MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 70 - Seventy: The Ghost

//CLARA//

I stared at him.

The kind man who had sold me the warehouse. The man I had warned about Bartholomew. The one person in this city I’d actually felt sorry for.

He was standing in a damp cellar with a lantern in his hand, looking at me with the calm, terrifying poise of a man who’d finally stepped onto his own stage.

"Why are you doing this?" My voice was steadier than I felt. "What do you want?"

He tilted his head, studying me with those warm eyes. The same eyes that fooled me.

"Well," he said, "I suppose I owe you at least a proper introduction."

He set the lantern down on a crate between us. The light caught his face, and I saw him clearly for the first time. The unassuming broker was dead. Someone else had taken his place.

"Hello, Miss Thorne." His voice was calm, polite and almost gentle. "My name is Silas Thurston. The son of a thief. The heir to disgrace. A pleasure to finally meet you."

The name landed like a stone in my chest. Silas Thurston.

"So," he continued, settling onto a crate across from me, "I take it you’ve heard my name. I was informed that you’ve been very... adventurous in finding out who I was."

The calmness in his voice snapped something inside me.

"Adventurous?" The word came out sharp. "You drugged me. You tied me to a chair. You locked me in a cellar, and you want to talk about me being adventurous?"

I pulled at the ropes. The hemp burned my wrists. I did not care.

"I trusted you. I warned you about Mr. Vanderbilt. I felt sorry for you." I laughed, bitter and broken. "And all that time, you were playing me."

"Oh, I was not playing you, Miss Thorne." His voice was still calm, but something flickered behind his eyes. "I was studying you. I was learning about you. I needed to know if you were like him."

"Like who?"

"Like all of them." He leaned forward, the lantern light catching the hard edge of his jaw. "The people who destroyed my family and then forgot we ever existed." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Like Casimir, my brain supplied, even as my heart protested.

I stared at him. "Your father embezzled money. He stole from people who do not forgive debts. He was not innocent."

Silas’s smile did not waver. That was the worst part.

"No," he said. "He was not innocent. He was greedy. He thought he could take what was not his and no one would notice. He was wrong."

He stood up and began to pace. The lantern light flickered, casting long, jagged shadows across the walls.

"But do you know what the difference is between my father and your uncle? My father paid for his sins. He lost everything. And then he put a gun in his mouth and ended his life."

The image burned into my mind, and I forced myself not to flinch. He stopped pacing and turned to face me.

"What did your uncle lose? Nothing. He sat back and watched my father destroy himself, and then he went back to counting his money."

"Your father made his own choices," I countered, though the doubt was starting to seep in.

"I know that." His voice rose, cracking at the edges. "I have always known that. My father was a fool. He thought he was smarter than everyone else. Those were his sins. Not mine."

He stepped closer.

"But I am the one who has been paying for them. For years. Everywhere I go, no one looks me in the eye. They see a traitor. They see a thief. They see a man whose father could not be trusted, so neither can he."

His voice broke.

"I did not steal a single dollar. I did not sign a single false contract. I did not betray a single trust. And yet I have spent years being treated like I was the one who pulled the trigger."

I pulled at the ropes. For some reason, they did not budge. Or maybe I am getting weak.

"You cut the axle," I said. "You tried to kill him. I was in there, that means I could be dead as well if you had succeeded."

"You are both alive, is that not so?" He let out a soft, chilling chuckle. "If I wanted him dead, he’d be rotting in a ditch. Death is too quick. I wanted him to feel it, to suffer. I wanted him to know what it was like to be helpless. To watch something slip through his fingers and know there was nothing he could do to stop it."

He crouched down in front of me, bringing his face level with mine. The lantern light caught his eyes. They were wild. Not the polite ones he had always regarded me with.

He reached out and gripped the arms of my chair, leaning close.

"I have nothing left to lose, Miss Thorne. No family, no future. Your uncle made sure every door in this city was slammed in my face. So if I’m going down, I am taking him with me. And you? You are the rope I’m going to use to hang him."

He pulled back slightly, studying my face. His eyes were desperate, like a man who had been drowning for years and had finally stopped fighting.

"You are the only person I have ever seen him care about," he murmured. "I don’t know the exact nature of your arrangement—ward, niece, or something else—but I know he would burn this entire city to the waterline just to find you."

He tilted his head, mocking and cold. "Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest, no?"

Fuck. He knows.

"That is why I chose you."

My blood ran cold. We had been so careful. Had we?

I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat before I could speak again.

"You have started over." My voice came out weak. "A new name. Mr. Evans, right? People barely recognize you anymore. You could have walked away. Why this? Why now?"

A flicker crossed his eyes. Not anger. Grief, maybe. Or exhaustion.

"Because walking away does not bring him back," he said quietly. "Because every time I close my eyes, I still see my father in that study, lifeless. And because your uncle does not get to forget. He does not get to move on. Not while I am still breathing."

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked.

He was quiet for a moment, as if considering the question for the first time. Then he stood and began to pace.

"I am going to keep you here. A day. Maybe two. A week, perhaps. Long enough for him to feel it. Long enough for him to wonder. Long enough for him to tear this city apart looking for you."

He stopped and looked at me. His gaze traveling over me with the calculating eye of a butcher.

"And then, I think I’ll send him a little proof of life. Or proof of death. It hardly matters which, provided the impact is the same."

He reached out, his fingers hovering just inches from my cheek, though he didn’t touch me. The restraint was somehow worse than a blow.

"A lock of your hair. A scrap of that expensive silk. And if he doesn’t respond with the appropriate level of panic... well, you have ten fingers, Miss Thorne. Losing one shouldn’t hurt you too much, right?"

He smiled then—a thin, bloodless curve that felt like a razor to the skin. It didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes remained as flat and vacant as a dead man’s.

"I need him to live in the space between hope and grief. I need him to choke on the imagery I provide. Every time he closes his eyes, I want him to see you being dismantled, bit by bit, and know that it’s all happening because of what he is."

He tilted his head again, studying me like I was already gone.

"Justice," he said softly, "is just a word people use to make themselves feel better about revenge."

He walked to the door, the lock clicked. The light faded as he moved away, leaving me in the dark again.