//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 sothing 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 tiline 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 nas 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 sowhere behind .
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 sothing, I begged silently. Please, say sothing.
To my absolute surprise, Casimir didn’t lash out. He didn’t demand I produce the docunt imdiately.
Instead, he pulled 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 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 sothing that puts a target on your back, little bird."
The endearnt 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 increntally, fingers pressing into my scalp with enough pressure to remind exactly how easily he could hurt if he chose.
"And never lie to to protect a man who isn’t worth the dirt on your shoes. Because if you beco the reason they hunt . 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 ?"
I shivered. I understood then, with terrible clarity.
He ant it. Every word. Every syllable. It was a haunting, nacing 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 was a tapestry of horrors I was only just beginning to comprehend.
"I wasn’t lying about having sothing."
His grip on my waist tightened, his thumb pressing into the small of my back.
"Tell everything. No lies."
I took a breath. Then another.
"I did sothing. Before the wedding." My voice ca 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 apartnt. 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. Soone had been there before . They tore through everything."
I swallowed hard, rembering the chaos, the overturned furniture, the stuffing from the mattress spilling across the floor like snow.
"But I found sothing."
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 ans. I don’t know if it’s connected to the ledger or just so random thing Elias left behind before he lost all his mories. 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 beca iron. And still he said nothing.
"They chased through that apartnt. 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 n. 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 or consu .
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 soone not to cross with, but I’ve never actually seen it. Not like that. I an, he threatens a lot, but that was different. When he looked at 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 .
"It scares 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 mont. But the yacht picked up the speed, charging back toward the world we had tried to escape.
"Clara?" Gary’s voice ca 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 sothing? 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 beco sothing that existed beyond rules or rcy.
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 ant.
And God help .
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