Chapter 5 - The Mirror and the Mask
"You're lying," I said, my voice trembling as I shook my head in frantic denial. "Clara didn't know anything about my father’s past. She’s too pure—she loves me, she—"
"She loved the idea of making you pay, maybe," Sabrina interrupted, her voice cutting through my desperation like a scalpel. "Or maybe she didn't know either. Maybe your father’s sins just have a way of catching up to the Vance men, no matter which corner of the room you try to hide in."
Before I could answer, the front door of the penthouse opened again with a sharp click.
Footsteps rushed into the foyer—fast, breathless, panicked footsteps that didn't belong to a casual visitor or a returning wife taking her time.
"Ethan!" a voice cried out from the hallway.
It was Clara’s voice, but it was frantic, cracking with a terror that had nothing to do with medical charts or EEG monitors.
Sabrina froze, her eyes widening slightly for the first time since she had walked into the room.
"Clara?" I yelled out, pushing past Sabrina and bolting toward the hallway.
Clara stood in the entryway, her fleece hoodie sliding off one shoulder, her face tear-stained and ashen. She stopped dead in her tracks as she saw me emerge from the office. But the moment she caught sight of the figure standing behind me in the shadows of the doorway, the blood drained entirely from her face.
"Sabrina," Clara breathed, her voice dropping into a hollow, disbelieving whisper.
I whipped my head back and forth between the two women, the absolute horror of the realization crashing down on me like a tidal wave. They weren't strangers on opposite sides of a revenge plot.
They knew each other.
"You're late," Sabrina said calmly, sliding her hands into the pockets of her trench coat as she looked at my wife.
Clara’s hands began to shake violently, her bag slipping from her fingers and hitting the marble floor with a dull thud. "I had to wait for the shift change," she choked out, her eyes locking onto Sabrina with a mixture of guilt and absolute terror. "I didn't think you’d come here. You promised you wouldn't come here."
I stepped backward, colliding heavily against the wall, my mind fracturing under the weight of the impossible truth.
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"You know her?" I whispered, looking at Clara. "Clara... what is going on? Who is she?"
Clara looked at me, her eyes swimming with tears, and for the first time since our son was rushed to the ICU, she didn't look like an innocent victim trapped in my betrayal. She looked like an architect of a catastrophe far larger than anything I could have ever imagined.
