Page 74 of The Cruel Heir
Twelve hours later, the world would wake to news that the Kingsley Gulfstream never reached Newark.
ZARA
Campus, 07:42 a.m. The day the crash news went public
Saint Bipal’s bell tower tolled six times, before I realised the quad had frozen around me. Phones lit pockets of fog like votive candles, faces warped by the same headline.
KING& QUEEN OF KINGSLEY CONSORTIUM PRESUMED DEAD IN GULFSTREAM EXPLOSION.
I tasted copper.Didn't register my scream until pigeons thrashed into flight. Sterling’s driver materialised, murmured something about “Mr. Kingsley will explain,” and herded me toward the Bentley. I didn’t fight; shock hands you a leash and calls it comfort.
The car didn’t take me home. It slid through campus gates and straight toward the Administration Annex. Sterling was waiting,of coursehe was waiting. This wasn’t coincidence; it was choreography.
08:11 a.m. Administration Annex
Sterling waited beside Dean Havers’ office, those impossible shoulders slouched in manufactured grief. He opened his arms, but I stepped back.
“Tell me you’re lying,” I rasped.
“I wish I were.” His voice sounded sand-blasted, but his eyes, God, his eyes were steady, calculating tide tables, even as my world drowned.
“Plane… honeymoon?”
He caught my wrists, thumbs brushing my pulse. “Autopilot malfunction near Nantucket Sound. Coast Guard is searching.”
“Searching isn’t finding.” A laugh cracked out of me, brittle as sea glass. “They’re not dead until we see bodies.”
He didn’t correct me. He didn’t know what to say.
09:00 a.m. Ethics 202
I made it to class on muscle memory, Sterling a silent eclipse in the back row. Dr Delgado read the roll, and when she reached “Miss Kingsley,” thirty necks swivelled. Kingdoms can smell blood.
“Your thoughts on moral luck, Miss Kingsley?” she prodded.
My throat locked. Luck? My parents had boarded a jet, dripping in privilege, and landed in the Atlantic as ash. Sterling’s wedding ring reflected projector light, proof a Kingsley heir still owned me, even in widow’s black I hadn’t earned yet.
I closed my laptop. “Sometimes luck is just someone else’s alibi.”
Delgado blinked, and the class exhaled a collective shiver. Sterling rose and made his way slowly toward me. The scrape of his chair sounded like a guillotine.
Professor Delgado, a sharp-eyed woman, with no tolerance for disruptions, noticed immediately. She pursed her lips, setting her notes on the podium. "Sir, this is a private lecture. If you’re not enrolled, I’m going to have to ask you to leave."
Sterling didn’t even glance up from his phone. "I’m here for my wife."
A wave of murmurs spread through the class. I sunk lower in my seat, heat crawling up my neck. Kill me now.
Professor Delgado adjusted her glasses. "That’s not how this works, Mr…?"
"Kingsley," he supplied, finally looking up. "And I think you’ll find that how things work can be… flexible."
There was something in his voice, something slow and deliberate, a warning wrapped in politeness.
The professor crossed her arms. "That may be the case in your world, Mr. Kingsley, but this is my classroom. If you don’t leave, I’ll be forced to report this."
Sterling’s smirk didn’t waver. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a black credit card, and placed it on the desk beside him. "Consider this an early donation to the university fund. I assume we have an understanding?"
A sharp inhale cut through the room. No. He didn’t.
