“Bullshit. Vanessa would sooner invite the devil.”
“Perhaps she did,” Clara murmured, glancing toward the altar where Vanessa was now visibly trembling, clutching Liam’s hand with a desperation that looked painful.
Marcus squeezed harder. “Why are you still alive?”
The question hung in the air between them, brutal and naked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was a lament.
Clara felt the cold shock of it, even after all these years. It transported her back to that night on the ridge. The screech of tires. The sickening crunch of metal. The car teetering on the edge. She remembered screaming for her father. She remembered him arriving before the ambulance. She remembered him pulling Vanessa—who had barely a scratch—out of the passenger side.
And she remembered him looking at Clara, pinned behind the wheel, blood in her eyes, the car groaning as it slipped further. He had looked at her, calculated the risk, and stepped back. He had chosen the heir, the perfect one, and left the spare to the gravity of the canyon.
“We mourned you,” Marcus spat, his face inches from hers. “We moved on. You’re a ghost, Clara. You’re an inconvenience. Leave before you destroy the only good thing this family has left.”
“The only good thing?” Clara repeated. She looked at Liam at the altar. “You think this wedding is a good thing?”
