Evelyn Kerr remembered the afternoon she first saw William Ashford in the flesh—the New York sky had turned red as if it were bleeding.
It was late autumn 1899. She had just turned eighteen, standing before the bay window on the third floor of Ashford Manor, cleaning each pane with vinegar water and newspaper. Outside, Central Park's maples layered in crimson; inside, the man from that massive oil painting—the legendary railroad tyrant—looked down at her with grey-green eyes, as if he had already foreseen how she would be crushed beneath the rails of fate.
"Don't stare at the Master." Mrs. Hopper's cane struck her shin bone, sending pain so sharp Evelyn nearly bit through her lip. "That's Miss Aurora's personally chosen engagement portrait. Those filthy hands of yours are fit only for dusting, not for gazing."
Evelyn lowered her head, her chestnut tresses tumbling loose from their bun to veil most of her face. This was the first lesson she had learned in the Lower East Side slums: beauty was original sin, and must be hidden well.
Her beauty came from her mother. Maureen Kerr, a woman who had fled the Irish famine, possessed copper-colored curls and emerald eyes, once supported the family by singing in New York dockside taverns. When she sang "Danny Boy," even the roughest sailors would fall silent. But in the slums, beauty wasn't a blessing—it was a curse.
"You look too much like your father." On her deathbed, her mother's bony fingers had traced Evelyn's face. "He'd be proud of you, if that damned railroad hadn't buried him beneath the tracks."
It was winter 1895, an "accident" on the Erie Railroad. Officially, operator error. But the uncles from the workshop said the Ashford family had bribed the coroner to keep the compensation low. When they brought her father home, his body was in three pieces. The payout was seventeen dollars—just enough for a coffin.
That's when her mother's health collapsed. Tuberculosis, the doctors said, caused by dampness from the docks. But Evelyn knew it was from hunger, from exhaustion, from despair hollowing out her lungs. At fourteen, she left school, working sixteen hours a day in a textile mill, her fingers mangled and bloody by the machines. Yet that money couldn't even cover the rent.
Her chance came in the summer of 1899. A woman who had sung with her mother in taverns found her. "Ashford Manor is hiring maids," the woman said. "They only want presentable girls—'respectable,' they say. That face of yours is respectable enough. Three dollars a week, plus you can sell the Master's cast-off clothes."
Three dollars. Enough for morphine, to ease her mother's pain.
Evelyn cut her signature copper hair, dyed it dark chestnut, smudged coal ash on her brows, and dotted fake freckles across her cheekbones. She transformed herself into a girl with pleasant features but no striking allure, and passed the interview. Mrs. Hopper pinched her chin like assessing livestock. "Eyes too bright, likely to seduce men. But hands are clean. You're hired."
That's how she stepped into the palace of the Gilded Age.
The first three months were peaceful. She cleaned the third floor—William Ashford's private domain. She saw him three times, always from behind. Once, emerging from his study in a three-piece suit, a gold watch chain cutting a cold, hard arc across his chest. Once, on the balcony, phone in hand, his low voice speaking of "shorting" and "mergers." The third time was the afternoon Miss Aurora came to call.
Aurora Vanderbilt. That surname sent tremors through all of New York. Twenty-five, two years older than Evelyn, William's childhood sweetheart and the perfect marital chess piece to consolidate his railroad kingdom. She entered the manor followed by two maids—one to hold her train, another to fan her. She herself lolled lazily on William's arm like a spoiled Persian cat.
"Darling, that portrait of yours is too stern," Aurora's voice dripped sweet as honeyed arsenic. "For our engagement ball next month, I'll have the painter do a new one with you smiling."
William said nothing, only swept his grey-green gaze across the hallway—across Evelyn, scrubbing the banister.
That glance became Evelyn's death warrant.
Aurora was elegant on the surface, but at her core a control freak who would crush an ant just to hear it scream. She couldn't tolerate William's eyes lingering on any female creature for more than a second. The next day, Evelyn was transferred to dining service, directly into Aurora's line of fire.
"New girl?" Aurora lifted Evelyn's chin with her ivory fan during afternoon tea. "Lift your head. Let me see."
