MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 45 - Forty-Five: Unwanted Visitor

//CLARA//

Bartholomew was leaning against the tall windows, his silhouette cutting a sharp, dark notch into the setting sun, and I felt that familiar jolt of recognition followed immediately by a glitch in the matrix.

He didn’t look like the man who’d tried to force himself on me in the park. The one whose hands I could still feel like a phantom bruise on my skin. That version of him had been desperate, frantic, losing his grip. This man had something in him filed down, or maybe just sharpened to a lethal point.

But here’s the thing about men who practice sincerity in the mirror—they always rehearse the wrong parts. The tilt of his head was too calculated. The slight furrow between his brows was staged. He’d practiced this face, probably in his bedroom mirror, practicing the exact angle of remorse that made him look noble instead of pathetic.

He wanted me to see a man burdened by guilt. What I saw was a man who’d decided it was time to stop being the villain in his own story.

His coat still had that old money cut, but the shoulders underneath were holding a different kind of tension, coiled and patient. He turned the second we walked in, his eyes locking onto mine with a laser focus that made my skin prickle.

Then he flashed a smile. It was so perfectly constructed, so on brand for a Gilded Age gentleman, that the sheer precision of it screamed it was a total fake.

"Eleanor." He moved toward me with the controlled grace of a predator traipsing in unfamiliar territory. "I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. I felt compelled to speak with you."

Casimir stepped forward, inserting himself into Bartholomew’s path with the subtle inevitability of a door closing.

"You’re not welcome here, Mr. Vanderbilt." 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Bartholomew’s smile flickered but held. He looked past Casimir to me, and for a heartbeat, I saw the calculating hunger in his gaze that set off every silent alarm in my head.

"I understand your uncle’s protectiveness." His voice went for wounded reasonableness, a tone that grated against my memory of him trying to choke the life out of me in the park. "I gave him cause for concern. Which is precisely why I’ve come."

He shifted his focus entirely to me, composing his features into a high-definition approximation of remorse. He was failing miserably.

"I came to apologize, Eleanor. For my behavior. At the park." He spread his hands—the international gesture for look-no-weapons—but his eyes remained cold, dead glass. "I was... distressed by the dissolution of our understanding. I spoke and acted in ways that were unforgivable. I can only hope that time might—"

"Let me stop you right there." My voice cut through his performance like a bone-handled blade. "You were distressed? God, how tragic for you. Truly. I was the one pinned against the tree with your hand on my throat, but please, do go on about your feelings. I’m fascinated."

His smile faltered. Just a micro-expression, but I caught it.

I stepped around Casimir, moving into the line of fire until I was close enough to see the flicker of something ugly behind Bartholomew’s eyes.

"You came all this way to perform this little set-piece. How noble," I said, tilting my head like I was reviewing a particularly bad off-Broadway play. "Tell me, did you rehearse that speech on the carriage ride over? Or did you just improvise the part where you pretend you didn’t try to assault me?"

"Eleanor—"

"No, no, finish the script. I want the full experience. Let me guess." I tapped a finger against my chin, studying him like a bug under a microscope. "You were beside yourself. You lost control. The pressure of our broken engagement was just too much for a man of your... breeding to bear."

I let the word drip with enough contempt to stain the floor. "Am I close?"

His jaw tightened. The marble in his pretty boy facade was cracking.

"Or maybe," I continued, stepping into his personal space, "this is the part where you gaslight me. I was too tempting, wasn’t I? Too sharp, too defiant. A man like you can’t be expected to resist a woman who won’t play her part. That’s the story you tell yourself, isn’t it? That I made you do it."

"Eleanor." His voice was strained now, the nice guy filter failing.

"No." I leaned in, close enough to see the sweat beading at his temples. "You don’t get to apologize. You don’t get to perform repentance and expect me to absolve you so you can sleep better in your silk sheets. You put your hands on me. You told me no one else would want me after you...now you stand in front of me, wearing your guilt like a seasonal accessory, and expect me to play the gracious victim."

The corner of my mouth curved. It was the kind of smile that usually precedes a hostile takeover.

"Here’s your forgiveness, Mr. Barty." I let the nickname land like a slap. "You’re going to carry what you did. Every day. Every time you hear my name, every time you so much as breathe in my direction, it’s going to fester in your gut. You’re going to remember that you tried to break me, and you failed. Spectacularly."

He blinked. I watched him process the fact that I’d just handed him nothing and called it grace.

I stepped back, the adrenaline making my blood sing. "Now get lost. I’m bored of looking at your pathetic face."

"Eleanor, please—"

"You heard her. Leave." Casimir’s voice cut through the room with the finality of a guillotine. "Before I make it so you cannot walk."

The silence that followed hummed with the threat of actual violence.

Bartholomew’s jaw worked, a muscle flickering beneath his skin. For a second, a pure, unadulterated hatred flashed in his gaze. Then he laughed, a sound so bright and brittle it set my teeth on edge.

"Of course." He straightened his coat, his hands were visibly shaking. "I had hoped for more civility. But I understand your position, Mr. Guggenheim. I would likely respond similarly... were our situations reversed."

He moved toward the door, then paused, turning to offer me one last look that felt like a curse.

"Give my regards to your aunt, Eleanor. I’m certain she’ll be... relieved... to hear of my visit."

Relieved? The word curdled in my chest. Those two were still thick as thieves. My blood boiled, my hands curling into fists. I’d deal with that later.

The door thudded shut. The air in the receiving area felt thinner and cleaner. Casimir remained where he stood, his shoulders braced like he was still holding back a landslide.

I moved to his side, my fingers digging into the stiff wool of his sleeve, trying to ground him before he went after Bartholomew with his bare hands.

"You didn’t need to do that," he said quietly, his hands still fisting at his sides. "I would have handled him."

"I know." I watched the space where the threat had been. "But he needed to hear it from me."

Casimir’s hand found mine, his grip tight enough to bruise. "He’s not done, Clara."

I looked at the door, at the way the light had shifted toward a bruised, purple dusk.

"I know."

The words were barely out before Casimir moved. He turned to me, his hand left mine, found my waist, and pulled me against him. Hard.

His mouth went straight for my throat, then my jaw—not gentle, not patient, not anything resembling the careful guardian he’d been playing.

This was the man who had been interrupted, who had been waiting, who had spent the last ten minutes imagining all the ways he could have made Bartholomew disappear. His teeth grazed the spot where my pulse hammered, and I gasped.

His hands slid down my back, over my hips, gathering my skirts. The silk whispered against my skin, and then his fingers found the back of my thighs, lifting, pressing me against him until I could feel how much he wanted me, hard and insistent through the layers of wool and silk between us.

"Neither am I," he whispered against my skin, his breath hot, his voice wrecked. "With you."