Page 17 of The Cruel Heir

The terrace gleamed with candlelight and ivory ribbon. Florals stretched like cathedrals; too big, too loud, too white.

Every table was a shrine to excess: gold-rimmed chargers, embossed menus, and linen napkins folded into origami birds.

Guests arrived slowly, like royalty. Women in gowns that shimmered like oil. Men with watches that cost more than my rent for the year.

I kept my head down and poured. Bubbly. Rosé. Top shelf whiskey.

“Don’t let their glasses get low,” Tara warned me, sliding past with a tray of sugared figs.

“Got it,” I said.

I didn’t feel him walk in.

Like fog creeping in under the door. Like heat radiating off a closed oven.

I looked up, tray in hand, and there he was.

My new fucking stepbrother.

His suit fitted like armor. His hair cropped into a precise taper-fade, the tight curls at the crown melting into bare skin at the nape, every edge razor-sharp. Smile too slow to be real.

He wasn’t looking at the guests.

He was watching me. Smugness flew across his face before being buried behind a cold exterior mask.

Like he’d known I’d be here. Like he’d planned it.

I should’ve turned around.

But I moved forward.

“Would you like a drink?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady.

He tilted his head, like I was amusing. Like I was a joke only he understood.

“Sure,” he said, taking a glass.

Our fingers didn’t touch.

But it still felt like a violation.

He sipped slowly, too slowly, his throat working, and I hated how I watched it. Hated the way my breath caught, like he still lived inside my lungs, rent-free and rotting.

“You wear the uniform well,” Sterling said, voice low and rich with mockery.

I didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

The only words on my tongue were curses sharp enough to strip paint. I bit down on them, let them settle behind my teeth like iron.

That’s when it happened.

“Zara?”

That voice didn’t belong here.

Didn’t belong to me anymore.

And yet it unspooled every nerve in my spine.