Chapter 5 The Name on Page Four

Griffin POV

I poured my third drink before the first course even hit the table.

The memorial dinner was my mother's idea, a room full of family friends and board members gathered to "support Sabine through her recovery," which really meant a room full of people watching me to see how I'd hold myself together in public. I hated every second of it. I hated the soft voices, the careful hands on my shoulder, the way everyone said so sorry like the words meant anything.

I hated more that Margot walked in at all.

She sat at the far end of the table, alone, in a black dress that made her look like she was already attending her own funeral instead of Sabine's recovery dinner. Nobody spoke to her. Nobody looked at her, except in the quick, sideways way people look at something they've already decided is dangerous.

Good, I told myself. Let her feel what it's like to be the reason everything fell apart.

But I couldn't stop looking at her either, and that made the anger in my chest burn hotter, because some old, useless part of me kept comparing the girl in that black dress to the version of her I used to know, the one who used to argue with me about which was better, coffee or tea, for twenty minutes straight just because she liked watching me lose.

That version of Margot didn't exist anymore. I made myself remember that.

By the fourth drink, my mother was deep in conversation with the board, and nobody was watching me closely enough to stop me from crossing the room.

I sat down across from Margot without asking.

She stiffened. "Griffin."

"You have some nerve, showing up here." My words came out heavier than I meant them to, the alcohol thickening my tongue.

"Sabine's my sister." Her voice was quiet, careful, like she was talking to something that might bite. "I have every right to be here."

"Do you?" I leaned forward. "Because from where I'm sitting, you're the reason this dinner exists at all."

Her jaw tightened, but she didn't look away from me, and something about that steadiness made the anger in my chest twist even sharper. She should have looked guilty. She should have looked away.

She didn't.

"I found something," she said instead, low enough that only I could hear it. "A photo. From the morning of the crash. I think someone tampered with,"

"Stop." I didn't want to hear it. I couldn't hear it, not with Sabine's face still fresh in my mind from that hospital bed, not with her hand gripping my wrist telling me it was Margot, it was Margot, it was Margot. "I am done listening to you make excuses."

"They're not excuses, they're,"

"I said stop." My voice came out louder than I meant it to, and a few heads turned at the tables nearby. I didn't care. Something in me had been building all night, all week, since the second I walked into that hospital and saw my whole future lying broken in a bed, and it finally broke loose. "You took the one person who ever mattered to me, and you put her in a wheelchair, and now you're going to sit here and tell me stories about photos to save yourself?"

Margot's eyes went bright, glassy, but she didn't cry. She held it back with a kind of strength that, in any other version of this night, I would have admired.

"I'm not trying to save myself," she said. "I'm trying to tell you the truth."

"The truth." I laughed, and it came out ugly, nothing like a real laugh. "You want to talk about truth? Fine. Here's the truth."

I reached into my jacket and pulled out the folded papers I'd been carrying around all week, the ones my lawyer had drawn up after I told him, in a fit of fury I hadn't let myself examine too closely, that I needed a way to make a Kilbride pay for what she did to my family.

I slid them across the table.

Margot's eyes dropped to the papers, and her face changed the second she started reading.

"This isn't a settlement," she said slowly. "This is a marriage contract."

"Your family owes mine everything." My voice was flat, final, the alcohol making it easier to say the cruel thing out loud instead of just thinking it. "Your father's company survives because of contracts my family hands him. Your sister may never walk again because of you. You are going to marry me, and you are going to spend every day of it paying down a debt you will never actually finish paying."

"Griffin, you're drunk, you don't mean,"

"I mean every word." I leaned closer, close enough to see the exact moment fear replaced disbelief in her eyes. "You will sign that contract, or I will make sure your father's company doesn't survive the month. That's not a threat. That's a promise."

Margot stared at me for a long, silent moment, and I watched something shift behind her eyes, something hardening into a decision.

"Fine." Her voice came out steady, steadier than I expected. "I'll sign it."

Relief and something else, something I refused to name, rushed through my chest.

Then she picked up the pen sitting beside the papers, and instead of signing where I'd marked, she flipped to the very last page instead, scanning it fast, her eyes moving line by line like she was looking for something specific.

Her whole body went still.

"What," I said slowly, "is this clause on page four?"

I hadn't read page four. My lawyer had handled the details; I'd only cared about the outcome. But something about the way Margot's face drained of color made the alcohol in my system suddenly feel very far away.

"Griffin." Her voice had dropped to almost nothing. "Do you know whose name is listed as the second signee on this contract? The one who has to countersign before it's legally binding?"

"My mother's lawyer drew it up. It would be her, or,"

"It's not her." Margot turned the paper around and slid it back across the table toward me, her finger pressed against a line near the bottom of the page. "Read it yourself."

I looked down, and the name printed there in small, official letters was not my mother's.

It was Sabine's.