THE SUBSTITUTE BRIDE

Sophie didn’t stop there.

She went back to our parents, crying, telling them her life had fallen apart because of Derek, that this was her one and only chance to get everything back — and that chance was my place in the Cross family.

My parents, as always, took her side.

My mother came to me, and this time her voice carried none of the old pleading — just a flat, matter-of-fact tone, as if she were stating something obvious.

“Claire, you’ve already enjoyed three years of privilege thanks to Sophie’s generosity.

That should be enough.

You should be grateful you got to live that life at all, instead of turning around now and being greedy about it.”

“That engagement was always Sophie’s.

You were only ever a temporary stand-in,” my father added, his voice carrying no trace of begging either — only a lecturing tone, as though I were the one making the unreasonable demand.

“Now that your sister is ready, it’s time you gave her back what’s rightfully hers.

Don’t make us keep reminding you what you owe this family.”

I refused outright, but my parents pulled out the company threat once again — this time it was a new loan Bennett Textiles desperately needed to avoid collapse, one that, according to my father, would only be approved if relations between the two families were “restored to what they were always meant to be.”

While Julian was away on a three-day business trip to Chicago, my parents showed up at the Cross estate, using the excuse of bringing me home to visit my “gravely ill” grandmother.

I was taken to a small house in the New Jersey suburbs I’d never seen before, the door locked from the outside, my phone confiscated.

Meanwhile, Sophie — carefully coached by my mother on how to dress and speak like me — moved into the Cross estate, telling Eleanor I “needed to go take care of my grandmother for a while.”