She Used Me for a Dare… Now I Own Her Mother - Chapter 307: Aftermath Of The Fall

Chapter 307: Aftermath Of The Fall

The heavy oak doors clicked shut, sealing the room in a silence that felt less like peace and more like the vacuum after an explosion.

For a long moment, no one moved.

Arthur was slumped in his chair, staring at the wall with the glass-eyed look of a man in shock.

The white silk handkerchief still lay on the mahogany table, a glaring, silent testament to what had just occurred. Cassandra stared at it, her chest heaving, her skin burning with a phantom heat where Jonathan had wiped her away like filth.

CRACK.

​Reginald’s palms slammed onto the mahogany with a violence that made the crystal decanters shriek.

“What the hell was that?!”

Reginald stood up, his chair scraping violently against the floor. His face, previously gray with terror, was now flushed with a patchy, ugly crimson.

He pointed a shaking finger at her.

“Have you lost your mind, woman? You threw yourself at him! Like a… like a common whore!”

He paced away from the table, hands gripping his hair, performing the outrage of a scandalized husband.

“In front of me! In front of my brother! You put your hand on his thigh… you offered yourself like cheap merchandise! Have you no goddamn shame?”

Cassandra didn’t flinch. She sat rigid, her spine a line of frozen steel. The rejection was still a cold, acidic burn in her gut, but Reginald’s hypocrisy acted like a catalyst, turning her shock into a white-hot, jagged rage.

​Slowly, she rose. She didn’t look like a seductress anymore; she looked like an executioner.

​”Shame?” she hissed, her voice vibrating with venom. “You want to talk to me about shame?”

She grabbed the white handkerchief and threw it across the room. It fluttered impotently to the floor.

“I sat here for twenty minutes and watched you stammer like a frightened child. I watched you sweat and grovel and offer excuses that a schoolboy would be embarrassed to use.”

“I did what had to be done!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “I did what you were too weak to do!”

​”I tried to save you, you ungrateful coward.”

​”Save me?” Reginald let out a harsh, incredulous laugh, the sound scraping against the silence of the room. “You tried to save me by spreading your legs for him?”

​”Yes.”

​The word didn’t come out like a confession. It came out like a weapon.

​Cassandra didn’t look away. She didn’t flush with shame. She looked him dead in the eye, her chin lifted in defiant, terrifying pragmatism.

“And you? You sat there with empty hands and a trembling voice. You had nothing to offer him, Reginald. Nothing but sweat and excuses.”

​Reginald opened his mouth to roar, his face twisting in disgust, but Cassandra cut him down before he could draw breath.

​”And don’t you dare,” she hissed, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper that was far louder than his shouting. “Don’t you dare stand there and pretend you have morals now.”

​She jabbed a finger into his chest.

​”I saw your face, Reginald. When my hand touched his thigh… you didn’t look away. You didn’t stand up. You didn’t defend your wife’s honor.”

​She leaned in, her eyes burning with cold, hateful truth.

​”You held your breath.”

​Reginald flinched.

​”You sat there and you hoped,” she whispered. “You hoped he would take me. You were praying he would bend me over that table right in front of you if it meant getting that signature. You were perfectly willing to let me sell myself to that man if it meant you got to keep your title and your office.”

She stopped inches from him, her eyes burning with contempt.

“You are only angry now because he said ’no’. You aren’t angry that I offered. You’re angry that he didn’t buy.”

Reginald’s face contorted. The truth hit him, ugly and undeniable, and because he was a weak man, he couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t look at his own reflection in her eyes.

​”You’re crazy,” he finally rasped, his voice a jagged edge. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind.”

​”Yes… I’m crazy.”

​Cassandra didn’t back away. She stepped closer, heels clicking sharply against the floor, forcing him to face her.

​”I’m crazy. I’m desperate. I’m a woman who just offered her body to a stranger to save a husband who stood there and said absolutely nothing.”

​She laughed… a jagged, hollow sound that didn’t reach her eyes… and leaned in close to his face.

​”And do you know why that is, Reginald? Do you know who actually stripped us of our dignity today? It wasn’t Jonathan. And it wasn’t me.”

​Her eyes burned with a focused, acidic hatred that pinned him in place.

​”It’s her,” she whispered, the name tasting like bile. “It’s that bitch, Vivienne.”

​Reginald’s jaw tightened, his gaze flickering as he tried to find a way to redirect the shame, but Cassandra grabbed the lapel of his jacket, forcing his attention back to her.

​”She did this,” she hissed. “She didn’t just disappear; she staged this vacancy. She knew exactly how the Elders would react to an empty chair. She knew exactly how the Blackwoods would perceive your stuttering silence. She calculated our panic. She anticipated our desperation.”

​Her nails dug into the expensive wool of his suit.

“She pushed us into this corner. She stripped us of our options until I had to… until I had to degrade myself like that.”

Her voice cracked on the last word, but her eyes stayed hard and bright with fury.

“She is laughing at us, Reginald. Wherever she is… hiding in some hole… she is laughing. She turned us into this. She turned me into… that.”

She looked at him, her grip on his lapel tightening.

​”So hold your anger, husband,” she commanded, her voice dropping to a lethal, pragmatic purr. “Don’t waste it on me. Show it to your little sister. Show it to the woman who is currently laughing while we are being treated like ’pedestrians’ in our own home.”

​For a moment, Reginald stood frozen.

The logic was there, clean and sharp, offering him an escape from his own hypocrisy. A target he could hate without having to face himself.

But the image of Cassandra’s hand on Jonathan’s thigh wouldn’t leave his mind. The sound of Jonathan wiping her away like filth.

The handkerchief lying on the floor like evidence of everything they’d become.

He realized, with sickening clarity, that she was right.

He had stood there in silence. He had let her move. He had hoped for a miracle that came in the form of his wife’s humiliation.

And that truth… ugly, undeniable, shameful… was something he couldn’t face.

Not here. Not now. Not with her looking at him like that.

“I can’t do this,” he said quietly, his voice flat and empty.

Cassandra’s expression shifted, confusion replacing rage.

“What?”

“I can’t look at you right now.” He pulled away from her grip, stepping back toward the door. “I can’t be in the same room with you without saying something I’ll regret.”

“Reginald… ”

“We have three days,” he interrupted, his voice still that same terrible flatness. “Three days before Richard Blackwood himself walks through that door expecting answers we don’t have. So you can sit here and figure out what we’re going to do. Because I can’t think when you’re in front of me.”

He turned toward the door.

“Reginald, wait… ”

The door opened.

“Don’t follow me.”

It closed.

Cassandra stood frozen, staring at the closed door, her chest heaving with adrenaline and rage that had nowhere left to go.

Then she turned.

Arthur was still there… still slumped in his chair near the wall, pale and wide-eyed, staring at the space between them like a man who had just witnessed something he wished he could unsee.