a shark. He’ll rally the board by noon, demanding a crisis vote.”
“Let him,” I said. “Tomorrow I anchor the consortium with a Kingsley heir the board can’t vote out.”
“You’re sure she’ll say yes on the heels of this?” Isaiah asked, voice pitched low.
I pictured Zara’s violin-callused fingers, the bruises her father left on her wrists, the way her pulse stuttered when my shadow crossed hers. “Tomorrow, I ask Zara to be my wife again, with no forced conditions,” I murmured. “Tonight, I’ve already buried every reason she’ll ever have to say no.”
For her to have the freedom of choice was important. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t going to force her to be with me. Rather, I wanted her to choose to be with me.
A gull cried over the surf, ragged, greedy. I turned away from the smoldering horizon, coat snapping in Atlantic wind, and walked back toward the idling SUV. Behind me, the twins kickedshell dust over our footprints, until even the path home forgot we were there.
