The arrogant duke burned my father’s life’s work, so I systematically bankrupted his 300-year-old empire.

Part 1

The acrid stench of melting glue and scorching paper hit the back of my throat.

Arthur Dalton didn’t even look at me as he tossed my father’s heavy calf-skin ledger into the roaring hearth.

He simply sat behind his massive ironwood desk.

He was meticulously cleaning his fingernails with a silver letter opener.

I stood in the center of his priceless Persian rug.

My damp wool skirt clung to my calves.

Cold rainwater dripped from my hem onto the intricate silk threads.

I knew the rug was worth more than my life.

I knew Arthur Dalton knew it, too.

He was making me wait.

He wanted me to be acutely aware of the mud drying on my boots.

He wanted me to feel the erratic, hammering pulse in my throat.

I forced my jaw to unclench and focused entirely on the heavy gold signet ring gleaming on his right hand.

That ring bore the oppressive crest of the Dalton family, a symbol that had choked the life out of every independent merchant in Riverbend for over three hundred years.

They held absolute power over the city by controlling the lucrative mordant mines.

Without that crucial chemical, no dye would ever hold fast to any woven fabric.

Arthur Dalton could simply cut the supply, and immediately the weavers would starve, the dyers would go bankrupt, and the merchants would have absolutely nothing to sell.

My father had spent ten agonizing years quietly mapping a hidden vein of crystalline mordant in the jagged northern hills to bypass their iron grip.

He died from a violent coughing fit just three weeks ago, his lungs filled entirely with the dust of his ultimate failure.

He passed his impossible burden onto my shoulders, leaving me with a staggering mountain of debts and a single meticulously charted ledger.

I brought that book here to negotiate, even though it felt like a brutally naive and desperate move.

My voice cracked pathetically on the final syllable when I offered Arthur a partnership.

I absolutely hated myself for showing such weakness under his cold gaze.

Arthur paused his meticulous grooming.

He tasted the word ‘partnership’ as if it were spoiled wine.

His gaze dragged over my soaked shoulders.

He told me my father was a tolerated nuisance.

He told me I was presuming to be a permanent one.

I tried to push the words past the rising bile in my throat.

I told him the deposits were substantial.

I told him I didn’t need his yield.

He picked up the heavy, worn ledger.

He pinched the binding between two fingers, looking at it like a diseased rat.

He told me his family owned the earth beneath this province.

They owned the ports.

They owned the roads.

He told me I owned wet rags and a dead man’s delusions.

He didn’t toss the ledger.

Tossing it would imply passion.

He simply extended his arm over the roaring hearth and opened his fingers.

The ledger hit the logs.

A spray of sparks danced against the soot-blackened bricks.

The leather binding hissed.

Arthur leaned forward.

He told me I was worthless.

He told me my father was worthless.

He told me to get off his rug.

I didn’t beg.

I didn’t weep.

A terrifying, absolute stillness settled into my freezing bones.

I turned on my heel and walked toward the heavy oak doors.

He called after me.

His tone dripped with mock pity.

He said Riverbend was too expensive for strays.

I stepped out into the freezing, rain-swept corridor.

The heavy doors thudded shut behind me.

Arthur believed he had burned my leverage.

He didn’t realize that in doing so, he had burned away my fear.

I had nothing left to lose.

I had no reason to play by his rules.

I wasn’t going to leave Riverbend.

I was going to bleed it dry.

Two days later, I sat in the corner of a tavern that smelled of spilled ale and rotting fish.

The floor was coated in sawdust to absorb the filth.

I slid my last silver coin across the sticky table.

Tyler Brooks stared at me with dark, bloodshot eyes.

Tyler was a former guildmaster.

He had been ousted and publicly beaten when Arthur suspected him of withholding taxes.

Now he moved untaxed goods through the treacherous waterways.

I told him I needed boats.

I didn’t have black market mordant.

I had potash.

Specifically, I had refined kelp ash.

When treated with ammonia, it creates a viable substitute for crystalline mordant.

The colors wouldn’t be as vibrant.

The deep crimsons might look muddy.

But the lower-tier weavers didn’t care about vibrant crimson.

They cared about survival.

Arthur taxed them into starvation.

I could sell them a substitute for half the cost and still make a massive profit.

Tyler looked at me like I was a dangerous animal.

He pocketed the coin.

Midnight on the mudflats was a landscape of nightmares.

I stood ankle-deep in the freezing muck.

My hands were wrapped around a rough hemp rope.

Tyler and two hulking men pushed a flat-bottomed punt through the shallows.

The boat groaned under the weight of twenty heavy burlap sacks.

My palms were blistered and weeping clear fluid.

The cold shock stole the breath from my lungs.

Panic flared in my chest.

Then I remembered the smell of burning leather.

I remembered Arthur Dalton’s bored drawl.

I pulled harder.

Within six weeks, the operation had grown with terrifying speed.

What started as one desperate weaver had metastasized into fifty.

They whispered my name in back alleys.

I was balancing ledgers with pieces of broken charcoal in an abandoned tannery.

We bought all the raw materials before the Dalton guild could.

We starved their production lines.

The money flowed in a torrential river.

But I was becoming the monster I was trying to destroy.

I threatened men who owed me money.

I utilized the exact same levers of debt that had killed my father.

Morality didn’t balance ledgers.

Then the wood splintered with a sound like a gunshot.

I was hiding in an alleyway.

Four men wearing the brass buttons of Arthur’s guards kicked in a weaver’s door.

Captain Barnes dragged the man out by his collar.

He brought a heavy oak truncheon down on the weaver’s shoulder.

The sickening crunch of breaking bone echoed through the rain.

Arthur had noticed the discrepancy in his ledgers.

He was looking for the smuggler.

Fear is brittle.

It snaps under enough pressure.

I knew someone would talk.

It was only a matter of time before Arthur found out exactly who was tearing down his empire.

I just didn’t expect the betrayal to come from the man sitting directly across from me at the tavern table.