Page 89 of The Cruel Heir

His throat bobbed, his grip on the door tightening. “Zara-”

I smirked, my exhaustion forgotten, tilting my head. “Problem?”

His answer didn’t come in words at first. Instead, he caught my hand, pressing something cold and familiar into my palm.

My breath hitched. Sterling’s ring. The heirloom Chadwick had torn from me, in the dirt outside the university.

“You-” My throat tightened. “You got it back.”

His gaze burned, unflinching. “Took it off his finger myself. He touched what’s mine, Zara. He doesn’t get to keep a single piece of me.”

Carefully, he slid the band back onto my finger, his jaw tight as if sealing a vow. “This never leaves you again.”

His eyes darkened, his jaw ticking. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”

Oh.

Oh.

A slow, knowing smile curled at my lips as I shifted slightly, adjusting our daughter in my arms. “She’s eating,” I murmured innocently. “Would you like a taste too?”

His breath hitched, his fingers twitching at his sides.

I had unlocked something dangerous.

Sterling moved.

He was beside me in an instant, his fingers ghosting over my swollen, sensitive skin. His mouth hovered just inches away.

“You’re playing with fire, little wife,” he warned, his voice thick.

I grinned, leaning into him, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Then burn with me.”

His growl was low and possessive, and as his lips finally met my skin, I knew…

I was in so much trouble.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

EPILOGUE

Dr. Lazarus "Laz" Carter

Seven weeks later

There aremoments in medicine that leave an imprint, quiet seconds stretched so thin they cut deep, where the life beneath your hands begins to fade, and nothing you do feels like enough.

I wasn’t supposed to end up here. I trained to be clean. Precise. I was the kind of surgeon they flew in for impossible cases, the type who’d been published in journals, and recruited to private clinics across three continents. My work had saved diplomats and drug lords, heiresses and hustlers. I kept my head down, my hands steady, and my conscience scrubbed sterile.

Then I took one too many calls. Said yes when I should’ve walked away. That call put me in the same sterile exam room where Zara Kingsley first learned her future wasn’t hers alone, and after that, I was a ghost in the Kingsley machine.

I’ve carried a lot of guilt in my career. Wrong incisions, risky calls, lives lost on tables I couldn’t keep warm. But none of it stuck quite like her.

She wasn’t just a patient. She reminded me of the one I left behind.

Not Zara. Another woman. Another night I failed. But watching Zara bleed beneath fluorescent lights, split something open inside me. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was penance. But I stayed. I saved her. And this time, I didn’t run.

I think about her sometimes, too often. About how I vanished from her life without a word. Not because I didn’t care, but because I did. Because I knew the kind of men I was about to work for. Because letting her close meant dragging her into a world I already regretted entering.