Chapter 151: Chapter One Hundred-Fifty-One: Disguise
//CLARA//
The Velvet Noose rose from the freezing fog. Its windows were dark, boarded up against the biting winter.
The door was painted a violent, bruised green, and a single gas lantern burned above it, casting a sickly, flickering emerald glow onto the icy cobblestones.
"Last chance to change your mind," Gary muttered beside me.
"Shut up." My teeth clicked together so hard my jaw ached.
"I’m just saying—"
"I know what you’re saying, Gary. I don’t care."
We pressed deeper into the mouth of a recessed brick doorway across the street, watching that green door like hawks.
A luxury carriage pulled up, its polished black chassis gleaming under the lamps. Two men in opulent beaver-fur coats disgorged from its velvet interior, disappearing inside without a word to the burly, scarred figure standing guard on the threshold.
The guard merely cracked the door, letting a brief, sickening sliver of warm, amber light and the faint thumping of a piano spill out onto the snow before shutting it tight.
Hattie pressed closer to my side.
"Miss Eleanor, I’m scared."
"I know." Finding her frozen hand, I squeezed it with all the warmth I could muster—which wasn’t much. "Me too."
The freezing mud and slush had soaked through the soles of my shoes hours ago, but the thick ledger pressed hard against my ribs felt like a death warrant.
We already had the damn proof. Now we just needed the monster powerful enough to use it.
"We walk in like we belong there," I whispered, repeating the plan for the fourth time. "Hattie and I go first. We’re new. Looking for work. A man told us to come here."
"A man with a name," Gary prompted, scanning the street for municipal police or the private enforcers who kept this district under a blood-stained thumb.
"A man whose name I forgot. I’m new to the city. I’m a country girl. I don’t know anyone, I have no money, and I’m desperate. It’s a story as old as New York itself."
"And if they ask who exactly sent you?"
"I’ll say I don’t remember. I’ll act stupid. I’ll cry if I have to. Trust me, Gary, it won’t be hard to look pathetic right now."
Gary shook his head, a guttural growl escaping his throat.
"This is absolute insanity, Eleanor. You’re walking directly into a lion’s den, and you’re carrying the raw meat."
"This is the only way. Every hour we waste, the tightrope gets thinner."
The plan was terrifyingly simple. Hattie and I would enter first. In a den of vice, a couple of pretty, shivering girls looking for a master were practically invisible. No one would ask questions.
Gary would follow a few minutes later, playing the part of a flush patron looking to drown his sins in cheap bourbon.
"Five minutes," I insisted, staring him down. "If we’re not back near the main parlor in five minutes, or if things turn ugly, you run."
"I’m not leaving you," he gritted. "I didn’t agree to this stupid plan just to abandon you to these bastards."
"Five minutes, Gary. That is all I am asking. If we can’t find Casimir in there, we leave."
He didn’t argue further. He just looked at me with a messy, complicated cocktail of fear, stubborn pride, and a lingering grief.
"Be careful. Both of you."
"We will."
"Don’t do anything stupid, Eleanor."
"I won’t."
Gripping Hattie’s wrist, I stepped into the icy cobblestones toward.
"Evening, mister," I murmured at the threshold, pitching my tone into a timid, trembling register.
The guard slowly turned his massive head. Small, dark, piggish eyes flicked down to me, then over to Hattie, scrutinizing our dripping bonnets and water-logged clothes.
"What are you doing here at this hour?"
"We’re looking for work, sir," I said, letting my shoulders slump to look as small as possible. "A gentleman down by the slips... he told us to come here. Said the Velvet Noose was always looking for fresh help."
"What man?"
I shrugged, letting my face go entirely oblivious.
"I don’t remember his name, mister. Tall. Dark hair. Wore a fine hat. He said you’d take care of us if we were willing to please."
The guard grunted, a disgusting, knowing smirk touching the corner of his mouth as his gaze lingered on Hattie’s pale, porcelain face. She was young, fresh from the country, and untainted. Exactly the kind of innocent meat the wealthy patrons inside drooled over.
Disgusting pieces of shit, I thought, my knuckles clenching into white-hot balls of fury beneath my shawl.
"Through the door, down the hall, first room on the left," the guard finally muttered, spitting a dark stream of tobacco juice into the snow. "Someone will be along to find you. Don’t touch nothing."
