Page 72 of The Cruel Heir
Sterling finally turned to him, voice low and lethal. “He put hands on her.”
“I know.” Frankie’s eyes flashed. “So we bury him, quiet. No red tape. No headlines. No funeral.”
Sterling looked back at me then. No softness. Just calculation. Like he was already imagining the body count he’d rack up for every fingerprint left on me.
His voice cut through the silence, meant only for me. “Don’t think I’m sparing him, Zara. Friendship’s been dead a long time. I just want him to feel me coming.”
I swallowed hard, the air too thick to breathe.
Frankie nodded toward the hallway. “Come on, Zara. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I moved on autopilot, but I felt him watching me. Not with pity. With promise.
Because if Sterling Kingsley ever decided to stop holding back, there would be no survivors.
STERLING
Two Months Later
The morning airwas thick with tension. Zara had left for university, oblivious to what I was about to do. My stepfather and his wife, who had spent their short-lived marriage trying to manipulate their way into controlling me, had pushed too far.
"Annul the marriage," my stepfather demanded, his voice like gravel as he stood in my office, his broad shoulders squared, but his eyes calculating, and wary. "Before this spirals further."
I leaned back in my chair, letting the weight of the moment settle. My mother sat beside him, her disgust palpable. She had never accepted Zara, never wanted to. "She’s carrying my child," I said, my voice dangerously smooth. "This isn’t up for discussion."
My mother scoffed. "That girl tricked you. You think she loves you? She’s securing herself a future she has no right to. If you let this continue, you’ll ruin everything."
I exhaled slowly, tapping my fingers against the mahogany desk. "If I let this continue? You think you have a say in what I do?"
John’s gaze darkened. "The board is furious. They’ve already begun discussing contingencies. Do you understand what you’re risking?"
I smiled. A slow, dangerous curl of my lips. "Oh, I understand perfectly."
Their mistake was thinking they still held power over me.
I stood, moving around my desk, slow and deliberate. "You were always so concerned about appearances. About power. About maintaining the illusion that this family is untouchable." I poured myself a drink, swirling the whiskey lazily, before taking a sip. "But you forgot one thing."
John stiffened. "And what’s that?"
I set the glass down with a sharp clink. "Underneath the suit, I’m a monster."
Before they could react, I pulled my gun from the drawer and shot John between the eyes. My mother gasped, her scream strangled by shock, her body trembling, as John’s corpse slumped forward onto the desk. Blood pooled, dripping onto the floor, staining the polished wood.
"Sterling-" she whispered, eyes wide, her nails digging into the armrests of the chair.
I turned the barrel toward her. "You never did know when to shut up."
One more shot.
Silence.
The twins’headlights carved a white scar across Kingsley’s private runway, swallowing October fog in greedy gulps.
John Johnston’s corpse was cooling in the Gulfstream’s aft galley freezer; Mother beside him, her pearls scattered like teeth across stainless steel. I promised them Florence for their honeymoon. Technically, I was delivering… bits of them would rain over the Atlantic before sunrise.
Isaiah muscled the cargo door shut. “Payload secured.”
Malachi followed with two jerricans of Jet A-1, and a duffel packed with C-4 bricks, each wired to a military arming switch. Clean burn, no fingerprints.
