THE CONFRONTATION

Chapter 2: The Confrontation

I woke before Miguel.

The sun was already filtering through the heavy curtains of the master bedroom, casting the room in a soft grey light. Miguel lay beside me, still asleep, his chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of deep, alcohol-induced slumber.

I slipped out of bed carefully, pulling the silk sheet around myself. My body ached in ways I wasn't ready to think about. But there was something else, something that kept replying in my mind like a broken record.

Clara. God, Clara.

I needed answers. I needed to understand what had happened, why he'd called out my sister's name.

I found him in the shower an hour later, the sound of water running behind the frosted glass doors of the en-suite bathroom. I pressed my hand against her chest like I could hold it still. I waited, wrapped in a borrowed robe, until the water shut off and he emerged in a cloud of steam.

Miguel froze when he saw me standing there.

"Good morning," he said carefully, reaching for a towel. He looked different in the daylight, younger, somehow, and more vulnerable with his hair wet and his guard slightly lowered.

"Why did you call me Clara?" The words came out before I could stop them.

He went completely still.

"What?"

"Last night," I said, my voice shaking slightly. "During…while we were…you called out Clara. Multiple time."

Miguel wrapped the towel around his waist and didn't say anything for a long moment. His dark eyes studied me carefully, and I could see the gears turning behind them. Confusion. Calculation. Something else I couldn't quite name.

"Isn't your name Clara?" he asked finally.

Everything inside me stopped.

"What?" I whispered.

"Your name," he said slowly, as if speaking to someone who didn't understand English. "Isn't it Clara? Clara Kristoff?"

My mouth went dry. The bathroom tilted slightly. My mind raced, trying to process what he was asking.

He thought I was Clara. He thought he was marrying Clara the entire time.

My mouth opened, then closed again with a dry click. I stared at him, but my eyes didn’t focus, like I was looking through him at something farther back.

“I—” The word caught and broke. I shook my head once, quick, like I could shake the sentence loose.

Miguel watched my face, his expression shifting from confusion to something darker. Something like anger beginning to simmer beneath the surface.

"Your name is Clara," he said, but it sounded like a question now. Like he was trying to convince himself. "Isn't it?" he pressed, stepping closer.

I turned away from him without answering. I couldn't lie directly. I couldn't confirm something that wasn't true. But I also couldn't explain what I'd just discovered, that my entire wedding had been built on a fundamental deception.

"I need to go," I whispered.

"Mara…"

He called out my name, but I was already moving, already leaving the bathroom. I grabbed my robe tighter and walked out, leaving him standing there wet and confused, his dark eyes following me with an expression I couldn't read.

Behind me, I heard him exhale sharply. But he didn't follow me.

---

I found a quiet corner of the library on the ground floor and locked the door behind me. I pressed my thumb against the keypad, missed the 5, hit it again. The phone slipped half an inch down my palm before I caught it.

Mum answered on the third ring.

"Hello? Mara?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered urgently into the phone, my voice low and desperate. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Tell you what?" My mother's voice was carefully neutral, which somehow made it worse.

"Miguel thought he was marrying Clara," I said, the words tumbling out in a rush. "He asked me this morning if my name was Clara. He didn't know. He didn't know he was marrying me. He thought the entire time that I was Clara."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"What did you tell him?" my mother asked, her voice turning sharp.

"I didn't tell him anything," I said. "I just looked at him. I couldn't speak. I couldn't lie to him and say yes, and I couldn't tell him the truth, so I just left."

"Good," my mother said. "That was smart."

"Smart?" I repeated, my voice rising slightly before I caught myself and lowered it again. "Mum, he didn't consent to marrying me. He showed up to that altar thinking he was going to marry Clara, and instead he got me. How could you do this? How could you put me in that dress if he didn't even know who he was marrying?"

"Because that was the arrangement," my mother said coldly. "The arrangement was always for you to marry Miguel Antonio. That was the deal we struck with his family. A wife is a wife, Mara. It doesn't matter which sister he gets. The merger goes through either way."

I felt like I couldn't breathe.

"A wife is a wife?" I whispered. "Mother, he doesn't want me. He wanted Clara. This entire marriage is built on a lie, on deception. How am I supposed to live with that? How am I supposed to wake up every morning next to a man who didn't choose me, who thought he was getting someone else?"

"Then you'd better make sure he doesn't find out the truth," my mother said, her voice turning glacial. "You'd better make sure that you keep your mouth shut about this, because if you don't, if Miguel goes running to his family with this information, then everything will crash. Do not let him find out. Do you understand me?"

"He already knows something is wrong," I said desperately. "He asked me directly. He knows I'm not—"

"You need to manage this," my mother interrupted. "You need to make sure he doesn't piece together what happened. You need to—"

I turned around slowly, my stomach dropping.

Miguel stood in the doorway of the library, still shirtless, still wet from the shower. His dark eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that made my blood run cold. His jaw was clenched so tightly I thought it might crack.

And from the expression on his face, it was clear that he'd heard every word of my side of the conversation.

“What…?”