Chapter 4 A Man in the Driveway

Margot POV

Griffin's phone buzzed before he could answer me.

He looked down at it, and whatever had cracked open in his face a second ago snapped shut again, faster than I could hold onto it. He didn't look back at me. He just walked away down the hallway, phone pressed to his ear, already talking in the low, clipped voice he used for people he didn't trust.

I stood there alone, my own words still hanging in the air where he'd left them. I was at that lake too.

He hadn't answered me. He hadn't even looked like he wanted to.

By the time I got home that morning, the story was already everywhere.

My father was sitting at the kitchen table with his phone face-down in front of him, which was somehow worse than if he'd been staring at it. He didn't stand up when I walked in. He didn't ask if I was okay. He just looked at the phone like it was something dangerous he was trying not to touch again.

"Dad."

"They're saying you two were fighting in the car." His voice was quiet, careful, the voice he used when he was trying very hard not to believe something. "That you grabbed the wheel."

"That's not what happened."

"There's a photo." He finally looked up, and I wished he hadn't, because his eyes were full of something I had never seen from him before. Doubt. Real, heavy doubt, aimed straight at me. "Someone got a picture of the car being pulled off the guardrail. The headline says Jealous Sister Snaps. It's already got half a million shares."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"You can't believe that." My voice cracked on the word believe. "Dad, please, look at me. You've known me my whole life. You know I would never hurt her."

He was quiet for a long moment; too long. When he finally spoke, he didn't look at me at all.

"I don't know what to believe anymore, Margot. Sabine says one thing. You say another. And the whole world already picked a side before either of you said a word to me."

That was the moment I understood, really understood, that I was standing completely alone.

I grabbed my own phone with shaking hands, and the second the screen lit up, I wished I hadn't. Every app was the same story wearing a different headline. Sister Behind the Wheel of Family Tragedy. Insider Reveals Years of Jealousy Before the Crash. Was It Really an Accident? Under one article, someone had already dug up an old photo of Sabine and me as kids, me standing slightly behind her in every single picture, and turned it into proof of a grudge I never had.

My phone buzzed again. A text from a number I didn't recognize.

You should be ashamed of yourself. She'll never walk again because of you.

Another one came in behind it before I could even process the first.

Hope you rot for what you did to your own sister.

I dropped the phone onto the counter as it had burned me.

"Dad, please." I hated how small my voice sounded. "Just come with me to the hospital. Talk to the doctors. Ask them about the brakes. Somebody has to actually look at that car before everyone decides I'm a monster."

"The car's already been towed for repair." He said it flatly, like it didn't matter, like it wasn't the single most important sentence he could have said to me in that moment.

My whole body went cold. "Towed? By who?"

"Castellane's people. Standard procedure after an accident involving family property, I assume." He rubbed his hand over his face, tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. "Margot, I need you to just... give people time. Let this settle."

"There is no settling." My voice rose despite myself. "If that car is fixed or scrapped before anyone checks it, there won't be any proof left of anything. Don't you understand what that means?"

He didn't answer. He just looked at his phone again, like it had more truth in it than his own daughter standing three feet in front of him.

I walked out of that kitchen because I couldn't stand there one more second watching my father choose a headline over me.

I went up to my room, locked the door, and sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, trying to remember every single detail of that drive, every second, trying to find something, anything, that could prove what actually happened.

That's when I remembered the noise.

Not the missing screech of the brakes. Something before that. A small metallic clink, right as we pulled out of the driveway that morning, quick and sharp, like something snapping into place under the car. I remembered glancing down at the dashboard for half a second because of it, and Sabine laughing at me for being paranoid, telling me it was probably just a rock caught in the wheel well.

I hadn't thought about it since. Not once. Not until right now, sitting alone in a room with the whole world convinced I was a monster.

I grabbed my phone again, this time to actually be useful, and pulled up every photo I had taken that week, searching for anything, any glimpse of the car's underside, the driveway, anything at all.

And then I found it.

A photo I didn't remember taking. Timestamped an hour before we left for the overlook. The driveway, empty except for the car, and a man crouched near the back wheel in a uniform I recognized instantly, because I had seen it a hundred times growing up in that house.

Castellane maintenance staff.

The same people who, according to my father, had just towed away the only proof that could clear my name.