22. Zara #2
My heart pounded as I stepped back, scanning his face for any sign of remorse, but all I saw was unfiltered rage. "You think you’re something special now?" His voice was sharp, bitter, cutting through the growing crowd that had stopped to watch. "Wearing his mark like a damn trophy?"
I swallowed hard, trying to steady my voice. "Give it back, Chadwick."
He scoffed, his grip tightening around the ring in his pocket. "You don’t deserve to wear this. You think he loves you? You’re nothing but a pawn. A placeholder. He’ll get bored, and when he does, you’ll be just another discarded toy."
His words stung, but I refused to show it. I squared my shoulders, trying to reclaim even a fraction of control over this situation. "I said, give it back."
Instead of complying, his expression twisted, and before I could move, he shoved me, hard.
My back collided with a nearby pillar, the impact knocking the air from my lungs.
Gasps echoed around us, more students stopping, whispering.
The murmurs turned into a low roar of concern, but no one stepped in yet.
No one helped. They all had their phones out, like this was the most amazing press of the year.
"You’re pathetic," Chadwick sneered, stepping closer. His hand snapped out and grabbed my throat. "Playing house with Kingsley, like you belong in his world. You’re just a means to an end. You really think he’s going to stay tied down to you?"
I clenched my fists, my nails biting into my palms, to keep from trembling as I choked. Why was he here? Why now?
A movement in the crowd caught my eye and, before I could process it, a hand slammed against Chadwick’s chest, shoving him back forcefully.
"Back the hell off," a deep voice growled.
I turned my head and found Frankie stepping between us, forcing Chadwick to let go of me, his expression a mixture of annoyance and lethal control.
Another male student, a stranger, but tall and solid, flanked Chadwick from the other side.
"What the hell is your problem, man? You don’t put hands on a pregnant woman. "
“She’s not pregnant, she’s just fat,” he sneered.
“Can you believe this guy? Like he can’t see her round stomach, and the way her sweet boyfriend is always helping her around campus. It really isn’t hard to tell she’s pregnant, and you’re a dick,” a girl said.
I didn’t know her, but I was grateful for her words.
Chadwick’s nostrils flared as he looked between them, assessing. He had always been a coward, and now that he had eyes on him, real danger surrounding him, he hesitated.
"You don’t know what she is," Chadwick spat.
"I know she doesn’t belong to you," Frankie said coolly. "And, unless you want me to break something you actually care about, I suggest you leave. Now."
Chadwick's gaze flickered to me one last time, his eyes filled with something dark, hatred, jealousy, something unhinged. But he backed off, slipping away into the crowd.
I let out a shaky breath, my fingers instinctively reaching for my neck, only to be met with empty space.
The ring.
It was gone. Chadwick had taken it.
I made it to the girls' bathroom before the first sob cracked loose.
Not the loud kind. Not theatrical.
Just the quiet, sharp kind, that punches through your ribs and steals your breath.
I locked myself in the last stall, gripping the sides of the toilet like it could anchor me. My thighs trembled. My palms were slick.
He had been right there.
The casual way his voice slithered down my spine. I could still smell his cheap cologne, musk and threat, and I swore I’d never be clean again.
I didn’t cry when Sterling forced me.
I didn’t cry when my father replaced me with a woman who mocked my pain.
But here, in the fluorescent quiet of a college bathroom, I cried.
Because no one stopped it.
Because no one would believe me if I told them.
Because I wasn’t even sure this place was mine anymore.
I stayed in that stall for twenty-three minutes.
I know because I counted them. One breath at a time.
By the time I came out, I’d fixed my makeup. Smoothed my hair. Swapped out my vulnerability for silence.
But the whispers had already started.
“Did you see what happened in the quad?”
“I heard he shoved her…”
“That’s the girl who dated Kingsley, right? Figures.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t correct them. Let them guess. Let them judge.
Let them all rot.
I should have dropped out right then.
Instead, I went to class like nothing happened, not allowing others to ruin it. Sat through fifty minutes of macroeconomics, without hearing a word. Until I left.
My phone buzzed, just as I stepped off the quad.
I didn’t look right away. Didn’t need to. The burn in my stomach told me it wasn’t good.
Still, I glanced down.
STB Secrets Feed
@campuswhispers: Clear View girls stay messy. Old money, same trauma. Some of y’all need to be chemically sterilized.
Attached was a blurry photo.
Of me.
Frozen mid-step. Shoulders hunched. My mouth half open, like I’d just been slapped. I recognized the walkway. The angle. Someone had taken it when Chadwick grabbed me.
I stopped walking. The cold spread from my hands to my chest.
Underneath, the comments were worse.
@GhostingTheHalls: That Zara chick again? Thought she got expelled from Clear View for sucking her way up the social ladder.
@DramaDeptReject: If my man ever touched me like that I’d sue. Or film it. Girl looks like she liked it.
@TeaSpiller05: This is why you can’t take scholarship bitches anywhere. Go back to where you came from whore and stop stealing our men!
@FinancialAidFashionista: Scholarship chick isn’t a trend, sis.
@TextBookThief: Can’t afford a book anymore but somehow she’s able to land that hottie?
@StarbucksBecky: Watch her cry that we are racist or something. DEI at it again!
@WifiLeech: Always in the library, she’s probably dodging her room fees.
@CafeteriaCritic: Whole plate stacked in the back. Queen, they just don’t get it.
@PityPartyPrincess: Forever looking like life owes her something and then she gets a hunky man? It’s not fair.
My blood went cold. They were talking about me. My fingers hovered over the report button. Then dropped.
What was the point?
Something inside me dropped.
I wasn’t even angry. Not at first. Just… numb. Hollowed out, like someone had scooped out my insides with an ice cream scoop.
The words weren’t just cruel. They were familiar.
I’d seen them before; at Clear View, in the bathroom stalls, scribbled across my locker in Sharpie. On anonymous apps in the middle of the night.
Slut.
Try hard.
Fat girl with a fantasy.
Knew she was easy when she played the violin like that.
It wasn’t about the truth. It never had been. It was about the way people love watching a girl fall. And how much they enjoy pretending they didn’t push.
I shoved my phone into my bag, heart thudding.
This wasn’t high school.
But it still felt like a locker had just slammed shut behind me. I left the premises after that, getting straight into the car without catching anyone’s eyes.
Back at the mansion, I walked straight past Sterling.
Sterling didn’t say a word when I walked past him.
But his gaze dropped to my neck.
His entire body went still.
A shadow passed over his face, something deeper than rage, colder than vengeance.
I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know what he saw. The bruises were already forming, low and dark, along the curve of my throat.
People like to pretend black girls don’t bruise. That our skin hides the damage. That we’re too strong to break. But Sterling saw it. All of it. And the way his hands curled into fists said he wouldn’t let anyone unsee it again.
Five minutes later, Frankie’s voice cut through the hallway behind me, like a warning shot.
“You want me to kill Chadwick, or just make it look like he snapped?”
Sterling didn’t respond, not with words.
His hand twitched toward the inside of his jacket.
Frankie stepped in, firm and low. “Sterling. No.”
Sterling’s jaw clenched tighter.
His eyes flicked past Frankie, somewhere far away for half a breath, and when they landed back on me, the fire in them had shifted. “I’ve known him too long to let it end in a hallway with cameras watching,” he muttered, low enough that only I could hear. “But don’t mistake that for mercy.”
“I know what you saw. I know what he did. But you pull that trigger now, and you won’t make it past the precinct doors. Billionaire or not, they won’t see a Kingsley. They’ll see a black man with a body count.”
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.