"Thank you, mister."
We stepped into a narrow, claustrophobic hallway where the walls seemed to sweat moisture. Somewhere ahead, past a set of heavy velvet drapes, an off-key ragtime piano played, accompanied by bursts of harsh, cruel laughter.
Hattie immediately grabbed my hand, her palm slick with cold sweat.
"Keep your head down," I whispered, our boots making no sound on the threadbare carpet. "Don’t look anyone in the eye."
"Yes, miss Eleanor," she breathed.
We pushed through the heavy curtains, and the main parlor exploded into view.
The room was low-ceilinged, thick with a blue haze of tobacco smoke. Dozens of round tables were scattered across the floor, crowded with men hunched over cards, ivory dice, and amber bottles of imported liquor.
Women moved like ghosts between the tables, poured into scandalous, low-cut silk uniforms that exposed far too much skin, extracting gold coins from vest pockets with practiced, hollow smiles.
But no one looked at us.
Suddenly, Hattie tugged sharply on my sleeve. "Miss Eleanor—look."
"I see it," I murmured, my eyes locking onto the far end of the room.
Past the crowded tables lay another hallway, but this one was completely different. In a crowded, chaotic vice den like this, every corridor should have been brimming with drunkards and women.
Instead, an eerie silence radiated from that particular archway. The patrons deliberately steered clear of it. Even the servers gave it a wide berth, not casting a single glance down its darkened length.
"Must we go there?" Hattie whimpered.
"You can stay here by the service bar and wait for Gary. I can go alone."
Hattie fiercely shook her head.
"I am coming with you."
With a loud sigh, I steeled my spine and started toward the restricted hallway, trying to blend into the shadows of the velvet draperies. Hattie followed almost reluctantly.
We were halfway across the main room when a sudden, violent shouting shattered the noise near the main entrance.
"Mr. Elias Russell! Well, well, well. Look what the damn tide dragged in!"
I froze, my heart leaping into my throat, and spun around.
Gary stood right in the main doorway, his face a ghastly shade of chalk-white under the flickering gas lamps. A man had him viciously by the arm, and two more massive brutes flanked him instantly, blocking the exit.
"Let go of me," Gary growled.
"Let go of you? After you disappeared from the lower wards for months?" The burly man’s grip tightened, thick fingers digging deep into Gary’s coat sleeve. "My boss has been looking for you, Mr. Russell. He wants to have a very long, very quiet conversation about your outstanding debts."
"I don’t have—"
"Don’t lie to me, you welching dog!" the brute barked, shoving Gary hard against the doorframe. "I know you owe more silver than your worthless, miserable hide is worth."
The entire room went dead silent.
Hattie tugged violently at my sleeve again.
"Miss Eleanor, what should we do? Oh God, they’re going to kill him."
I couldn’t look away from Gary. I knew he could fight, but as his eyes suddenly drifted across the room and landed squarely on mine, his entire posture went completely pliant.
He stopped struggling and slumped his shoulders, deliberately playing the part of a defeated, terrified debtor.
He was using himself. He was making a scene to draw everyone to the front door so the back hallway would be completely exposed. He didn’t give a single hint that he knew us.
For less than a second, his gaze flicked over my face before he turned back toward his captors, letting out a loud, theatrical plea for mercy.
"Miss Eleanor—"
Hattie cried, her tears finally spilling over.
"Go," I whispered, the adrenaline spiking so hard my vision blurred. "Find the red door down that hall."
"What? No, I can’t leave you—"
"Go, Hattie! Now!"
Shoving her toward the darkness of the empty corridor, I watched her turn and run.
I forced myself to stand still for one more agonizing second, watching as Gary was brutally dragged toward a back room near the kitchen, his boot heels scraping uselessly against the floorboards.
He didn’t fight back. He just let them take him into the dark, ensuring we wouldn’t both be lost before we ever found what we came for.
I had five minutes to find Casimir. That’s what we had planned.
For one final moment, Gary found my eyes across the crowd. He hissed through his teeth, and the corner of his left eye twitched toward the dark hallway.
Move.
The clock was ticking. Every second was a grain of sand slipping through my fingers. Turning away, I ran after Hattie.
