Chapter 54 Funeral Algebra
Sloane’s POV
Funerals are just board meetings for the dead.
Same polished wood. Same careful lighting. Same stale air full of people pretending they are here for anything other than appearances.
The chapel Graham chose was upscale and tasteful. White stone, dark pews, stained glass that looked like it had never known a real storm. Men in suits who had known him from deals, not dinners, murmur in small knots. A few estranged relatives stand near the back, already halfway to gossip.
When Eli and I step through the doors, the sound shifts.
“There is the prodigal daughter,” someone whispers, not quite low enough.
“There is the bodyguard boyfriend,” another voice adds, with just the right amount of disdain on boyfriend.
I feel their eyes slide over us. Over my black dress, simple and severe. Over Eli in a dark suit that fits him too well to be rented, his hand briefly, deliberately, on the small of my back as we move down the aisle.
He is not behind me today. He is beside me. I hold onto that.
We slide into a pew near the front. The casket sits up there, closed, draped in flowers that smell like money. A screen behind it already looping photos of Graham shaking hands with senators, Graham cutting ribbons, Graham looking benevolent in staged candids.
Not a single picture of him holding me as a child. There might not be many to find.
“Sloane.” A sharp hiss at my elbow.
I turn. My aunt, thinner than I remember, lips pressed tight. She clutches her program like it is a weapon.
“You should have come sooner,” she says under her breath. “He waited, you know. And then that interview. Airing family business. You embarrassed him.”
“I am sure that was very hard for him,” I say. My tone could cut glass.
“You are still his daughter,” she snaps. “Some respect would not kill you.”
Behind her, Eli shifts subtly, a quiet presence, not intervening unless she crosses a line. I dial my answer back a notch because the last thing Harper needs is me starting a shouting match in a chapel.
“I am here,” I say instead. “That is more than he was for most of my life.”
Her mouth opens, then shuts with an audible click. She moves away, offended. Good.
Eulogies start. Polished men at the podium, reading from paper they did not write, saying words that somehow sound both generic and false.
Visionary investor. Devoted father. Generous mentor.
I sit there, spine straight, and feel fury coil under my ribs with every lie.
He was devoted to returns. He mentored my code into contracts I never saw.
He leveraged your genius for capital.
The fact that the same consortium that killed him is now paying for these floral arrangements is almost funny.
“Ms Mercer,” the officiant says at one point, turning toward me. “Would you like to say something.”
No. Every part of me wants to say no.
But I stand.
The walk to the podium feels like moving through syrup. Eyes on me. Some curious. Some hostile. Some hungry.
I look down at the sheet of paper they have left there for notes and leave it untouched.
“My father taught me the language of power,” I say. My voice does not shake. “He taught me that contracts can own you if you are not careful. That clauses hidden in the fine print can decide lives.”
A couple of his old partners shift, recognizing themselves in that line.
“I have dedicated my life,” I continue, “to making sure the next generation understands they can write their own.”
I let that hang. Brief. Coded. True.
No mention of his generosity. No pretense that we were close. Just acknowledgment and a quiet declaration of rebellion.
When I step down, I scan the room.
Back row, left, a slick Avalon Ridge rep in an impeccably cut suit. He inclines his head, a fraction. As if to say, We are still here.
Near the aisle, a woman with a RyeSec lanyard peeking out from under her coat. She averts her eyes when I look at her.
Mariah Chan slips in late, black dress perfect, pearls at her throat. She catches my eye, offers condolences with a sad tilt of her head. Nothing in her expression admits she helped build the web that strangled him.
Graveside, the air is different. Colder. The rich have nicer dirt, but it is still dirt.
The cluster stands around the open ground, murmuring, tossing handfuls of earth and empty phrases down on the box. Eli and I stand slightly apart, under a bare tree. I am grateful for the small space of not having to nod at anyone.
“I am not grieving the man he was,” I whisper.
His hand finds the back of my coat, warm, steady. “What are you grieving,” he asks.
“The girl I had to be because of him,” I say. The one who learned early that being useful was safer than being loved. The one who thought contracts were affection.
“You do not have to be her anymore,” he says quietly.
I look down at the dark rectangle in the earth. They lower him. The thump of initial earth on the lid sounds strangely hollow.
My phone buzzes in my bag on our way out. Of course.
I pull it out, thumb already tense.
Photo. Taken from a distance. Me at the grave, Eli’s hand at my back, our bodies angled together in a way that reads as intimacy even in grain.
Caption: Bury one problem, create another.
No signature. Does not need one.
“Subtlety has never been their strong suit,” Eli mutters when I show him.
Rage flares, then something else. A familiar urge to shut down. To push him away before the universe or some hedge fund flunky can weaponize him further.
I look at the image again. At the line of his body beside mine. At how natural it looks. At the fact that every time I have let someone in, someone else has tried to turn it into currency.
My father used my work to buy power. Noah used my heart. Lena used my panic as prose.
If I flinch now, they win again.
Instead of stepping away, I lean into him a little more as we move toward the car, letting his arm settle properly around my waist.
“I am not pushing you out to make their job easier,” I say. “I am done firing myself from my own life so other people feel safer.”
He glances down at me, eyes soft, proud. “Good,” he says. “I am terrible at taking hints anyway.”
In the car, heading for the airport and a flight to London, the chapel recedes in the rearview. My father’s grave gets smaller.
Ahead, a different kind of battlefield waits.
“My father used my work to buy power,” I say into the quiet, watching the road unspool. “Noah used my heart. I am done letting people write my story for me.”
Eli’s hand is on my thigh now, thumb rubbing small circles through the fabric. Grounding.
“In London,” I add, turning to meet his eyes, “we are not reacting. We are breaking in.”
He smiles. It is not a nice smile.
“Then let us kick down the door,” he says.
For the first time in a long time, the idea of walking into a room full of people who wanted to own me did not just make me afraid.
It made me ready.