She Used Me for a Dare… Now I Own Her Mother

Chapter 304: The Vulture’s Court – II

The heavy oak doors swung open.

Both Reginald and Cassandra turned simultaneously, their eyes snapping toward the entrance with the same tightly coiled hope... the hope of people who have been waiting for good news long enough that they’ve started fearing it won’t come.

It didn’t.

Arthur Vanderbilt, the second brother, slipped into the room and closed the doors behind him, and one look at his face told them everything before he opened his mouth.

The confident businessman he performed in public boardrooms and family gatherings was gone entirely. His tie hung loose around his collar.

His jacket was creased as though he’d been gripping his own lapels. His forehead carried a sheen of perspiration that had nothing to do with the weather, and his eyes moved around the room in the restless, darting way of a man looking for somewhere safe to land his gaze and finding nothing.

The hope in Reginald’s chest cooled, hardening instantly into lead.

Cassandra said nothing. She simply watched her brother-in-law cross the room, her expression unreadable.

Arthur dropped into the nearest chair like his legs had decided without consulting him. He loosened his tie further, pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it against his forehead, then reached for the crystal water decanter on the side table with slightly unsteady hands.

He poured. He drank. He pushed the glass away from him slowly, as though even that small effort cost something.

The silence stretched.

”You’re back early,” Cassandra said finally, her voice carrying nothing but mild observation. As though the careful architecture of their entire plan didn’t hinge on whatever came out of his mouth next. ”How did everything go?”

She paused, tilting her head slightly.

”What did the elders say?”

Arthur stared at the table in front of him for a long moment, his fingers turning the empty glass slowly without lifting it.

”They wouldn’t even see me properly.” The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.

”What do you mean they wouldn’t see you?” Reginald demanded. ”You had the evidence. You had the logs.”

”I tried.” Arthur’s voice cracked. ”I was kept waiting for forty minutes in the outer hall before they allowed me in. And when they finally did, I laid out everything... Vivienne’s absence, the cancelled board meeting, the surveillance logs, all of it. I told them she had abandoned her post. That she was endangering the Blackwood alliance. That she was destroying everything father built.”

”And?” Reginald’s voice came out harder than he intended.

Arthur swallowed.

”Elder Cornelius laughed.”

The words landed in the room like something dropped from a great height.

”He laughed,” Arthur repeated, as though he still couldn’t entirely believe it himself. ”He said, ’If you cannot wrangle one woman, perhaps you shouldn’t be trying to lead the pack.’”

His hand fell away from the glass and settled in his lap like something that had given up.

”Then Elder Benedict told me they are retired for a reason. That they left the family in capable hands. That if those hands have proven less capable than expected, that is our problem to solve, not theirs.” Arthur’s eyes finally came up to meet his brother’s.

”He said, and I am quoting exactly: ’Sort out your own mess, boy. Or should we come back and remind you all how it’s done?’”

The room went very quiet.

Reginald didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He stood completely still in the center of the office, and something behind his eyes went through several transformations in rapid succession... disbelief, then humiliation, then a rage so complete and cold it had moved past the stage of throwing things entirely.

Boy.

They had called Arthur boy.

Which meant they considered him the same. The eldest son. The rightful heir. Reduced to a child who couldn’t manage his own household.

Only moments ago, Cassandra’s plan had reignited his ambition. He had believed, genuinely, that they could win. Now, that belief sat in his chest like a coal that had turned to ash.

”They don’t care,” Reginald said quietly. The words came out almost wondering, as though he were discovering something he should have known years ago.

”We are standing on the edge of losing the most important alliance this family has had in a generation, and they sat in their comfortable chairs and *laughed* at us.”

His hand found the edge of the desk. Gripped it.

”We are nothing to them,” he said, his voice dropping lower with each word, the quiet somehow more frightening than the shouting had been. ”After everything. After every year I spent proving myself, every sacrifice, every compromise... we are a joke. We are children having a squabble they can’t be bothered to intervene in.”

