A Marriage Built on Ashes

Sloane I stood at the edge of the grave, watching the casket that held my grandmother. She was only eighty-eight when she died, the founder of an empire that supported over a thousand families. She had raised me after my parents died, teaching me that the only person I could ever truly rely on was myself. As the workers stepped forward to lower the casket, a flash of white caught my eye. A man stepped forward. He was tall, dressed in a sharp black coat, his face only covered by his umbrella carefully concealing his identity. Without saying a word, he stepped to the edge of the grave and placed a single white lily on top of the casket. He looked up, and for a split second, our eyes locked. My heart stopped. It was Cade. His face was harder than I remembered, his eyes colder, but the electricity that hummed between us was still there, even after five years of silence. Before I could even breathe his name, he turned and walked away. Seeing him felt like a physical blow to the stomach. Suddenly, I wasn't twenty-seven anymore. I was twenty-one, standing in the middle of a rainstorm, watching my life fall apart as I remember. "It’s over, Sloane," he had said that night. He hadn't even looked me in the eye. "Why?" I had asked, my voice trembling. "Cade, we were planning a life together." "My father is right," he’d replied, his voice flat. "You’re a Hartford, but you’re the wrong kind. You don't have the status or the backing I need for Whitmore Holdings. I’m sorry, but I have to choose what’s best for my father’s business". He had chosen his father's approval over me. But it didn’t matter now. I had spent the next five years building my own hotel consultation business just to prove I didn't need him or his billionaire world. “Well to hell with that him and that billionaire world now”, I muttered bringing myself to reality. I felt a hand on my shoulder, the touch pulling me back to reality. It was my Uncle Marcus. “I miss her too”, he said, as I turned to him. “I’ve worked with your grandmother every day for three decades. And I remember how kind she was to the whole security team of her hotel” I smiled. “Yes, I remember too”. “We’re still serving her, by serving you and the rest of the family, Sloane”, he continued. “So don’t be a stranger” “Thank you.” As I watched him walk past my grandmother’s grave, I noticed in the far distance, someone standing away from the crowd, in a trench coat and umbrella. Completely dressed that it was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman, but I could tell the direction they had been facing. Me. My pulse rising. I suddenly didn’t feel safe here. The irony in a cemetery. My thoughts were interrupted when both Richard and Claire called out to me. “I’m so sorry, Sloane,” Claire said, reaching out for a hug. I didn’t exactly return it, my muscles too coiled, my eyes still darting toward the ridge. “Thanks, Aunt Claire,” I replied, my voice sounding distant even to my own ears. “Your grandmother would be proud of the woman that you’ve grown up to become,” Richard said. He squeezed my shoulders, his hands heavy and warm through my thin coat. “I know I am.” Richard had always been like a second dad to me, a constant support when I needed one. “Thanks, Uncle. That... that means a lot. I just wish she could have seen one of my projects to the finish.” Richard sighed, releasing white breath in the cold air. “She saw enough, Sloane. She knew you were a fighter.” “I need to be,” I whispered, my eyes snapping back to the ridge. The figure in the grey coat was gone. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Sloane,” Melissa mocked, stepping directly into my personal space. She was dressed in a black designer mourning outfit that probably cost more than a mid-sized car. “There was someone on the ridge,” I said, unable to keep the edge out of my voice. “But I don’t know who they were, but they were just staring.” Melissa let out a short, sharp laugh that sounded like breaking glass. “Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’re having a 'main character' moment at a funeral. I’m surprised you even noticed the ridge, considering those heels you chose for a graveyard.”, she mocks. “But then, you always did prioritize the 'consultant look' over practicality. Even today.” I felt my jaw tighten. “Grandma liked these shoes. She bought them for me.” “Of course she did,” Melissa murmured, a small, bitter smile playing on her lips. “She always knew exactly get you spoiled. I suppose we’re all waiting to see just how much she spoiled you when we get to hear the will.” “We just lost grandma and you’re here getting hung up on who gets or who’s going to get what? And who are you calling ‘spoiled’?” “Oh please! Don’t even try to be modest.” “Alright, that’s enough, you two!” Richard interrupts. It irks me how immature Melissa can be, even though she’s older than me, even at grandma’s funeral. I walk away from her, from Richard and Claire to a tree close to the cemetery fence. Right there, a man in a grey suit approached me. It was Jonathan, the family attorney. "Miss Hartford," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "We need to go to the family estate. Your grandmother left instructions for you in her will" I was right behind my lawyer following him when I felt a vibration in my coat pocket. I pulled out my phone, expecting a work email. But I shouldn’t have. I told Nina to handle delegate the work this week while I grieved over my grandmother. Instead, it was a message from an unknown number. She didn't die of old age, Sloane. My blood went cold as I read the words. My grandmother? If it wasn’t old age that killed her, then what did? Or could she have been killed? And my name at the end of the text showed it was someone that knew me personally. I reached my car, parked a short distance from cemetery gates and the family limousines, and I stopped dead. Shards of glass lay scattered across the wet pavement like diamonds in the mud. I looked up to see the driver’s side window of my sedan had been shattered. My heart hammered against my ribs. I dashed towards my car to see if anything was stolen. This wasn't a random act of theft. My laptop bag was still visible on the backseat, untouched. I leaned in through the jagged frame and I found something on the driver seat. Resting in the center of the driver’s seat, perfectly placed where I couldn’t miss it, was a single object. It was a heavy, vintage brass key attached to a faded gold lettering on the fob read It read Hartford Harbor – Wing B. Someone wanted me to go there. And suddenly, I knew refusing wasn’t an option.