Chapter 3: Salt on an Open Wound

The room was so quiet Clara could hear the clock on her nightstand ticking through every second of it.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the faded wallpaper, her eyes burning from holding back tears she refused to shed. Not anymore. She'd cried enough for one lifetime already — she wasn't about to spend any more of it on a room that didn't deserve to see her break twice in the same week.

A knock came at the door. Before she could answer, it swung open anyway.

Sophia walked in like she owned the room, a glossy bridal magazine tucked under one arm, never once slowing to ask permission. She never did.

"Well." Sophia's mouth curled into a smile that never reached her eyes. "The bride doesn't look very excited."

Clara didn't look up. Didn't answer. Sophia took the silence as an invitation, the way she took most things that weren't hers to take — crossing the room, heels clicking against the polished floor, and tossing the magazine onto the bed so it landed open to a smiling bride in white.

"I thought you could use some inspiration." Sophia smoothed an invisible crease from her sleeve. "Every bride deserves to look beautiful on her wedding day."

Clara reached over and closed the magazine without a word.

Sophia laughed softly. "Still pretending you have a choice?"

Clara's fingers stayed flat on the cover. She said nothing.

"Oh, Clara." Sophia sighed, theatrical, drifting toward the dresser to pick up a framed photograph and set it back down, slightly crooked, like she wanted Clara to notice. "You've always lived in your own little world. Do you even know what's happening downstairs right now?"

Nothing from Clara.

"The florist just left." Sophia glanced over her shoulder, smug. "Margaret chose white lilies."

"They're elegant," Clara said, flat.

"Very fitting, for a wedding."

Clara's throat tightened, and Sophia — always watching for exactly that — smiled a little wider for it.

"The caterer comes this afternoon." A pause, timed to let it land. "And your dress designer arrives tomorrow. They've already started planning everything. Honestly, it's exciting." She clasped her hands together, admiring a thought that wasn't hers to admire. "I've never seen Father this relieved."

Clara lifted her eyes at that.

*Relieved.* Not guilty. Not ashamed. Relieved — like a debt he'd been dreading had finally, conveniently, been settled by someone else's future.

Sophia leaned against the dresser, arms crossing. "You should be grateful. Most women would dream of marrying a billionaire."

Clara looked away. "He isn't marrying me."

"No?"

"No." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "He's buying me."

For one brief moment, something flickered across Sophia's smile — there, then gone, papered back over almost before Clara could be sure she'd seen it. Then Sophia laughed. "Call it whatever helps you sleep at night."

She stepped closer, until only a few feet remained between them. "You know what I find funny? You always believed you were different. That being Father's favorite meant you'd get some kind of happy ending." She tilted her head, savoring it. "But look at you now. The favorite daughter — handed over like a settlement."

The words landed deeper than Clara expected. Not because they were true. Because they came from someone who used to sit across the breakfast table from her every single morning and call her *sister* like she meant it.

Sophia folded her arms. "I almost pity you."

*Almost.*

Clara stood slowly, and met her sister's eyes without anger, without tears — only a quiet, settled disappointment that surprised even her.

"If he's such a wonderful husband," she said, "why aren't you marrying him?"

The smile dropped off Sophia's face like it had never been there at all.

For a full heartbeat, neither of them spoke. The silence stretched taut between them, sharp enough to cut whoever moved first.

Then Sophia's laugh came back, but it was thinner now, stretched over something that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"Don't be ridiculous." She turned away, busying herself with straightening a fold of the bedspread that didn't need straightening. "Gregory Blackwood is *ancient.* I have options. Real ones. Men my own age, who—"

"Then it's not the age that bothers you." Clara's voice was quiet, almost gentle, which somehow made it land harder than if she'd shouted. "It's that nobody's offering to erase a debt by handing *you* over."

Sophia's hands stilled on the bedspread.

For just a moment, something raw showed under the composure — there because Clara knew exactly where to look for it, after eighteen years of practice. Not guilt. Something closer to old, familiar hurt, quickly buried.

"You think this is about me," Sophia said, turning back around, and her voice had lost its earlier drawl, gone flatter, harder. "It's not. I don't care what happens to you, Clara. I never have."

"I know." Clara held her gaze steadily. "That's the part I stopped being surprised by a long time ago."

That landed somewhere Sophia clearly hadn't braced for — Clara could see it, the way Sophia's jaw tightened, the way her chin lifted a fraction too high, a tell she'd worn since they were children and one of them had lost a game she refused to admit losing.

"You'll be married in a week," Sophia said, recovering her smile, forcing the drawl back into her voice like pulling on a coat that no longer quite fit. "And I'll be at the wedding, in the front row, watching you become Mrs. Blackwood. So let's not pretend either of us has won anything here."

She snatched the magazine back off the bed, tucking it under her arm with more force than necessary, and turned for the door.

She paused there, hand on the frame, not quite looking back.

"For what it's worth," she said, quieter than anything else she'd said all afternoon, "I used to wish it was me. Being Father's favorite." A short, humorless breath. "Careful what you wish for, I suppose."

She was gone before Clara could decide whether that had been an apology or just another blade, dressed up softer than the rest.

Clara stood alone in the sudden quiet, the clock still ticking on the nightstand, and realized her hands weren't shaking anymore.

She looked down at the closed magazine on the bed — the one Sophia had left behind after all — and found herself unable to look away from the bride smiling up from the cover, radiant, unaware that somewhere behind that photograph, s

omeone else's whole life had just been folded into a bouquet of white lilies.