Chapter 149: Chapter One Hundred-Forty-Nine: Names

//CLARA//

Calloused fingers dug into my throat. It was the second guard, the one with the thick scar running from temple to jaw who had been eyeing me like meat.

Then the world splintered. The door exploded inward, wood spraying like shrapnel, and the grip vanished.

Through the haze I saw Gary charged through the wreckage.

Before the guards could even register the intrusion, Gary moved. One moment he was in the doorway, the next he was inside the room, and the guard who had been advancing on my left suddenly crumpled with a sound like a sack of flour hitting the floor.

Gary’s elbow had found his temple, and even as that man fell, Gary’s boot was already connecting with the knee of the third guard, the crack of bone audible over my ragged breathing.

"Gary—"

His eyes found mine momentarily.

"You good?"

I barely managed to nod before the scarred man lunged, knife slashing toward Gary’s ribs. He twisted into the attack, his shoulder deflecting the blade as his palm drove upward into the man’s nose.

Blood sprayed. The scarred man howled and stumbled back.

I sat there, utterly astounded, my hands pressing the ledger flat against my thighs beneath my skirts.

Since when did my nerd as fuck cousin know how to throw a punch like a professional assassin?

"The ledger!" I shouted, my arm moving of its own accord to hurl it toward Gary. "Catch!"

He caught it one-handed without looking, tucking it inside his coat. But the scarred man recovered faster than I thought possible. His arm snaked around my neck from behind, yanking me against his chest while pressing a cold blade sharp against the hollow of my throat.

"Stop! You move one inch and I’ll open her up from ear to ear."

Gary froze. His fist hung in the air, trembling with arrested violence, and slowly—so slowly—he lowered it.

The two guards he had struck were stirring now, dragging themselves upright with eyes full of murder.

"Drop the fucking ledger." The scarred man commanded. "Step back, or the girl bleeds right here in the dirt."

I shook my head, frantic, trying to catch Gary’s eye.

Go, I mouthed. Take it and go. Find Casimir.

Gary ignored me. He reached into his coat and withdrew the ledger, holding it up where the light caught the worn leather.

"Let her go. You can have it. Just don’t hurt her. Take it."

"No—Gary, don’t—" I tried to protest, but the blade bit deeper, and I felt warmth trickle down my neck.

"Shut your mouth!" The scarred man barked.

With his eyes never leaving mine, Gary took a step backward, the ledger extended in one hand. The grip on my throat loosened fractionally.

"Drop it there," the scarred man jerked his chin toward the floor. "Put your hands where I can see them."

Gary bent slowly and placed the ledger on the floorboards. It landed with a heavy sound. He straightened, his hands rising to shoulder height, palms out.

The scarred man laughed and began dragging me toward the door.

"Gary, no! You idiot!"

I angrily protested. If they got the ledger and kept me, we lost everything. All of this horror would be for absolutely nothing.

"Stupid," he muttered against my ear. "Should have run when you had the chance. Should have—"

THUMP.

The sound that followed was unmistakable. A solid metal colliding violently with a human skull. The arm around my neck went slack, and I felt the vibration of the impact travel through his body into mine.

Then he was falling, collapsing behind me like a puppet with cut strings as I staggered forward. Gary was already moving at breakneck speed, scooping up the ledger.

I turned and saw Hattie. She stood in the doorway with a metal rod still clutched in both hands, her face pale as milk. The rod slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor, and she looked at it with something like horror.

"Run," Gary bellowed, and it broke the spell.

Hattie let out a sharp, high-pitched shriek of pure panic as she turned on her heel. I didn’t need to be told twice.

Behind us, a chorus of furious, muffled curses echoed, but due to the brutal injuries they had suffered from Gary’s initial assault, their pursuit was sluggish.

We had the upper hand. Gary steered us through a labyrinth of narrow, overlapping tenements, turning corners so sharply my shoulders brushed the frozen brickwork. We didn’t stop running until Gary suddenly threw his weight against a warped, rotting wooden door at the end of a dead-end alley.

