//CLARA//
I can’t sleep.
The candle had burned down to a sputtering nub of tallow, drowning in its own lted wax like my last remaining brain cells.
I’d been sitting here for hours, my back screaming, my eyes crossed from staring at page after page of cramped, nineteenth-century cursive.
The hearth had long since collapsed into spiteful embers. Outside, the winter wind rattled the windows like an extra from a horror film.
And after all this? Nothing. Absolutely zero. Nada.
I’d read every line item. Every stuffy na, every sketchy address.
The only takeaway was that the syndicate had its hooks in half of New York’s high society. Scandalous? Sure. Useful to my current predicant? Debatably.
Casimir’s page was still just... sitting there. His na at the very top of the final page, mocking .
I slamd the ledger shut, the cloud of dust making sneeze.
"Useless," I muttered, coughing into the sleeve of my chemise. "A hundred pages of cold, hard evidence, and the one man I actually need a background check on might as well be written in invisible ink. Thank you, universe."
The candle flicker-died, sparking a tiny trail of gray smoke. I glared at the wick.
"Don’t you start with . I am not in the mood for symbolic ons."
The candle, wisely, remained dead.
With a dramatic groan, I flopped backward against the pillows. Sowhere across the courtyard in the guest wing, Gary was sleeping off a level of psychological trauma that no amount of laudanum was going to fix.
Every ti I closed my eyes, I saw the terror in his face when he looked at Casimir. Like he’d seen the devil.
And knowing Casimir? Maybe he actually had.
"Eleanor," I said to the ceiling. "If you’re floating around here sowhere, a little supernatural tech support would be highly appreciated. Seriously. You gave Gary the express digital download of Elias’s entire life. Hell, you even threw in the martial arts reflexes."
I sighed. "What do I get? A diary full of pining and a husband who might be a serial killer. The favoritism in this family line is honestly insulting."
The ceiling offered no comntary.
"Figures."
I dragged myself back up into a sitting position and cracked the ledger open again. Traced the ink of his na with my finger.
"Why are you the final entry? What makes you special?"
I flipped back a page. Then forward. Then back again, squinting until my eyes watered.
"Co on."
My analytical instincts kicked into overdrive.
"Think, Clara. There has to be a structural reason. A watermark. A hidden column. A lemon-juice ssage. Anything."
Nothing.
I leaned back, rubbing my temples where a massive tension headache was starting to bloom.
I’d been running data analysis on this stupid ledger for nearly six straight hours without a single cup of iced coffee or a proper spreadsheet tool.
Still, I was no closer to decoding the enigma of my terrifying husband than I was when he pinned against the wall.
"Maybe I’m overthinking it," I told the empty room, trying to force logic into the chaos. "Maybe he just owed so back taxes. Maybe he was being blackmailed by a rival line. Maybe—"
I stopped mid-sentence.
Blackmailed. I sat up so fast the ledger nearly slid off my knees.
The ledger wasn’t just a financial record for a criminal enterprise. It was a leverage docunt.
A comprehensive collection of debts, dirty laundry, marital indiscretions, and political bribery. It was an encyclopedia of every weakness required to completely control or destroy the most powerful n in New York.
And if Casimir’s na was in here with absolutely no data attached to it...
"What if you’re not the debtor?"
My eyes widened as the pieces began to rearrange themselves in my mind.
"What if you’re the target?"
I flipped back to page one, looking at the numbers differently. I stopped looking at the numbers as re currency values and started looking at them like data points.
Column after column of nas. Loan amounts. Interest rates. The kind of aggressive math that usually resulted in soone wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of the East River.
But as I looked closer, I noticed so entries were formatted differently. They were building a web, docunting every single variable connected to the Guggenheim sphere of influence.
I kept flipping. The sa structural pattern kept repeating itself—different nas, different sins, but all of them leading toward the logistics of the city’s shipping lines.
I was on the verge of slamming it shut in frustration again when a detail caught my eye in the outer margin, right next to a registry of port authorities.
14.
