His Vow

At the Hospital

The hallway was too white. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that doesn't bring peace — the kind that warns you to brace for something worse.

Heinrey stood outside the emergency room doors, hands trembling. His mind was racing, repeating one thing over and over:

This is my fault.

He should’ve seen it coming. Should’ve stopped it. Should’ve...

A doctor finally stepped out, removing his gloves with slow, practiced ease.

Heinrey’s heart dropped.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said gently. “We did everything we could. But the heart attack was too severe. She was under immense emotional stress. She... she didn’t make it.”

The world didn’t shatter.

It went silent.

Then empty.

Then colder than he’d ever known it could be.

---

Heinrey stood at the foot of his mother’s grave, the cold wind brushing against his black suit. The soil was still fresh, the headstone not yet carved. He stared at the wooden marker — just her name, handwritten on a board — and something inside him snapped.

The day of her funeral, his father never cried.

Sherry Cooper didn’t shed a single tear.

And Dylan — the boy who now lived in the house his mother built — watched the service from the distance, awkward and silent, like he was attending a stranger’s burial.

Heinrey didn’t speak to any of them.

Not during the wake.

Not during the burial.

Not after.

That night, he returned to his room and stared at the ceiling for hours — eyes wide open, but seeing nothing.

Something in him had died, too.

The next morning, he looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the boy staring back. The softness in his features, the light in his eyes — gone. What was left behind was sharper, colder, quieter.

Three Months Later

The mansion was redecorated.

Photos of Nora Smith had been taken down and replaced with newer, trendier portraits — ones featuring Sherry Cooper in pearls and floral silk.

The scent of her perfume filled the halls now. Gardenia and amber — sickeningly sweet. Heinrey refused to eat at the same table. Refused to speak when spoken to. He hadn’t called his father “Dad” since the funeral.

Then came the wedding.

Three months after burying his mother, Alan Smith and Sherry Cooper were married in an extravagant private ceremony. Society reporters hailed it as a surprise but tasteful union. The Smith Corporation spun it as moving forward through grief.

Heinrey didn’t attend.

He stayed locked in his room, fists clenched, teeth grinding through a fury he couldn’t release — not yet.

From that moment forward, he treated Sherry like a ghost.

Dylan like a shadow.

And his father — like a stranger.

In public, he was civil. At board meetings, composed. But inside, his hatred burned.

Not the kind of hatred that screamed.

The kind that waited.

Heinrey’s Vow

I will never forget.

I will never bow down and obey.

You took the woman who raised me, the only person who loved me for who I was... and buried her in silence.