Read Chapter 30: The Price of a Lie

The pew was hard and cold, and Jack had been sitting in it for three hours.

The vicar had stopped glancing at him after the first hour. The widow in black at the front had stopped weeping after the second. Now the church smelled of damp stone and candle wax, and the only sound was the rain beating against the stained glass like a patient creditor.

His mother had died of a cough that turned to fever. The letter had come to his workshop on a scrap of paper, written in a neighbor's hand. *Mullins, your mother is failing. She asks for you.*

He had not made it in time.

The service ended. People filed past the grave, throwing handfuls of wet earth that struck the coffin with soft, final thuds. Jack stayed until the gravediggers finished their work and the rain had soaked through his coat to his skin.

Back in her rooms, he stood in the doorway and felt the weight of thirty years press down upon him. The kettle still sat on the hearth, blackened and cold. His father's chair, mended three times with wire, stood empty beside the window.

He had never asked her the questions he should have. Why his father had worked for Ashworth. Why the accident had happened on that particular night. Why they had never spoken of it, not once, not ever.

The floorboard creaked beneath his boot.

He looked down. His mother had always kept a rug by the hearth to cover a loose board she said let in drafts. He pulled it aside now, revealing the board she had claimed was warped from damp.

It lifted easily.

Beneath it lay a leather pouch, heavy with coins, and a folded letter sealed with wax the color of dried blood.

Jack sat on the floor, oblivious to the dust, and undid the seal.

*My dearest Jack,*

*If you are reading this, I am gone, and you have found what your father left for you. Do not be angry that I kept it hidden. Do not be angry that I never told you the truth. I kept it to protect you, as your father would have wanted.*

*Your father did not fall from that engine because the brake failed. Ashworth sent him up that night with a cold rope and a warning that he would break the contract if the line did not open by dawn. Your father knew the rope was rotten. He used it anyway. He thought he could finish before it gave.*

*The money is what Ashworth paid to make the matter go away. I took it because I had no choice, but I never spent it. I could not spend his price. It is yours now. All of it.*

*Your father loved you more than he loved his own life. Do what you must.*

*Your loving mother,* *Annie Mullins*

Jack read the letter twice. Then a third time.

The coins in the pouch were gold sovereigns, old ones, their edges worn smooth from years of hiding. He counted them without emotion. One hundred and eighty. Enough to rebuild his workshop. Enough to bring his contract back from the edge of ruin.

Not enough.

He folded the letter carefully and placed it in his breast pocket, next to the warped brass nameplate he had retrieved from the ashes of his workshop. His fingers touched the twisted metal, and he felt something harden inside him, like iron cooling in a forge.

Ashworth had paid his mother blood money. And his mother had kept it, waiting for the moment Jack would need it most.

He walked out of the slums with the pouch heavy in his coat, and he did not look back.

---

The offices of the Greenbank Land Company smelled of fresh paint and new money.

Jack had cleaned himself as best he could, but he still felt the slum dust on his hands when he stepped through the door. A clerk with a face like a weasel looked him up and down and opened his mouth to speak.

"The name is Mullins," Jack said. "I'm here to see Mr. Fletcher about a transfer of shares."

The clerk blinked. "Mr. Fletcher doesn't see—"

"Tell him it concerns Ashworth's interest in the northern extension."

The clerk disappeared through a mahogany door and returned moments later with a different expression. Jack was shown into an office where a thin man with spectacles and a cravat too large for his neck rose from behind a desk.

"Mr. Mullins." Fletcher's voice was careful, measuring. "This is an unexpected visit."

"I'm here to make an offer."

"For the northern extension? That project is fully—"

"For Ashworth's shares."

Fletcher's face went still. "I was not aware Mr. Ashworth was selling."

"He's not aware either. That's why I'm offering you first refusal on the information."

Jack placed the ledger on the desk. Fletcher's eyes dropped to it, then rose to Jack's face. "What is this?"

"A record of debts. Unpaid debts. Several of them owed to my father, and several more to men whose livelihoods Ashworth destroyed to build his rail empire. There are letters here. Threatening letters. I have witnesses who will corroborate."

Fletcher pushed the ledger back without touching it. "This has nothing to do with me."

"It has everything to do with you. Ashworth's share in the extension is predicated on his reputation. When I take this to the Manchester Herald and the Board of Directors, that reputation will be dust. His shares will be worthless. The extension will collapse."

"You can't mean to—"

"I mean to do exactly that. Unless you purchase his interest now, at a fair price, and transfer it to me."

Fletcher laughed, but the sound had no mirth in it. "I cannot purchase what a man does not wish to sell."

"You can if you hold paper that gives you the option. I have done my research, Mr. Fletcher. Ashworth borrowed against those shares. The debt matures Thursday. If he cannot pay, the option falls to the lender."

Fletcher's face paled. "How do you know about that?"

"I know many things." Jack leaned forward. "The question is whether you want to be holding those shares when the news breaks or standing safely aside with your capital intact."

The silence stretched. Rain hammered against the window. Fletcher stared at the ledger as if it were a snake that might strike.

"How much?"

Jack named a figure. Fletcher's eyebrows rose.

"That is less than half the value of the shares."

"It is more than they will be worth Thursday afternoon. You have until noon to transfer the deed. After that, I find another lender."

He turned and walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.

"And Mr. Fletcher. When you speak to Ashworth's agents about the transfer, tell them it is a matter of land consolidation. I have no desire to reveal my hand before I must."

---

He stood in the rain outside the office, the deed folded in his pocket, and felt nothing.

No triumph, no vindication. No warmth from his mother's final gift. Only a hollow ache where his heart should have been.

He had bought Ashworth's share in the northern extension with his father's life and his mother's patience. The money had sat under those floorboards for twenty years, waiting for this moment. And now it was gone, spent on a piece of paper that made him one step closer to the empire he had sworn to build.

The streets around him bustled with evening traffic. Carriages splashed through puddles. A boy selling newspapers shouted something about a riot in Birmingham.

Jack pulled the letter from his coat and read once more his mother's final words.

*I could not spend his price.*

He folded it and returned it to his pocket, next to the nameplate.

His father had known the rope was rotten. He had used it anyway, because Ashworth had left him no choice.

Jack Mullins stood in the rain with a deed in his pocket and thirty years of grief heavy on his shoulders, and he understood his father at last.

He walked toward his workshop, and the horse trough beside the printer's shop caught his reflection in the dim gaslight. A man in a fine coat, with money in his pocket and a name stamped on a deed. A man who had bought his way into the ranks of those he had sworn to destroy.

He did not recognize the face staring back at him.