The Queen's Silence

Chapter 9

Evelyn’s POV

Power has a sound.

Most people think it roars, like applause in a boardroom or the crash of a deal closing. They’re wrong. Real power is quiet. It’s the gentle clink of porcelain against glass. The steady breath you take when another person’s world is collapsing in front of you and you feel nothing.

That was the sound filling Room 7001 after the doors slammed shut behind Caleb Knight.

Silence.

I sat back in the white leather chair that had been custom-made for me five years ago, my spine straight, my chin lifted, my hands calm in my lap. Only when the sensors confirmed the doors were sealed did I allow myself to exhale.

Not relief.

Lucien was the first to speak. “Security has removed him from the building. He didn’t resist.”

Of course he hadn’t. Caleb only ever fought battles he was certain he could win. The moment certainty left him, he folded.

Marcus stood near the window, his reflection fractured against the glass. “Say the word, Eve, and I’ll make sure Knight Group doesn’t survive the week.”

I turned my head slightly, meeting my brother’s gaze. “I already did.”

Julian didn’t speak. He never rushed into moments like this. He watched. Measured. Calculated. That was why he had survived long enough to become who he was.

“You did well,” he finally said. “You didn’t flinch.”

I lifted my teacup again, the liquid inside long gone cold. “I didn’t come here to flinch.”

What I didn’t say was that my hands were numb. Not shaking. Not trembling. Just distant. As if my body had decided to sever the connection between memory and flesh.

Because if I let myself feel, really feel then the image of Caleb standing there, proud and shattered all at once, would crack something open.

And I couldn’t afford cracks.

Not today.

Not ever again.

“Press?” I asked.

Lucien’s lips curved. “Waiting downstairs like vultures. The moment he steps outside, they’ll descend.”

Good.

I stood, smoothing the front of my suit. The ivory fabric fell perfectly, tailored not just to my body but to the woman I had become Sterling's Chairperson.

“Make sure they get their shots,” I said calmly. “I want the humiliation documented.”

Marcus frowned. “Evelyn..”

“I said documented.”

He went quiet.

The truth was simple: Caleb Knight didn’t deserve privacy. He had stripped me of dignity in places that were meant to be safe. He had turned love into currency and loyalty into weakness. If the world was going to watch his fall, then so be it.

This wasn’t cruelty.

It was a consequence.

I walked to the window and looked down seventy floors below. From here, the city looked obedient. Tiny cars. Smaller people. A board I could rearrange with a flick of my wrist.

Somewhere down there, Caleb was being escorted out like a criminal.

The irony almost made me smile.

Five years ago, when my father had placed the Sterling Group into my hands, the board had panicked. A twenty-one-year-old woman. Soft-spoken. Educated, yes but untested.

They hadn’t seen what hunger does to a person.

They hadn’t seen what it means to grow up knowing your name carries a weight you’re never allowed to drop.

So I played along.

I had stepped away.

I took a leave.

Disappeared into anonymity.

Into Caleb Knight’s world.

Into his house.

Into his bed.

The experiment had been simple: Could I be loved without the Sterling name?

The answer had been brutal.

No.

I had been loved only as long as I was small.

As long as I scrubbed and waited and smiled.

As long as I was grateful.

I pressed my palm against the glass now, my reflection staring back at me, older, sharper, unrecognizable to the woman who had once waited by the door for a man who never came home on time.

“Eve,” Julian said softly, “the acquisition lawyers are ready.”

“Good.”

I turned away from the window.

“Begin Phase Two.”

Downstairs, the chaos unfolded exactly as predicted.

I watched from a private monitor as Caleb stumbled out of the Sterling Building, his tie crooked, his face pale. The Sterling lion loomed above him, carved into stone, a silent witness to his undoing.

Cameras flashed.

Reporters shouted.

“Mr. Knight! Is it true Sterling Group is acquiring Knight Group?”

