MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 35 - Thirty-Five: Rampage

//CLARA//

The aroma of burnt coffee and boiled kippers was doing absolutely nothing for the nausea currently roiling in my stomach.

Or my patience.

I sat at the breakfast table, poking at a piece of dry toast with a fork that probably cost more than a small country’s GDP, wondering if anyone had ever actually murdered their aunt in this century and gotten away with it. There had to be legal loopholes somewhere.

Casimir sat at the head, buried behind a copy of the Tribune that looked thick enough to double as body armor. He hadn’t looked at me once since we sat down. Not once. After yesterday, he still couldn’t meet my eyes.

The silence was suffocating. The kind of quiet that happens right before something terrible breaks. I’d learned to recognize it. I was starting to crave it, if only because it meant something would finally happen.

I shifted in the chair, the stays of the corset digging into my ribs like a cage made of bone.

God, I hated the Gilded Age.

I missed almond milk lattes. I missed yoga pants. I mostly missed not feeling like a Victorian sausage casing waiting to hit its expiration date.

But apparently, the universe wasn’t done messing with my vibe.

The double doors didn’t open. They were assaulted. Banged against the plaster with enough force to rattle the chandelier above us.

"Eleanor!"

Aunt Cornelia swept into the room like a battleship in full sail, her face the color of an overripe plum, her chest heaving like she’d just run a marathon in that ridiculous corset.

"Just what do you think you are playing at?"

She ignored Casimir, made a beeline straight for me.

"Bartholomew has sent a telegram retracting his offer of marriage this very morning! Eleanor, explain yourself! Have you lost your mind along with your manners?"

Her voice was shrill enough to crack the fine china.

I set my fork down slowly.

"Perhaps," I said, meeting her gaze with the bored expression that used to make my entire marketing team reconsider their life choices, "he finally realized that a merger with the Guggenheims required more than just a pulse and a bank account."

I smoothed my napkin across my lap. "Or maybe his fragile ego simply couldn’t handle a woman who speaks in full sentences."

Cornelia’s face went from plum to something approaching a stroke. Her mouth opened—

The newspaper lowered with a sharp rustle.

Casimir fixed his gaze squarely on the harpy standing at the foot of our table, and the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"The arrangement was dissolved, Auntie." His voice was low, vibrating with something dangerous that made the servants edge toward the door and fled the dining room.

"Mr. Vanderbilt lacked the gentlemanly restraint required to keep his hands to himself. During their promenade yesterday, he saw fit to manhandle my ward in public."

He picked up his knife, slicing into a sausage with surgical precision. The steel blade glinted under the chandelier.

"I simply ensured he understood that such behavior would result in him losing those hands."

Aunt Cornelia sputtered. Actually sputtered, like a kettle about to boil over.

"Manhandle? Don’t be absurd, Casimir! The man is a gentleman of the highest order! Something you wouldn’t recognize if it slapped you across the face. And surely Eleanor must have entirely deciphered it wrong, given her insolent nature and her talent for dramatics. He was merely being... affectionate!"

She whipped back to me, her ring-laden finger pointing like a weapon.

"You ungrateful girl! Do you realize what you have cost this family? I would rather have a man with a healthy appetite who secures our future than some flighty little virgin who cries assault over a hand on her waist!"

My teacup rattled against the saucer. I loosened my grip. Deliberately.

I stood up slowly. Let the scrape of my chair silence the room.

"Let me get this straight." My voice was calm, but my blood was boiling inside "You, who claims to be the mistress of this house, who lectures me daily on propriety and duty and the sacred honor of this family. And you are essentially pimping out your niece to the highest bidder, regardless of his character."

I stepped closer. Let her see exactly how done I was. "You call his healthy appetite—which, by the way, felt less like affection and more like a prelude to assault—a valid trade for my dignity?"

I was in her space now. She was shrinking back, but I didn’t stop. "That’s your great moral code, Auntie? That’s the legacy you’re so desperate to protect?"

I tilted my head.

"Newsflash, old hag. My body is not a commodity to be bartered on the stock market to cover your social standing. If you think I’m going to let some walking ego with a comb-over touch me without my consent just to save face, you are crazier than your corset allows you to breathe."

Cornelia’s face cycled through colors I didn’t know human skin could produce. She drew herself up to her full height—which was still sadly lacking—and let out a screech that would have made a banshee proud.

"How dare you! I am doing what is necessary for this house! You insolent, ungrateful little—"

Her hand moved faster than I expected. The slap connected with my cheek, a sharp crack that sent my head snapping sideways.

The pain bloomed hot. Copper flooded my tongue. I tasted blood, felt the sting spreading across my cheekbone, and for a moment, the room spun.

Then Casimir moved.

I didn’t see him get up. One second he was seated, the next he was between us, his fingers wrapped around Aunt Cornelia’s wrist in a grip that made her gasp before she could complete her second arc toward my face.

"My God, woman."

His voice didn’t rise, didn’t need to. It settled somewhere in the space between thunder and the silence after lightning.

"You seem to be suffering from the delusion that this house is a democracy, and that you have either a vote or the right to conduct violence within these walls."

He released her wrist with a flick, as if touching her had soiled his fingers. "You have neither."

He loomed over her, his shadow swallowing her whole.

"If you ever raise a hand to her again, or anyone in this house, I won’t just send you away. I will ship you off to the Bloomingdale Asylum so fast your head will spin. I hear their treatments for hysteria are quite invigorating."

His voice dropped to something barely human. "A little ice water and a straitjacket might finally teach you the silence you so woefully lack."

Aunt Cornelia stumbled back, crashing into a chair. Her eyes darted between us. Fear and fury, battling over something that looked almost like disbelief.

But she wasn’t done.

"You are a fool, Casimir!" Her voice cracked. "You indulge her too much! You encourage this defiance, this madness! You are supposed to be her guardian, not her accomplice! You are letting a child ruin this family’s legacy because you are too blind to see that she is manipulating you!"

She was backing toward the door now, but the poison kept coming. "Mark my words, you will both rot for this!"

She swept out. The doors slammed behind her, leaving the echo fading into silence.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. My hand hovered over my throbbing cheek, the sting still fresh, the taste of blood still sharp on my tongue. I was shaking. The adrenaline was crashing, leaving me shaky and absurdly close to tears I refused to let fall.

Casimir was already watching me. His eyes were still dark with rage, but the edges were softening, bleeding into something that made my chest ache.

He stepped into my space, the air around him still thrumming from the blowout with Aunt Cornelia. His fingers hooked under my chin, tilting my face toward the window with a touch so unexpectedly light it made my breath hitch.

"You’re bleeding," he murmured gently, losing its jagged edge.

"I’m aware, Casimir."

His thumb caught a stray bead of red from the corner of my mouth. He traced the wound with reverent focus, his gaze anchored to my lips as if he were trying to memorize the damage he hadn’t been fast enough to stop.

"Does it hurt?"

I tried for a witty comeback, but my voice betrayed me, cracking around the edges. "It hurts like hell."

A flicker of guilt crossed his face, his expression softening.

"She’s right about one thing, though," I whispered, my heart doing a chaotic staccato against my ribs. "I am a fool. Because for a second there, I actually liked the way you threatened to institutionalize your own flesh and blood for me."

He let out a low, weary sigh, as if he had just realized that his carefully ordered life has been hijacked by a beautiful disaster. He looked at me with exasperation and a dark, simmering amusement.

"You cost me everything, Clara. You know that, don’t you?"

The way he said my name made the sting on my cheek fade into the background. "I know."

"And you know," he murmured, his thumb lingering on the curve of my lip, "that I’d pay it all over again."