Page 16 of The Cruel Heir

The blue lines appeared before I even set the test down on the toilet paper holder. Fuck. This couldn’t be real. I needed a second opinion. I had to get to a doctor. I needed confirmation through blood, because there was no way he knocked me up with his spawn.

I couldn’t waste any more time. I tucked the tests in the trash, wrapped in a ton of tissue paper like a used pad, and headed out of the stall to wash my hands. My chest ached. I told myself it was the corset, or maybe the shame, and shook it off.

I rushed to get to my post, before Tara caught wind that I wasn't where I needed to be.

The sky cracked open in shades of pink and bruised lilac, as I stepped onto the gravel path leading to the estate. Dew clung to the tips of freshly manicured hedges. A humming generator coughed behind the tented prep kitchen. Overhead, gulls cut through the quiet like gossip.

The wedding hadn’t started yet, but the chaos already had. The air smelled like salt and roses. Like lies dressed in white.

Inside, everything moved too fast.

People barked orders into headsets. Wait staff passed flutes of prosecco back and forth like ammunition. A florist crouched in the foyer, adjusting a six-foot installation of peonies with trembling hands.

One of the servers dropped a tray of crystal glasses. No one even flinched.

I walked through the prep hallway, hugging the wall like a ghost, and I smoothed down the skirt with shaky fingers. My thighs still trembled with the memory of him when I bent to tie my shoes as if it’d just happened.

I didn’t want to be here. But I was.

Because sometimes pride stings louder than pain, and I refused to beg for help to clean up this mess.

From the kitchen window, I could just barely see the ceremony starting on the lawn.

Music swelled, soft and hollow. Chairs rustled. Guests stood.

And there he was. My father. Standing at the altar in a tux that probably cost more than what I made in six months.

Then she appeared. Madeline Kingsley, no, Madeline Johnston now. The woman, who used to ice me out at sixteen, now stood at the center of everything I was excluded from. Her new last name didn’t matter. She still wielded the same power; old money privilege, with a hint of practiced cruelty.

I held the tray tighter.

No one looked back. No one noticed the girl behind the serving station, watching her father promise forever, to the woman who used to laugh when I scrubbed vomit out of the marble floor.

They toasted while I filled glasses.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t move.

I just poured.

A knock on the prep room door startled me.

“Zara, you’re on the terrace bar,” someone called. “The bride's already in the suite.”

I swallowed the bile rising in my throat.

The bride.

Sterling’s mother, my now evil stepmother.

I didn’t know how the world expected me to stand in front of that woman again, and pour her champagne, without shattering the bottle across the floor.

But I would.

Because I didn’t cry anymore.

I moved.