Chapter 137: Chapter One Hundred-Thirty-Seven: Terrifying Devotion

//CLARA//

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

The word echoed through my skull like a bell, each repetition more damning than the last.

I had spent the last few minutes watching Casimir transition from my loving, devoted husband into a quiet predator waiting for a kill. Watching him terrorize Gary, with his hand fisted in my cousin’s collar like he was weighing the soul of a stray dog, had made my lungs seize and something in my chest had simply... snapped

I couldn’t have it. I couldn’t let him break Gary, even if Gary’s presence in this timeline was a walking disaster.

So, I threw myself into the gears of his wrath. I offered him a bone to chew on, hoping it wouldn’t be my own.

The problem was that I didn’t actually have a ledger. I didn’t have a heavy, leather-bound book filled with the names of the Syndicate’s financiers. I had a fucking matchbook.

I studied Casimir’s expression. Or rather, the lack of one.

His eyes were flat. Not a single muscle in his jaw twitched. His body was too still. Not an ounce of emotion flickered across his features.

The silence stretched between us, thin and brittle. I could hear the water lapping against the hull. Gary’s shallow breathing from somewhere behind me.

I felt the fear spike through my chest, sharp and cold. This was worse than shouting. Worse than accusations. This was the silence of a man who was deciding who lives and who dies.

Say something, I begged silently. Please, say something.

To my absolute surprise, Casimir didn’t lash out. He didn’t demand I produce the document immediately.

Instead, he pulled me toward him until my cheek rested against his chest, his heart thundering beneath my ear with a beating that betrayed the calm his face had shown. His other arm wrapped around my waist, drawing me flush against him with a possessiveness that ensured I couldn’t escape even if I’d wanted to.

He leaned down, his lips ghosting against my ear, his breath a haunting rasp that made my blood turn to ice.

"Don’t ever say something that puts a target on your back, little bird."

The endearment should have softened the warning. Instead, it made my blood run cold. The familiarity of it, the intimacy, spoken in a voice that held no warmth at all.

His hand crawled at the back of my head and tightened incrementally, fingers pressing into my scalp with enough pressure to remind me exactly how easily he could hurt me if he chose.

"And never lie to me to protect a man who isn’t worth the dirt on your shoes. Because if you become the reason they hunt me. If you are the one holding the blade they want..."

He continued, and now I heard it, the thing lurking beneath the surface of that controlled tone, the madness coiled tight and waiting for release.

"All hell will break loose. I will dismantle this city down brick by brick until there is nowhere left for them to hide, and I will lock you so deep in my shadow that you’ll forget what the sun looks like. Do you understand me?"

I shivered. I understood then, with terrible clarity.

He meant it. Every word. Every syllable. It was a haunting, menacing sort of love. It bordered on a terrifying, mad obsession that made my skin crawl even as my body instinctively leaned into his strength.

I realized then that I had only been seeing the surface of his darkness. I had unraveled a single thread, but the man holding me was a tapestry of horrors I was only just beginning to comprehend.

"I wasn’t lying about having something."

His grip on my waist tightened, his thumb pressing into the small of my back.

"Tell me everything. No lies."

I took a breath. Then another.

"I did something. Before the wedding." My voice came out barely audible. "I snuck out. While everyone was busy with the fittings, while Aunt Cornelia was micromanaging the flowers, I slipped out of the mansion and went to Elias’s old apartment. The one where he stayed before I moved him."

I felt his jaw tighten. But he didn’t interrupt.

"It was already torn apart when I arrived. The mattress was sliced open. The walls were ripped down. Someone had been there before me. They tore through everything."

I swallowed hard, remembering the chaos, the overturned furniture, the stuffing from the mattress spilling across the floor like snow.

"But I found something."

The silence stretched unbearably. I felt the tension in him, the coiled energy of a man processing too many variables at once, fitting pieces into a pattern I couldn’t see.

"A matchbook. It’s called The Velvet Noose. There was a code on the back. 14-2-33."

I stopped. Let the words settle.

"I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if it’s connected to the ledger or just some random thing Elias left behind before he lost all his memories. But I knew it was important. They knew I had it. They wanted it back. They were willing to kill for it."

His arm around my waist became iron. And still he said nothing.

"They chased me through that apartment. Barely got out. I had to climb out the window from a three-story drop."

His grip curled tightly until the silk of my nightshift strained at the seams, a silent scream of the violence he was imagining inflicting on those men. His chest rose and fell in a controlled breath.

"You could have been killed."

"But I wasn’t."

Casimir’s grip loosened, but only slightly.

He lifted my chin, forcing my gaze to his. His thumb brushed my cheekbone.

"The matchbook," he said finally. "You still have it?"

"In my room. Back at the mansion. Hidden."

He nodded slowly and stepped back just an inch, though his palm remained to my face, his thumb tracing the line of my lower lip.

"The things I do for my wife."

The words left his mouth sounding less like a devotion and more like a debt he intended to collect in blood.

He leaned down, his mouth crashing against mine, and for a second, I couldn’t tell if he was trying to protect me or consume me.

The kiss lasted only a heartbeat before he withdrew and stepped back entirely. Without a single word of explanation, he turned on his heel, disappearing into the shadows.

"Holy shit," Gary wheezed, wiping a hand over his forehead.

"That was terrifying. I know he’s someone not to cross with, but I’ve never actually seen it. Not like that. I mean, he threatens me a lot, but that was different. When he looked at me just now? I saw a reaper. That man screams death and that aura..."

He shuddered, visible even in the dim light. "Goddamn. It screams I will bury you alive and forget where I put the shovel aura."

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to replace the warmth he’d taken with me.

"It scares me too." I admitted. I walked over to the railing.

"You? He worships you," Gary countered, though he still looked pale. "And I am no longer sure if it is a red or a green flag. Maybe grey. But that’s the scary part, isn’t it? The way he looks at you... it’s not normal, Clara. It’s like he’s decided you’re the center of the universe, and if anyone bumps into you, he’ll just extinguish the sun to make it stop."

I didn’t correct him. I couldn’t. Because I knew if Casimir was downright terrifying, it was usually when he said barely anything at all.

The steam engine roared to life beneath our feet, the deck vibrating with sudden power. We were turning, the yacht carving a slow arc through the water.

"We’re turning around," Gary noted with dread.

"We’re going back to the shore."

The wind shifted, blowing colder now.

I looked back toward the bridge, where the faint glow of the lanterns showed Casimir’s silhouette standing next to the Captain.

I had thought eloping would set us free even just for a stolen moment. But the yacht picked up the speed, charging back toward the world we had tried to escape.

"Clara?" Gary’s voice came out thin, nearly lost beneath the engine’s roar.

"Yeah?"

"If we die... can you at least tell the history books I was a hero? Like, maybe I died saving a kitten or something? Don’t let them write that I died hiding behind a woman in a silk nightshift."

I looked at him. "We’re not going to die, Gary."

He smiled weakly. "I really should have learned Morse code."

I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, feeling the flutter of panic that still hadn’t fully subsided. Tonight, I watched the man I married become something that existed beyond rules or mercy.

The monster was real. He had made it clear before. But he was mine, I am his. We vowed to each other till death part us. And I was only beginning to understand what that meant.

And God help me.