"The Golden Rat" was an illegal bucket shop hidden behind a butcher shop in the Lower East Side.
This was the poor man's Wall Street. The air was thick with the smell of stale beer, acidic sweat, and cheap tobacco smoke. The wooden rail in front of the chalkboard had been polished to a greasy sheen by countless hands filled with longing and despair.
When Evelyn pushed open the heavy wooden door, the wall of noise from inside slammed into her.
No one paid her any mind. Here, there were only two kinds of people: madmen red-eyed from winning, and walking corpses who had lost their shirts. A woman wrapped in a headscarf, wearing worn-out roughspun clothes, was as insignificant here as a rat crossing the street.
Evelyn pressed her hand tightly against the roll of dollars at her chest. It was her entire stake.
She walked up to the counter. The bookmaker was a one-eyed Irishman, currently cleaning his fingernails with a boning knife.
"What are you buying?" One-Eye didn't even look up. "If you're looking for a husband who owes money, turn left and go fish him out of the river."
"Third Avenue Railroad Company."
Evelyn's voice trembled, but every word was distinct.
"I want to short it."
One-Eye finally stopped cleaning his nails. He lifted his cloudy eye to size her up, looking at her like she was a joke. "Short? Little lady, can you read? Third Avenue is trading at 128 dollars. It's the steadiest ticket in New York. You're just handing money to my pocket."
A few gamblers nearby heard this and erupted in laughter.
"Go home, little girl. Buy some milk and stop acting crazy here."
"Heard she's a maid who ran off, probably stole her master's money to try her luck."
The mockery buzzed like flies.
Evelyn ignored them. Her mind held only the memory of that blinding blizzard from her past life, and the old cobbler hanging from the rafters.
"Two hundred and twenty dollars."
She slammed the roll of bills, still warm from her body heat, onto the greasy counter. To these gamblers, it wasn't a fortune, but for a factory girl, it was an astronomical sum.
"All in. Ten times leverage. Short."
One-Eye's expression changed. He put away the boning knife, took the money, weighed it in his hand, and then revealed a mouth of yellow teeth. "Ten times leverage? If it goes up just two points, you lose everything. You sure?"
"It won't go up."
Evelyn stared at the bold "128" on the blackboard, her eyes flashing with a cold light that bordered on a curse.
"Because it is rotten to the core."
...
The next three weeks were the longest time Evelyn had endured in two lifetimes.
In that drafty laundry shed, she worked like a tireless machine. Her hands were soaked white and wrinkled by the cold water, eventually developing chilblains. The gauze on her hand was changed again and again; the wound scabbed over, cracked open, and scabbed again.
But she couldn't feel the pain.
Every day, Sam brought her the day's newspaper. She looked at nothing else, staring only at the stock prices in the corner.
125... 120... 118...
The price was falling slowly, but it hadn't crashed. Life in the manor continued with its singing and dancing; Aurora still held her luxurious tea parties, and William was still too busy to be seen.
Until February 28.
That morning, Evelyn was washing a pair of mud-caked riding breeches when Sam rushed in like a madman, waving a special edition broadsheet.
"Evelyn! Oh God! Evelyn!"
Sam collapsed onto the hay pile, gasping for breath as he shoved the newspaper into her face. "Look! Look!"
The headline was printed in massive, bold black letters:
THIRD AVENUE RAILROAD DECLARES RECEIVERSHIP! MASSIVE FRAUD EXPOSED! STOCK PLUMMETS!
Evelyn's hand jerked, and the soap slipped into the water trough.
She grabbed the newspaper.
Yesterday's closing price was 110. Today, it opened at half that—60 dollars—and was still freefalling, expected to break below 50.
Wall Street was a river of blood. Countless middle-class families went bankrupt overnight.
But amidst this wailing of the damned, Evelyn heard the sound of gold coins dropping into her pocket.
She had won the bet.
And she had won big.
From 128 down to 50—a drop of 78 dollars per share. Ten times leverage. Her two hundred and twenty dollars, in the midst of this disaster, had turned into nearly twenty thousand dollars.
