MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 61 - Sixty-One: The Fallout

//CLARA//

Stupid! Fucking stupid idiot!

The door slammed with a finality that shook the pictures on my walls, and I was left alone with the wreckage of my own words.

I collapsed onto the bed, my entire body still shaking. It wasn’t fear—I was now too pissed off for fear. It was something else, something morbid and heavy that twisted in my chest until I couldn’t draw a full breath.

Then came the heat. The hot, stinging, frustrated tears that blurred my vision and turned the room into a watercolor of gray and gold.

I felt awful. Not because I had lost the argument. Not because he had locked me in my room like a child. But because I had looked him in the eye and called him a monster.

Hattie came back after an hour. She found me still lying there, cheeks wet.

"Oh, Miss Eleanor. Let me get you cleaned up."

I let her work. She peeled off the soiled dress and brought a basin of warm water. I scrubbed myself clean until the skin was raw.

My body went on auto-pilot while my mind replayed every bit of the day on a vicious loop.

After what felt like a literal eternity, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The storm outside had developed a grudge. Lightning flickered against the heavy curtains.

I did not know when I decided it. But the next thing I knew, I was traipsing through the dark hallways by sheer muscle memory until I reached his study door.

A thin, sharp line of light seeped through the gap at the bottom.

He was still awake. Of course he was.

I brought my hand up to knock, but the knuckles hovered an inch from the wood. My pride screamed at me to turn around. My heart told my pride to shut up.

What am I doing here? What am I going to say?

I turned the handle, silently thanking whatever god was listening that he hadn’t locked this door, too.

The room smelled of him. He was at his desk, pushed deep into the corner shadow. He was hunched over a stack of papers. He didn’t jump. He just looked up, and sighed.

He seemed to be expecting me. Or maybe he’d just wagered on my inability to stay put.

"You’re supposed to stay in your room," he said flatly, but lacking the jagged edge from earlier.

"I know. You practically grounded me. I’m waiting for you to take away any means of communication I can get."

"What do you want now, Clara?"

"I—I wanted to say..." I trailed off, I did not know what I was going to say. Whatever words I had, they died in my throat. I looked at the floor, then back at him. "I think I went too far."

"You think?"

"Don’t make it any harder for me, Casimir. I’m already standing here in my nightgown admitting I was a brat." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"I’m the one making it harder?" He leaned back, the leather of his chair creaking. "You vanished into the most dangerous parts of the city in a costume that would have gotten you arrested or worse."

"Yes, I know I was way over my head," I admitted, my voice dropping. "But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stand not knowing anything."

Casimir watched me, his expression unreadable. "What exactly do you know? How did you even find the name Silas Thurston?"

"I overheard you talking to someone the other day," I said, crossing my arms over my chest to keep from shivering. "About the broken axle. About Thurston Holdings and how they went bankrupt because of you."

"What else?"

"I went to get answers for myself because you said I wasn’t supposed to know. And the more people tell me I can’t do something, the more I feel like I have to."

He looked at me, seemingly unfazed. It was the very reason he’d tried to cage me—he knew my curiosity was a terminal illness.

"And..." I paused, my heart doing that frantic bird-flutter again. I didn’t know how he’d react to this part. "Mr. Vanderbilt saw me there."

He stilled. It was instantaneous, like a predator goes into right before it strikes. The anger flared in his eyes first, hot and bright, but it was immediately smothered by a wave of possessive concern. He was out of his chair before I could blink, grabbing my upper arms.

"Did he touch you? Did he hurt you? What did he do, Clara?"

"Nothing," I said quickly, surprised by the intensity in his grip. "I didn’t give him the chance. I left immediately."

"Are you sure? Bartholomew is a snake who thinks he’s a king. If he thought for one second he could use you to get to me—"

"I’m fine. Shaken, but fine."

He let out a breath, his forehead dropping to rest against mine for just a second.

"This is exactly why I didn’t want you to know. My only fault is that I underestimated your eavesdropping capabilities."

I almost laughed. Almost.

We stayed like that for a beat, just breathing the same air until I found the strength to pull back and ask the question that had been rotting in my mind all day.

"Is it true, then? You’re the one who drove Mr. Thurston into taking his own life?"

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. The silence was heavy enough to drown in. He turned back toward the window, watching the rain hammer against the glass.

"Why?" I whispered.

"I’m not a good person, Clara. My morals have never been in sight when it comes to business. But when it comes to this family... there is no length I will not go to, no soul I will not crush, to ensure our name remains safe."

He turned and reached out, his fingers hovering just inches from my cheek, trembling with a restraint that felt like a scream.

"And now, there’s you. I will be whatever villain this city requires me to be, so long as you are safe beneath my roof. You are the only thing in this world I cannot afford to lose, and I will protect you until there is nothing left of me but ash."

Holy shit. My brain stalled.

He sounded like a man who had rewritten the laws of physics to keep me in his orbit. And part of me wanted to melt into a puddle right straight into his arms.

But the other part of me felt a cold shiver, knowing exactly what lengths he meant by it. It was beautiful, sure. But it was also terrifying. He’s not a good man, he said it himself.

I cleared my throat, trying to ignore the way my heart was doing a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Forcing my brain to reboot before I did something spectacularly stupid—like throwing myself between us and kissing him until the name Thurston was just a smudge of ink in my memory.

"Fine. You’re the monster in the dark. I get it," I said, leaning back just enough to breathe. "But why him? Why the Thurstons? You don’t burn down an entire shipping empire just to see the flames."

"He was embezzling," Casimir’s voice turned cold as ice. "I was foolish enough to trust him with a merger. I thought he was a partner. But he found a loophole—a way to drain our finances into his private accounts while I took the loss."

"How did you find out?"

"I am keen with what goes in and out of my business, Clara. The ledgers didn’t tally. I traced every missing cent back to his desk. He thought he could outsmart me because I was younger. He thought I wouldn’t have the stomach for a fight."

"What did you do to him?"

Casimir’s eyes darkened, reflecting the flickering lamplight.

"I did to him what he tried to do to me. I took back what he stole. And then I took more. I ensured no bank would ever speak his name again. I made him a ghost before he even held the gun."

He paused, jaw tightening.

"If I had let him take a cent without a reckoning, word would spread by noon. By dinner, our creditors would be at the door. By morning, the Guggenheim name would be a footnote. I did not destroy him for fun. I destroyed him so no one else would dare."

How powerful is he? The question surfaced before I could stop it. Not the power of money or railroads. The power to make banks turn their backs. To silence an industry with a word. To erase a man completely.

What kind of network wielded that kind of influence?

"That is why no one would help him."

"Yes," he replied bluntly.

He looked at me and the honesty in his eyes was almost harder to stomach than the lie.

"I’m not asking for your forgiveness, Clara. Forgiveness is for people who regret their choices. I’m just telling you why I do what I do. The doors are locked because I know the price of losing. And I’m not willing to let you pay for it."

"You can’t locked me out from the truth, Casimir."

"No," he agreed softly. "But I can try to stay between you and the fallout."