I blinked, wondering if sleep deprivation was making hallucinate. I leaned closer, bringing the page inches from my nose. It was definitely there. A small, faint 14, written so precisely it looked like a footnote.
I scanned the outer margins of the subsequent pages. Five pages later, on a ledger detailing warehouse leases, there was another faint pencil mark, 2. Three pages after that, tucked into the crease of the binding next to an entry on iron imports, 33.
My breath hitched in my throat, the air turning to ice in my lungs.
"14. 2. 33."
The matchbook. The cheap, crumpled little matchbook I’d swiped weeks ago.
14-2-33. The exact sa numbers and sequence.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding ," I breathed, a chill cascading down my spine. "It’s a cross-reference code."
I spent the next hour working, using the matchbook numbers as a cipher to decode the ledger’s hidden tiline.
When I mapped the numbers against the pages, entry lines, and specific nas, the chaotic jumble of Gilded Age corruption suddenly condensed into a direct, terrifyingly straight line.
I grabbed a piece of scrap stationery from the vanity and a pencil, hurriedly writing down the connected nodes of the sequence.
Page 14, entry 2, line 33: Bartholow Vanderbilt—The jackass prick who tried to force into a corporate marriage contract.
Page 22, entry 7, line 15: Judge Morrison—The corrupt city official who signed off on Casimir’s land seizures.
Page 42, entry 3, line 9: William Cuthbert—The shipping magnate Gary saw Casimir execute at point-blank range.
Page 52, entry 8, line 19: Pier 14, Slip 2, Warehouse 33.
Page 59, entry 2, line 5: Silas Thurston.
My hand froze over the paper, the graphite tip snapping under the sudden pressure of my grip.
Silas Thurston.
I stared at the na, the room suddenly feeling entirely devoid of warmth.
He was docunted in the ledger. His coordinates, his warehouse, they were all part of the sa master schedule.
I traced the line further down my scratch paper. Silas’s entry connected directly to the logistics of the port, which connected directly to the final, pristine page.
To Casimir.
I sat back against the pillows, my breathing coming in short, shallow puffs.
"It’s a target map," I whispered. "Soone didn’t leave a record of Casimir’s cris. Soone left a trail to him."
Every single person on this list wasn’t an accomplice. They were variables being monitored.
Bartholow wanted my dowry to ruin the Guggenheim railroads.
Cuthbert was trying to choke out Casimir’s shipping supply.
Silas was the blunt instrunt used to hurt him through .
And Casimir was the common denominator, the defensive wall that had broken every single one of them when they crossed his path.
The matchbook and the ledger weren’t a collection of dirt to blackmail my husband.
They were an active investigation. A surveillance log compiled by soone who was systematically tracking every single move, every enemy, and every counter-strike Casimir Guggenheim had ever made.
Soone was systematically mapping his lethality, waiting for the perfect mont to strike the keystone and watch his entire empire collapse.
And according to the place where every single thread converged, the center of the trap was already set.
Pier 14. Slip 2. Warehouse 33.
"Soone wanted this found," I murmured, staring down at the empty space beneath Casimir’s na.
"Soone went to a ridiculous amount of trouble to ensure that if anyone ever cracked the code on that matchbook, they would end up exactly at that warehouse. Right at his throat."
The question was no longer what Casimir was hiding from the world. The question was who was hunting him from the shadows and how much ti did we have left before they closed the snare?
I looked over at the mantel clock. It was nearly four in the morning. I closed the ledger and slid off the bed, my bare feet hitting the cold floorboards as I tucked the book securely under my arm.
"Well, Eleanor..."
I forced a sharp, sarcastic smirk onto my lips to keep from losing my mind entirely.
"If you’re watching this train-wreck, I hope you’re thoroughly entertained. Next ti you decide to drag a 21st-century woman into your historical drama, maybe leave a cheat code or a walkthrough guide. Because this is getting ridiculous."
No response. Classic.
"Fine. No helpful ghosts. Guess I’ll have to do the investigative journalism myself. Like always."
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