Twenty thousand dollars.
In this era, that was enough to buy an entire apartment building in the Lower East Side, or a decent cottage on Long Island.
Evelyn leaned against the cold sink, her body sliding down the edge until she collapsed onto the dirty, wet floor. She hugged the newspaper tightly to her chest and buried her face in her knees.
She wanted to laugh, but what came out of her throat was a whimper that sounded like weeping.
It was the release of a survivor.
Mom was saved.
She wouldn't have to watch her mother cough up blood and die like in her last life; she wouldn't have to sell her dignity for a few dollars; she wouldn't have to have her heart broken over a damn green dress.
"Are we rich?" Sam asked. He didn't know the exact number, but he knew Evelyn had done something huge.
"No, Sam."
Evelyn raised her head. The tears were already wiped dry. In those emerald eyes, the last traces of rawness and weakness had faded, replaced by a bottomless calm.
"Getting rich is for the nouveau riche."
She stood up, pulled her hands out of the dirty water, and dried them on her apron.
"This is just an entrance ticket."
"A ticket to the table."
...
That night, Evelyn crawled out of the dog hole again.
This time, when she walked into "The Golden Rat," the entire hall went dead silent.
Everyone looked at the woman in the headscarf as if she were a monster. The one-eyed bookie's face was ashen, but he had no choice but to open the safe and push bundles of tied banknotes toward her.
This was the rule of the underground bank. It was shady, but if they didn't pay out, no one would gamble there again.
Evelyn didn't take all the money.
She took out five thousand dollars—enough to cover two years of treatment and living expenses for her mother at the best sanitarium in Switzerland.
Then, she pushed the remaining fifteen thousand dollars back across the counter.
"Keep it," Evelyn said coldly. "From now on, this is my account."
One-Eye paused, then grinned—a smile full of awe this time. "Interesting. Little lady, what do I call you?"
Evelyn fell silent for a moment.
Evelyn Kyle? That name was too weak. It belonged to the maid who was trampled in the mud.
She remembered what William had once said: "Scared of the scars? If you want to stand on the summit, you have to roll through the thorns first."
"Thorn."
She whispered the word.
"Call me Miss Thorn."
...
It was late at night when Evelyn returned to the manor after arranging her mother's transfer.
She sewed the bankbook with the massive balance into the core of her pillow.
After doing all this, she lay on the hard plank bed, staring at the drafty roof.
With this money, she could leave at any time.
But she didn't leave.
Because the game wasn't over.
Money only gave her the right to survive. But to make those who had trampled on her—Aurora, Isabella, and the high-and-mighty William Ashford—pay the price, she had to stay in the center of this vortex of power.
She would watch this tower rise, watch them feast guests, and then...
Personally pull out the most critical brick.
The next morning.
Mrs. Hope came to inspect the laundry shed as usual, prepared to hurl insults at Evelyn like she was abusing livestock.
But when she walked into the room, she froze.
All the horse blankets—hundreds of them, piled like mountains—had been washed clean and stacked neatly on the shelves.
Evelyn was sitting by the window, mending a torn vest in the morning light. Her movements were elegant and unhurried. Her injured hand, though still bandaged, was as steady as if she were doing embroidery.
Hearing the door open, Evelyn slowly turned her head.
The morning light fell on her profile. In those green eyes, there was none of the fear, haggardness, or resentment Mrs. Hope expected.
There was only a palpitating calm.
Like a bottomless lake hiding a vortex capable of swallowing everything.
"Good morning, Mrs. Hope," Evelyn said with a smile, her tone so gentle it made one's skin crawl. "I've finished today's work. Are there any other orders?"
Mrs. Hope instinctively took half a step back.
She suddenly had an illusion.
The woman in rough clothes before her no longer seemed like mud that could be molded at will, but a dangerous statue that was slowly waking up.
"N... no," Mrs. Hope stammered, then turned and fled the room as if escaping a predator.
Evelyn watched her retreating figure and bit off the thread with her teeth.