Page 84 of Inheritance

“Nothing,” he said, flat.

“Right. Well, don’t use ‘nothing’ for more than a week.”

“I won’t.”

Silence. Thick. Not heavy with grief—just compressed by it. Like it was sitting on the air itself.

I exhaled, slow.

“How’s Caroline? Isabelle?”

“Caroline blames herself—for leaving her window unlocked. Isabelle’s functional. That’s all I know.”

He slumped into the chair across from me and let his head tip back against the wall. A minute later, he was nodding off.

It was going to be on me.

Not just to clean this up.

To avenge my father.

To make whoever sent this man pay.

I looked back down at the corpse.

He wasn’t Italian. Wasn’t Russian. Just a plain-looking man.

It was professional.

I opened the note again.

Just an address.

Somewhere in the Upper East Side.

It was bait.

Or it was sloppy.

Either way—I was going.

But not yet.

I tucked the paper back beside the gun and stood. My neck cracked as I rolled it. The grief was still there, pressed behind my teeth, but it wasn’t sharp anymore.

It was just a dull fact I could keep at a distance, tucked away.

After the funeral, I would make use of it.

Sophia

Asteady drizzle blurred the edges of the morning, softening the skyline and making everything gray. From the polished black cars lining the gravel road to the dark coats and umbrellas of the guests gathering around the hole in the ground, even the flowers wilting on the casket looked muted. The scent of cut grass mixed with rain—sharp and earthy.

Gabriel stood beside me, his hand resting low at the small of my back. Warm through the fabric. Grounding. His posture was sharp—formal, unreadable—but that simple touch spoke more than anything he’d said all morning.

I scanned the crowd.

Every face I’d seen at the gala was here. More, even. Men in tailored coats and expensive watches. Women with perfect posture and smeared eyeliner. Associates. Petty rivals. Family friends. Everyone who mattered and everyone who wanted to gain favor.