24. Zara
ZARA
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 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 course he 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.
Professor Delgado’s expression didn’t falter, but the way her fingers twitched against her podium told me she was considering it. "You think you can just-"
"I know I can," Sterling interrupted smoothly. "But if you'd like, I can arrange for a meeting with the Dean, to discuss your salary increase instead."
Silence. The kind that pressed against your chest.
I wanted to sink into the floor. This was my life now.
Professor Delgado exhaled sharply, then turned toward the whiteboard, choosing to ignore him.
Sterling shot me a knowing smirk.
I was going to murder him.
Class dismissed.
The hallway was still settling after my class dismissed, when Sterling’s voice slid over my shoulder, soft, decisive, already walking. I trailed him through the quad’s lingering fog, dazed, until the Bentley’s rear door yawned open. A maid thrust a garment bag at me.
“Change on the way,” Sterling ordered, climbing in first.
I obeyed, because my knees had forgotten how not to.
Inside, city blocks blurred past tinted glass, while I fought with a zipper that smelled of fresh dye.
The dress was black crepe, the sort people pick for respectable grieving, when there’s no time to tailor respect.
By the time I smoothed the skirt, Sterling was tapping his watch at the driver.
We ran three red lights. Grief, it seemed, had a schedule.
The cathedral loomed, thirty minutes after class ended, limestone wet with half-hearted drizzle, reporters penned behind barricades like livestock. Flashbulbs sparked. Sterling’s fingers locked around my elbow, steering me through the storm of questions.
Inside, St. Sebastian’s nave stretched, half-empty.
Two coffins rested beneath lilies that looked anaemic under the harsh sconces.
Incense hung in stale pockets, unburnt and cold, as if even the sanctuary had been rushed.
A violin waited on the first pew, rosin scent fighting candle wax.
Sterling had arranged it, of course he had.
The priest’s Latin rolled out in clipped syllables, verses stitched too tightly together.
I counted six board members in the front row: Langford, Harlan, Grayson, plus their wives, and one junior VP, who looked as if he’d wandered in by accident.
Their whisper-corridor began, before the kyrie ended.
“Share price is hemorrhaging,” Langford muttered.
Harlan answered, “Wall Street hates incest almost as much as it hates uncertainty.”
Grayson leaned forward, voice oily. “Give it another quarter, and we’ll vote him out for misconduct.”
The priest beckoned, and I realised he expected music.
My hands shook as I lifted the violin. A single adagio, Sterling’s idea of solemnity.
Bow met string, and the first note quivered like a held breath.
While I played, Sterling stood behind me, gaze fixed on the caskets, but his shadow stretched across the marble toward the board, claiming territory.
When the last chord died, the priest closed his Bible with a decisive clap, service length twelve minutes, and attendants moved in. There were no eulogies, no childhood anecdotes, not even a moment of silent prayer. Just a mechanical pivot toward burial.
Rain thickened to needles, as we followed the coffins along a slate path, slick with moss. My heels skidded twice, and Sterling’s grip tightened each time, not affectionate, simply unwilling to slow. The board trailed behind, umbrellas colliding like dark wings.
At the family mausoleum, the pallbearers wrestled the coffins onto brass rails. A hydraulic hiss swallowed the coffins whole, no roses, no earth, only stone closing like a vault on unfinished sentences. Rainwater pooled on the metal threshold, beading like mercury.
I placed my palm on the cold door. The goodbye in my throat tasted of salt and jet fuel.
From behind me I heard whispers.
“Drive-thru burial,” Grayson scoffed.
Langford’s wife sniffed. “He’s turned tragedy into a business expense.”
Another voice, maybe Harlan’s, answered, “Embarrassment breeds discount shares. We’ll clean house soon enough.”
Sterling pivoted. The rain glazed his hair, but his smile was winter-sharp. “Those who find my methods distasteful,” he said, voice slicing through drizzle and dissent, “are welcome to liquidate their positions. Grief is temporary; legacy is not.”
Silence swallowed them. Even the rain seemed to hesitate.
He motioned for me to move beneath the umbrella, ushered me toward the car, and hurried me away from the graves. Cameras clicked beyond the gates, capturing the moment his hand slid over the slight curve of my abdomen. Proof of succession. Optics managed.
The Bentley’s door thudded shut, sealing us into leather and low light. Raindrops drummed overhead, a heartbeat I could not match. Sterling answered his buzzing phone.
“Send the press release. Seventeen-hundred characters, headline emphasis on tragic accident,” he said. A pause. “No, omit speculation about the investigation. Focus on our commitment to stability.” He ended the call and slipped the device back into his breast pocket, all without once looking at me.
I traced a circle of fog on the window, watching the cathedral recede. “Was it always going to be this quick?” I whispered.
“Justice delays nothing.” His tone was almost gentle, which somehow hurt worse.
“For whom?” The question escaped before I could sand down its edges.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for my hand, and rested it on my stomach, fingers lacing possessively. I felt the weight of a thousand camera flashes that were no longer there.
The city lights smeared into silver lines. My chest tightened, breaths turning thin. I counted them, one, two, three, until numbers lost meaning, and tears slipped free without warning. I pressed a fist to my mouth, but the sob rose anyway, cracked and raw.
Sterling’s arm tightened, steadying, not comforting. He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief, the gesture was almost clinical. My tears soaked linen that smelled faintly of his cologne. I turned toward the window, hiding the tremor in my shoulders, and let the darkness unspool behind my eyelids.
Miles later, minutes, hours?... the car eased through the estate gates.
I only knew because the engine’s rhythm changed.
Sterling said something to the driver I couldn’t parse, while my pulse throbbed too loudly in my ears.
Exhaustion folded over me like weighted silk.
The last thing I felt was the upholstery beneath my cheek, and Sterling’s palm settling on my hair, a curious, absent-minded stroke, as if quiet, sleeping grief were the easiest version of me to manage.
The world dimmed to rain and leather, and the faint ache of a goodbye unsaid.
And then it dimmed to nothing at all.