Evelyn obeyed, tilting her face upward. Her emerald eyes caught the afternoon sun like shattered glass, dull and lifeless—she had rubbed them with fingertips dipped in pepper water to create the illusion of illness.
Aurora studied her for a long moment. "Nice eye color." She smiled, a smile that made cold sweat bead on Evelyn's nape. "Like gemstones. But gems belong in boxes, shouldn't be flashing about, don't you think?"
Evelyn lowered her head humbly. "As you say, Miss."
She thought her disguise was flawless. She was wrong.
December 31, 1899. New Year's Eve. The manor hosted an intimate dinner for twelve guests to celebrate the new century. Evelyn was assigned to serve William alone, because Aurora had suddenly taken ill and retired early.
It was a trap.
She entered the study with a decanter when William stood before a map, marking rail lines with a red pen. He wore no jacket, his white shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, two buttons undone at his collar, revealing his sharp collarbones. A man of thirty, possessing the edge that youths lacked and the ambition that age hadn't yet dulled.
"Set it down." He didn't turn.
Evelyn curtsied, preparing to leave.
"Wait." He spoke suddenly, a metallic quality in his voice. "Have you seen this map before?"
"No, sir."
"Good." He finally turned, grey-green eyes locking onto hers. "Because after tonight, you'll forget everything."
Evelyn didn't have time to understand. A scream came from outside—Aurora's voice, sharp as broken porcelain: "My necklace! My diamond necklace is gone!"
Then Mrs. Hopper's roar: "Search! Search every servant's room!"
Evelyn was pressed face-down on the Turkish carpet in the study when she saw Aurora standing in the doorway, no panic of a woman who'd lost jewelry, only the satisfaction of a hunter watching prey step into a trap. On her finger, that nine-carat engagement ring flashed like a demon's eye.
"Found it on her!" A footman "discovered" the priceless necklace beneath Evelyn's mattress.
"No—" Evelyn's voice turned sharp for the first time. "It wasn't me, it was Miss Aurora—"
*Smack!*
Aurora's slap sent her crashing into the fireplace, her cheek striking the brass fender, blood pouring forth. That blood hissed as it dripped onto William's cigar.
"William," Aurora tucked her hand into his arm, her voice instantly turning weak and pitiful. "I told you girls from the slums have sticky fingers. And she tried to frame me, how... utterly vicious."
William looked at Evelyn, his gaze as calm as if studying the fluctuating curve of a railroad bond. He crouched, lifting her bleeding chin with two fingers, like assessing damaged goods.
"Irish," he murmured, his accent carrying the elegance of Boston high society. "Never learn their place."
He dropped his hand, stood, and told the housekeeper, "Call the police. Theft charges."
"My mother is sick!" Evelyn clutched his immaculate trouser leg—her final struggle. "I need this wage, sir, please..."
William's foot pulled away without a trace of hesitation.
"Then let her die with dignity," he said. "Don't let her see you go to prison."
As Evelyn was dragged from the manor, snow began to fall. The last image she saw was William standing at the third-floor window, Aurora wrapping her arms around his waist from behind, resting her head on his shoulder. They looked like a perfect oil painting, and she was merely a stain erased from the frame.
In prison, the inmates Aurora had bribed tore her clothes. After her release, the brothel thugs in the Lower East Side broke her ribs. She died at dawn on the first day of the new century, her body dumped by the Hudson River, the wounds on her face half-eaten by rats.
When she died, she clutched a crumpled scrap of paper—the last letter her mother had written, the lines crooked like a child's drawing of railroad tracks:
**"Survive."**
She had failed.
But this time—
Evelyn's eyes snapped open to find herself in a maid's dormitory at Ashford Manor, the first rays of September 1899 streaming through the window. Her fingers were whole, her cheeks unmarked, her emerald eyes flashing with cold light in the mirror.
She had been reborn.
Reborn three months before Aurora would "discover" her. Reborn at the source of all tragedy.
This time, she would be the hunter.
And William Ashford, that tyrant who had watched coldly from outside the cage—
Would become her perfect weapon.