The air smelled of lilies and rain-damp earth, but all Elena Marquez could hear was the clicking.
Endless, sharp, mechanical—like a swarm of insects. Cameras.
She stood stiff beside her mother's coffin, her black dress heavy against her skin, the lace collar scratching her neck. Her fingers curled against her palms until her nails dug crescents into the flesh. The church was supposed to be a place of mourning, yet everywhere she looked, there were flashing bulbs, hovering microphones, strangers scribbling in notebooks.
Her mother's funeral wasn't a farewell. It was a spectacle.
A man in a dark suit adjusted the television lights, making the altar glow as though it were a stage. Politicians leaned in close to whisper condolences, each handshake lingering just long enough for the cameras to capture it. Reporters mouthed silent questions from the pews, lips forming "cause of death" and "political fallout."
Elena, fifteen and trembling, pressed closer to the coffin. They're not here for her. They're here for the story.
Her gaze caught on the tall figure at the pulpit—Senator Marcus Hale, her party's most ruthless rival. He stood with a hand over his heart, his baritone rolling through the speakers.
"Today, we honor a woman of conviction. Though we often disagreed, her spirit was a testament to unity. May her death remind us of what binds us together."
The words were smooth, polished, dripping with the kind of sincerity that made television anchors nod gravely.
Elena Marquez stood only a few feet away from the pulpit, but she could have been a hundred miles. Each syllable pressed into her chest like a bruise. The man speaking—Senator Marcus Hale—had been her mother's fiercest rival. Now he was dressed in black, head bowed just so, his voice breaking at carefully rehearsed intervals.
It was all theater.
Her hands curled into fists against her sides. To the cameras, she was a girl in mourning, her dark eyes fixed on the coffin, her back straight, her black dress perfect for the occasion. Inside, she burned.
How dare he speak her name? How dare he stand here, pretending to grieve, when every fight, every sleepless night, every scar her mother bore had been because of him or men like him?
Elena's gaze shifted past the senator to the boy standing beside him—Adrian Hale, his son. Seventeen, maybe eighteen, tall, shoulders stiff in his suit. His expression was unreadable, detached, like he was observing a ceremony that didn't matter.
Then his eyes slid to hers.
The look wasn't cruel, not exactly, but it was empty. Empty in a way that made her feel invisible, as though her grief were nothing more than another line in his father's speech. And in that moment, she hated him. Hated him as fiercely as she hated the flashes exploding around them, the whispering reporters scribbling at the edges of the pews, the microphones lurking just out of frame.
Click. Click. Click.
Her mother's funeral was not a farewell. It was a headline.
And then—just behind her—two men spoke in hushed voices, low enough that only someone listening for distraction instead of prayer would hear.
"…she knew too much…"
"…not an accident…"
Elena's head whipped around, heart slamming, but the men were already slipping away into the crowd of black umbrellas.
Not an accident.
Her throat tightened. The senator's voice blurred into the drone of the rain, the cameras, the murmurs. None of it mattered anymore. Only the coffin, gleaming under the lights. Only her mother, lowered into the earth with a story the world would never know.
Elena pressed her fingers against the coffin, the wood cold and smooth. She leaned forward, whispering so low no microphone could catch it.
"I'll find the truth. Even if it kills me."
Another camera flash. Another lie captured forever.
But this vow—this one was hers.
The rain outside thickened, striking the church windows in silver streaks. Mourners shifted uncomfortably in their seats, but the cameras didn't falter; if anything, they seemed to feed on the gloom.
Elena's father stood stiff beside her, his face hollow but disciplined. He shook hands with senators, governors, journalists, every gesture tight and controlled. She could tell he hated it—hated the theater of it all—but he played his role, because what choice did they have? Grief had no place in politics.
"Elena," he murmured under his breath, "chin up. Don't let them see you break."
She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted iron. She wouldn't give them the shot they wanted. No tears for the front page. No sobbing headline: Daughter Collapses at Mother's Funeral. If her mother had taught her anything, it was that weakness became ammunition in the wrong hands.
The coffin descended lower. The ropes creaked, the wood gleamed wet in the dim light. The priest muttered prayers drowned out by the storm.
Elena's gaze darted again to the Hales. Marcus Hale smiled faintly as the cameras circled him, that same politician's smile that looked like compassion to the world and like calculation to anyone who knew better. Beside him, Adrian stood tall, umbrella now resting against his shoulder as the rain hit the earth around them.
For a moment, the cameras caught the two of them in the same frame: Elena and Adrian, black against gray, grief against detachment. Somewhere, a journalist whispered to another: "Someday, those two will inherit the fight."
The thought lodged like glass in Elena's throat.
Her fingers clenched at the rosary around her wrist until it nearly snapped. She didn't care what frame they caught. She didn't care what story they told. She would write her own.
The final thud echoed as the coffin touched the earth. A shovel scraped. The priest closed his book. The crowd began to scatter, umbrellas rising like black wings in the rain.
Elena lingered, her shoes sinking into the mud, her dress hem heavy with water. One last flash went off, blinding her for an instant. She didn't turn toward it. Instead, she fixed her eyes on the ground where her mother lay and whispered, this time louder, almost daring the storm to carry her words:
"I'll find out who did this. And when I do, they'll wish the cameras had never turned their way."
Elena's fists tightened at her sides. The vow hardened into stone inside her chest.
The rain washed away the last of her tears.