Chapter 2 A Debt With My Name On It

Margot POV

"The brakes didn't scream," I said.

It came out wrong, too sudden, too strange for the moment. Griffin's jaw tightened as I'd slapped him.

"That's what you have to say to me right now?" His voice cracked down the middle, grief and fury tangled together so tight I couldn't tell which one was winning. "My fiancée might never walk again, and you're talking about brakes?"

"Griffin, listen to me."

"No." He stepped closer, and for the first time in my life I felt something from him that wasn't warmth. It was heat, but the wrong kind, the kind that burns instead of comforts. "You listen. Sabine begged you not to drive fast on that road. She told me herself, months ago, that you always take that turn too hard. And now she's lying in a bed that she might never get out of."

Every word landed like a stone dropping into my chest.

"I wasn't going fast," I said. "I pressed the brakes the second I saw the curve. Nothing happened. There was no sound, no pull, nothing. Like they weren't even connected."

"Do you hear yourself?" He laughed, but it wasn't a real laugh. It was the sound someone makes when they're too broken to cry anymore. "The brakes just stopped working. On the one night you were driving her car."

"It's not her car. It's the family car. The one your driver services every," I stopped myself, because saying it out loud made something twist cold in my stomach. The car was serviced by Castellane staff. Griffin's staff. Not ours.

He didn't notice the pause. He was too far gone in his own grief to hear anything except the parts that confirmed what he already believed.

"I've known you eight years, Margot." His voice dropped, and that was almost worse than the yelling. Quiet, Griffin was always more dangerous than loud Griffin. "I used to think you were the careful one. The steady one. I used to think if anything ever happened, it would happen because of Sabine, not because of you."

I flinched. He saw it and didn't stop.

"Tell me the truth. Were you angry at her? Was there something between you two I don't know about? Because normal brakes don't just disappear, Margot. Normal accidents have a reason."

"You think I did this on purpose?" My voice broke on the last word, and I hated that it did, hated that he could see exactly how much that question cost me. "She's my sister. I have loved her since before I could walk. I would never."

"Then explain it to me." He was close now, close enough that I could see how red his eyes were, how his hands were shaking at his sides like he didn't know whether to reach for me or push me away. "Because right now all I have is a wrecked car, a woman who might never stand again, and you standing in front of me talking about sounds nobody else heard."

I wanted to hate him in that moment. It would have been easier. But underneath the anger, underneath the accusation aimed straight at my chest, I could see something else in his face, something raw and terrified that had nothing to do with blame and everything to do with love. He wasn't accusing me because he believed it. He was accusing me because he needed somewhere to put the fear, and I was standing there, and I was already the person the world had decided to blame.

That almost made it worse.

Because for one stupid, aching second, some old, buried part of me still wanted to step forward and hold him instead of arguing with him. I remembered every time over the years he had looked at me like I mattered, before Sabine, before the engagement, before any of this. I remembered the version of him that used to save me a seat at dinner without being asked. That version was still somewhere inside this furious, grieving man in front of me, and some foolish part of my heart still reached for it even now, even here, even with his accusation still hanging in the air between us like smoke.

I hated myself a little for that.

"Griffin." My voice shook, but I made myself say it anyway. "I know how this looks. I know you're scared. But somebody needs to actually look at that car before anyone decides what happened. If I'm wrong, fine. Prove me wrong. But don't stand here and tell me I hurt her on purpose."

For one second, something flickered in his face. Doubt, maybe. Or just exhaustion. He opened his mouth as if he might actually hear me.

Then a nurse rounded the corner, fast, her shoes squeaking against the floor.

"Mr. Castellane." She was out of breath, her eyes darting between the two of us like she wasn't sure who to address first. "You need to come. Now."

Griffin's whole body went rigid. "Is it Sabine? Did something happen?"

"She's asking for you." The nurse hesitated, and that hesitation was the worst part, because nurses who deliver good news don't hesitate like that. "She said there's something you need to know. Something she saw. Right before the crash."

The air in the hallway went thin.

Griffin turned to look at me one more time, and whatever softness had almost broken through his anger a moment ago was gone, replaced by something colder, sharper, already halfway convinced of whatever he was about to hear.

"Stay here," he said, like an order, not a request.

Then he followed the nurse down the hallway, and I stood frozen in place, my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat, because I already knew, with a sick certainty settling low in my stomach, that whatever Sabine was about to tell him was not going to help me.

She was awake now. She could talk now.

And for the first time since the car went over that guardrail, I realized I had no idea what my sister was about to say about me.