“Did you know Chairperson Sterling personally?”

“Is this retaliation for your divorce?”

Divorce.

Such a small word for what we had destroyed.

Caleb shielded his face, his shoulders hunched. He looked smaller than I remembered. Or maybe he had always been that size, and I had simply made him larger in my mind.

The guards didn’t protect him. They didn’t need to. The building had already swallowed him whole.

Lucien paused the feed. “You want me to leak the valuation?”

I considered it.

Then I shook my head. “Not yet. Let him think this is the worst of it.”

Marcus exhaled sharply through his nose. “You’re enjoying this.”

I met his gaze. “No.”

That was the truth.

Enjoyment implies pleasure.

This was something else.

This was closure with bare teeth.

I turned away from the screens and walked back to my desk. There, hidden beneath a sealed folder, lay the only thing in this building that could still bring me to my knees.

I didn’t open it.

I wouldn’t.

Instead, I picked up another file, the one Lucien had prepared for me earlier.

ACQUISITION COUNTER-OFFER: $1,000,000

I smiled then.

A slow, cold curve of my lips.

“One million dollars,” I murmured. “For his life’s work.”

Marcus stiffened. “That’s insultingly low.”

“Exactly.”

Caleb had once told me, casually, cruelly that a million dollars was nothing in his world.

I intended to remind him of that.

“Send it,” I said. “Publicly.”

Lucien’s fingers danced over his tablet. “Done.”

The press would eat it alive.

The mighty Knight Group, valued at hundreds of millions, offered a lifeline worth pocket change.

Mercy disguised as mockery.

I sat down again, crossing my legs.

“Is there anything else?” I asked.

Julian studied me. “You’re leaving.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

I looked down at my hands then. At the faint line beneath my suit jacket where my body was already changing in ways no one here knew about.

“A while.”

Marcus’s jaw tightened. “You’re sure?”

I met his eyes. “I don’t run from storms, Marcus. I wait for them to pass.”

And this one needed time.

The private terminal smelled like leather, jet fuel, and finality.

I liked it.

No crowds. No questions. No cameras unless I allowed them. Sterling airspace was different from the rest of the world, it bent to my will.

My phone buzzed for the fifth time in ten minutes.

Caleb.

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I stared through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the city beyond. New York stood tall and defiant, unaware that one of its golden sons was being dismantled brick by brick.

Lucien’s voice echoed faintly from earlier that morning.

He accepted the meeting. He thinks the one-million-dollar offer is a joke.

Good.

I adjusted my coat, the fabric brushing gently against my stomach. Still flat. Still secret. Still mine.

The doctor’s words replayed uninvited.

Congratulations, Mrs. Sterling.

Not Knight.

Sterling.

I had corrected them without thinking.

Because even then, lying on that sterile table, staring at a screen that changed everything, I knew one truth with absolute clarity.

Caleb would never touch this.

He would never taint this life with his neglect or arrogance or conditional affection.

This child would know love without begging for it.

My assistant approached quietly. “Madam Chair, we’re ready for boarding.”

I nodded and took one last look at my phone.

Thirty-seven missed calls.

I deleted them all.

Not blocked.

Deleted.

There’s a difference.

Blocked is emotional.

Deletion is administrative.

I walked onto the jet without looking back, the cabin warm and serene. Cream leather seats. Fresh flowers. Everything was curated to soothe.

As the door sealed shut, I felt it, the final click of separation.

The engines hummed to life.

I sat by the window, my reflection faint against the glass as the city began to move.

Taxi.

Acceleration.

Lift.

New York fell away beneath me, shrinking into geometry and lights.

I placed my hand over my abdomen, my voice barely a whisper.

“Next time I come back,” I said softly, “I won’t just be a Sterling.”

The jet angled upward, the skyline tilting.

“I’ll be a mother.”

The city vanished into cloud.

“And he,” I finished, eyes cold, heart steady, “will have nothing!”