All that was left : what remains after darkness?

CHAPTER 2

ZARA

Black. That's all I remember about that day. The black dress my aunty laid out for me, the black veil that couldn't hide my swollen eyes, the sea of black-clad figures who filled the church with whispers and pity.

I had cried so much the night before that my tears had dried into hollows. My eyes were puffy, my skin pale, my body weak. But still, they expected me to stand. To walk behind two caskets as though my legs weren't breaking with every step.

The church smelled of flowers and incense, but beneath it was the stench of finality. People came up to me one by one, friends, coworkers, neighbors, all saying the same words, "We're so sorry for your loss," words that meant nothing and yet everything because what else could they say? I nodded, I thanked them, I shook hands that felt too warm against my cold skin.

And then it was my turn. They asked me to speak. Sixteen years old, standing in front of a crowd, staring at two wooden boxes that held the only family I had ever truly known.

My voice shook, but I spoke anyway. I told them about the way Mom always hummed when she cooked, about the way Dad laughed with his whole chest, about the nights they tucked me in and promised me the world. My words cracked in the middle, my throat raw from holding back tears that refused to stay hidden. I ended with one sentence I could barely finish: "I don't know how to live without them."

The silence that followed was heavier than the earth waiting to cover their graves.

And then I saw him.

Standing at the back, almost hiding in the shadows, was a face I hadn't seen in three years, my brother. His hair was longer, his body thinner, his eyes sunken with the ghosts of choices he'd made. Dad had thrown him out when his addiction swallowed him whole. He had vanished without a word.

But there he was, at their funeral, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. Guilt. Pain. Maybe even love. For a moment, I didn't know whether to run to him... or run from him.

When the burial was over, I searched for him in the crowd, but he was gone. Just like before.

⸻

Days passed in silence. The house felt emptier than ever, the air heavy with absence. I thought the worst was behind me, but then came another knock at the door. This time it wasn't family friends or neighbors with condolences, it was my parents' lawyers.

They sat across from me in the living room, their black suits and leather folders making everything feel colder. My aunty, though not by blood, sat beside me, her hand resting gently on mine. I could feel her trying to steady me, but nothing could prepare me for what they were about to say.

My parents had left me everything.

Clouds Inc. their empire, their legacy, their pride. One of the largest cotton production companies in the United States, a name that carried weight across oceans. And now, it belonged to me.

At sixteen.

The lawyers explained it carefully, their words formal and slow, as though I might break under them. The inheritance would be locked until I turned eighteen, and only then would I fully control it. Until then, I was the heir in name, but a child in the eyes of the law.

They told me they had spoken to my brother. My heart skipped when I heard his name, but their next words fell like ice. Because of his past, because of the addiction, because of the night Dad had thrown him out, they would not allow him to live with me, not yet. He had to prove he was clean, prove he was capable of being more than a shadow of the boy he once was.

I wanted to argue, to beg them to give him a chance. But deep down, I knew my parents' decision was final long before the lawyers ever spoke it.

Then they turned to my aunty. Or rather, the woman I had always called aunty. She wasn't really my aunt at all, she was my mother's best friend since childhood. Two girls who had grown up side by side, calling each other sisters until the title became real to everyone who knew them.

The lawyers said she couldn't be my guardian in any official sense, not by blood, not by law. But she was all I had left. The one who picked me up off the hospital floor, the one who made sure I ate when I wanted to starve, the one who whispered me to sleep when nightmares dragged me under.

They told me I wasn't alone. But sitting there, with the weight of an empire on my shoulders and a brother I couldn't reach, I had never felt more alone in my life.