Chapter 166 - One-Hundred-Sixty-Six: The Roots

//CLARA//

I woke to the creak of a door. Morning light cut through the small inn window, and the space beside me was already cold.

Casimir was gone.

"Good morning, Miss Eleanor."

My head snapped towards the voice. Hattie stepped inside, holding an emerald dress over her arm.

"Hattie." I sat up, dragging the blanket over my bare breasts. "How are you here?"

"Mr. Guggenheim sent a rider to the estate before dawn." She walked over to help me out of bed. "Mr. Higgins is downstairs with him now. Waiting for you."

"Is he... how is his side?"

"He’s fine, miss."

Hattie assisted me into the dress—no corsets today, thank God—and within twenty minutes, I looked like a proper lady of the Gilded Age again.

We walked down the creaking staircase into the small common room. The innkeeper and his wife were wiping down the counter.

I stopped at the threshold.

"Thank you for the hospitality last night. Truly."

The innkeeper’s wife gave me a solemn wave of her hand. "Safe travels with you."

Outside, the air was bitter. The first layer of snow had melted into a grey slush along the gutters.

Higgins stood by the door of an unmarked black carriage. He gave me a curt nod as he opened the door.

Casimir sat inside, fully dressed in a fresh dark coat, his gloved hands resting on the silver head of his cane. His gaze was fixed on the frosted pane of the window, his jaw clenched into a hard line that told me the superficial wound was giving him hell with every rock of the wheels.

The city was waking up. Casimir remained locked in his own thoughts but his hand found mine, intertwined with my fingers. The moment the carriage pulled into the iron gates of our estate, the quiet shattered.

We barely made it through the grand front doors before the clatter of crutches echoed from the main staircase.

"Clara! Clara, sweet God, are you alright? The servants wouldn’t tell me anything. You can’t just leave me like that, you can’t—"

Gary was wobbling precariously on a pair of wooden crutches as he practically threw himself down the final three steps. His left leg was still heavily bandaged, completely useless, and he looked like a stiff breeze could knock him over.

"Gary, stop!"

I rushed forward, catching his forearm before his crutches could slide out from beneath him on the polished marble floor.

"What are you doing out of bed? You haven’t healed yet. Do you have a death wish, or are you just trying to make my morning more complicated? I am fine."

"But—"

Behind me, a sharp clearing of a throat cut through the foyer.

Gary stiffened instantly. He limped backward, adjusting his weight on the crutches, creating a distance between us as Casimir stepped fully into the hall.

Casimir didn’t say a word to him. He didn’t even look at Gary directly. He simply walked past us toward his study with a steady thump of his cane.

"You shouldn’t be down here," I scolded Gary softly. "You’re going to tear your stitches, and frankly, I don’t have the stomach to play nurse again today. Let’s get you back to your room."

"Where the hell have you been? Dude, I’ve been freaking out over here, you seriously worried me to death."

I waited until we reached his room, helping him settle onto the edge of the mattress, setting his crutches against the nightstand before telling him everything. The warehouse. The ambush. The bodies in the street.

Gary gasped, his hands flying to his mouth.

"No fucking way! That bastard is still alive?"

He was pertaining to Silas. I nodded, a dry, humorless laugh bubbling up in my throat. "And as for Bartholomew? Let’s just say he won’t be modeling for any portraits anytime soon."

Gary shrank back against the pillows.

"And... and you watched him torture that man?"

"Yes."

Gary stared at me in disbelief. "And you’re not terrified?"

"Of him?" I considered the question. "No. He doesn’t hurt people who don’t deserve it. Is he a monster? Yes. And honestly? Between the kidnapping and the rape attempts, Bartholomew and Silas kind of earned their VIP pass to the underworld."

Gary let out a bitter, mocking laugh.

"What about me, Clara?" Gary’s hands flew to his hair, tugging at the roots. "He knows I’m not some blameless bystander. I’m Elias for god’s sake! Am I supposed to just chill under the roof of a psychopath who looks at me like I’m already six feet under? He’s basically tracking my stats like an NPC he wants to delete!"

My chest tightened.

"I won’t let him touch you. I swear it."

Gary let out a shaky breath. "Yeah... great. Still doesn’t sound reassuring. Not at all."

"It’s the best I’ve got right now. So take the win."

Once Gary settled down, his exhaustion finally pulling him into a fitful doze, I left his quarters.

I walked straight down the corridor, my boots echoing against the marble. The study door was already open, and I pushed through without knocking.

Casimir sat behind his massive desk, a glass of amber liquid untouched at his elbow. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

"We need to talk."

"I am listening, little bird."

"Who exactly attacked us last night? Who are the men on this board? And don’t sanitize it for me."

Casimir’s brow arched, but he answered anyway.

"The men who ordered the ambush are the old guard. The founding families of the shipping district. They believe New York belongs to their inheritance."

"Did you found the syndicate?"

"No," he said flatly. "The syndicate existed long before I took my first breath. It was a chaotic, bloody mess of street gangs and corrupt officials. It was inefficient. It left too many bodies in the open."

"So you took it over."

"I modernized it," he corrected. "I turned their violence into a machine. I established monopolies on the shipping routes, bought the local magistrates, and built a ledger of secrets that keeps every elite family in this city on their knees. I became the center of it because I am the only one capable of calculating the variables without letting sentiment interfere."

"And now they want your head. Turns out people don’t like being on their knees forever."

"They realize I am systematically erasing them." A faint, dangerous tilt touched the corner of his mouth. "One by one, I have been buying out their shares, exposing their frauds, and removing them from the board."

"How much danger are we in?"

"We are in a war, Clara. It is a mathematical certainty."

I let out a long breath, the reality of the incoming bloodbath settling heavily onto my shoulders.

"Splendid," I murmured with a dry smile. "I’ll make sure to pick out a funeral dress that coordinates with your burial suit. You know, just in case we end up sharing a plot. Though, if I’m doomed to be a young, fabulously wealthy widow, I suppose black really is my color."

Casimir didn’t flinch. He merely offered a subtle, dismissive tilt of his shoulder.

Rolling my eyes at his utter lack of appreciation for my coping mechanisms, I turned toward the door.

My mind already pivoting to the estate defenses. If a war was coming to our front gates, I wasn’t about to sit around playing the damsel in distress.

"Clara."

His voice stopped me dead.

I turned back. Casimir had stood up from his desk, his massive frame towering in the dim light, his hand gripping the silver head of his cane as he walked slowly toward me.

He stopped just inches away, his stormy eyes boring down into mine with possessive intensity that made my pulse jump.

"I know you spent the morning with your childhood friend. You indulged him far more than I found tolerable."

"Elias is injured, Casimir. He’s terrified. Cut him some slack."

A dangerous hum vibrated in his chest. He leaned down until the cold tip of his nose brushed the shell of my ear.

"I am going to say this once, little bird, and I will not repeat myself." The words came out emotionless. "He remains here because you asked. He breathes because I allow it. He eats my bread, shelters beneath my roof, and mends his brittle bones at my sufferance."

He paused. His fingers snapped around my chin, forcing my face up into the dead, frozen storm of his stare.

"But the very second his existence compromises your security. The moment he becomes a variable that threatens a single breath in your lungs, I will kill him myself. I will erase him from this world so thoroughly that not even a ghost of his memory will remain to haunt you."

His thumb traced the line of my lower lip, almost reverent.

"Do not make me choose, Clara. Because I will choose your life every single time, even if I must break your heart, wade through a river of anyone’s blood. I will burn your happiness to ash and call it mercy. And I will not regret it. Not for a single second."