He shoved us inside, slamming it shut behind us and sliding the rusted iron bolt into place.

The house was nearly dilapidated. The roof above us was missing half its shingles, allowing a light dust of snow to filter down into the shadows of the hallway, but the thick brick walls were still enough to shelter us from the harsh winter.

We all collapsed against the wall, gasps for air tearing from our lungs in thick, white plumes. My chest burned, the cold biting through my filth-ridden layers of my dress.

Hattie was still trembling violently. She looked down at her hands, which were still curled into the shape of the iron rod.

"Fire..."

That’s all she said as if her mind still processing what just happened. She stumbled toward a small, stone fireplace in the corner of the room, her fingers shaking so hard she could barely strike the match she pulled from her apron pocket.

After a tense, agonizing minute, a small, pathetic flame caught on a pile of dry tinder and old newspapers.

The three of us gathered tightly around the hearth, huddling as close to the meager warmth as possible, letting out a collective sigh as the heat began to touch our frozen skin.

But the flame wasn’t large enough to fight back the sub-zero chill, and the small pile of scrap wood was already turning to ash.

Hattie swallowed hard.

"The... the fire won’t last. It’s too cold. I’ll go look through the other rooms. See if there are any broken chairs or loose baseboards we can burn."

"Be careful, Hattie," I murmured, watching her small frame disappear into the shadows of the adjoining kitchen.

The moment her footsteps faded, I turned my head, my eyes narrowing as I glared at the cousin sitting beside me.

Gary was staring down at his hands, turning his bruised, blood-stained knuckles over in the firelight.

"Okay," I started, crossing my arms. "When the hell did you learn to fight like a comic book superhero? Last I checked, you threw out your back reaching for the TV remote and spent the rest of the day whining about it."

Gary shook his head with a breathless, humorless laugh.

"I don’t know. The moment I heard you scream, something just snapped. My body moved on its own. His memories are fusing into mine."

I let out a bitter breath.

"This is so unbelievably unfair. How come you get blessed with literal John Cena abilities while my grand superpower in this timeline is catching tetanus and playing the damsel in distress?"

"Think about it," Gary pointed a bruised finger at me. "You have Eleanor’s diary, absorbing her history. You had a roadmap. Elias’s memories are resurfacing through trauma and dreams inconsistently."

I sighed, looking at my mud-caked skirts.

"Logically, it makes sense. But I’m still sulking. You got the cooler upgrade."

"If it helps, my entire face feels like it was hit by a carriage."

"It doesn’t," I replied, a faint smile twitching on my lips. Then, my curiosity piqued. "The ledger. Hand it over."

Gary reached into his pocket and handed it across.

I unwrapped the twine and pulled the book into the weak firelight.

At first, the pages were entirely incomprehensible columns of dates, shipping schedules, and Hudson River addresses. But as I flipped further, the numbers receded, replaced by an elegant script of names.

Bartholomew Vanderbilt.

I muttered a low, venomous curse.

"That absolute asshole. I knew he was corrupt, but he’s deeply entangled with a heinous organization like this? Look at these numbers, Gary. He was taking payoffs for the entire northern district."

I turned the page. More names appeared. Some were from high-society gentlemen I had seen at charity balls and galas, prominent judges who sat on the city’s highest benches, wealthy politicians who gave speeches about cleaning up the slums of New York.

The ledger wasn’t a list of the syndicate’s enemies. It was a list of their assets. They were all bought, paid for, and tied to the same rotten ideologies.

And then, I reached the very last page.

The breath died completely in my throat. The warmth of the fire vanished, my blood turning to absolute ice as a sickening weight dropped into my stomach.

There were no notes, debts, addresses, or delivery dates.

There was only a single line of text, written in a bold, sweeping script I had seen a thousand times.

Casimir Guggenheim.