”They’re waiting to see if we fail,” Arthur said, his voice thin with panic. ”They won’t move against Vivienne unless we secure the Blackwood alliance first. And without Richard’s backing, we can’t force a vote of no confidence. We’re trapped. Without Vivienne, we can’t sign the deal. Without the deal, we can’t remove Vivienne.”

The silence that followed was the heaviest kind. The kind that comes not from having nothing to say but from seeing clearly, perhaps for the first time, the dimensions of the hole you’re standing in.

Then Cassandra spoke.

”She knew.”

Two words. Quiet and precise as a blade finding a gap in armor.

Reginald looked up. Arthur went still.

Cassandra moved away from where she’d been standing, her arms folding across her chest, her eyes fixed on some middle distance as the pieces arranged themselves behind them.

”Think about it,” she said, her voice stripped of everything except cold, methodical clarity.

”The elders have never been indifferent to family politics. They built those politics. They invented them. Men like Elder Cornelius don’t dismiss family crises with jokes and wave people away... not unless someone has already spoken to them. Not unless they’ve already been reassured that everything is under control.”

The implication settled over the room like fog rolling in from somewhere cold.

”She contacted them before she disappeared,” Cassandra continued, each word deliberate. ”She went to them first, told them her version of everything, reassured them that her absence was intentional and considered. She poisoned the well before we even picked up the bucket.”

Arthur stared at her. ”She knew what we were planning?”

Cassandra’s eyes moved to him with the slow patience of someone explaining something to a person who should have already understood.

”She has been three steps ahead of us this entire time,” she said quietly. ”And we are only now realizing we were in a race.”

The words landed with the particular weight of a truth that reframes everything preceding it.

Reginald said nothing. His jaw was tight, his eyes somewhere on the middle distance, recalculating with the grim efficiency of a man who has just discovered the game is considerably larger than the board he thought he was playing on.

It was Arthur who broke first.

”Then what do we do?” His voice carried the raw edge of someone approaching the outer limits of composure. ”If she’s already moved against us with the elders, if the board won’t vote without her present, if Richard is on his way here right now expecting answers we don’t have...”

A sharp knock cut him off.

The door opened. A servant stepped inside and bowed low.

”Sir. Madam. Mr. Jonathan has arrived.”

The name dropped into the room and changed its atmosphere instantly, the way a single cold draft can alter an entire space.

The three of them straightened almost simultaneously, the visible panic receding behind carefully assembled composure, years of social training overriding instinct in the space of a breath.

Reginald smoothed his jacket. Arthur pressed his handkerchief against his forehead one final time before folding it away.

”Jonathan?” Reginald’s brow furrowed. ”Why didn’t Richard come himself?”

Arthur’s voice followed immediately, carrying the particular anxiety of a man watching his investments depreciate in real time.

”Is he distancing himself? Does he no longer consider us worth his personal attention?”

The question hung in the air, uncomfortable and unanswered.

”It’s actually better,” Cassandra said, already moving toward the mirror on the far wall, her eyes making a swift, clinical assessment of her reflection and finding it satisfactory.

She turned to face them.

”Think about it. How would we have explained this failure to Richard himself? His pride alone would have ended the alliance on the spot.”

Her lips curved slightly. ”But Jonathan? Jonathan is a practical man. We can reason with him. Buy ourselves more time. Keep the door open until we find a way through this.”

She smoothed her jacket one final time.

”Richard would have closed that door the moment he walked in. Jonathan will leave it cracked.”

She looked at both men with calm authority.

”Straighten yourselves. Both of you. He cannot walk into this room and see what I’m currently looking at.”

She turned toward the doors, her expression arranged into something warm without being weak and confident without being aggressive.

”Leave him to me,” she said quietly.

The servant stepped aside.

Cassandra walked forward to receive their guest.