Kaz breaks into Jan Van Eck’s house through an upper-floor window, uneasy because the entry is easier than expected. He reminds himself that Van Eck trusts money and status too much, then pushes aside worries about Inej and Nina’s separate mission so he can focus on stealing Van Eck’s seal for their plan.

Kaz slips through the servants’ floor and uses Wylan’s timed flash-and-pop distraction to draw a guard away from Alys’ door. Kaz enters Wylan’s former room, now turned into an elaborate nursery for Van Eck’s expected heir, lowers a rope ladder, and helps Wylan inside with the auric acid.

After a second distraction, Kaz and Wylan get into Van Eck’s office. Wylan identifies the ancestral portrait concealing the safe, and Kaz notes the Van Eck family history before exposing a heavily reinforced vault that cannot be picked quickly. Because the lock is too strong, Wylan mixes the acid and carefully burns a hole through the steel door.

Kaz retrieves Van Eck’s signet ring, the seal they came for, and takes some kruge from the safe. Wylan is uncomfortable with theft despite his hatred of his father, and Wylan admits that even if the fortune should be his, Wylan believes his inability to read would make him unfit to run the family business.

Kaz challenges Wylan’s shame, comparing Wylan’s hidden illiteracy to Kaz’s visible limp and arguing that fear of exposure is what makes people weak. After Kaz and Wylan replace the portrait over the damaged safe, Pekka Rollins emerges from a hidden niche with armed Dime Lions, revealing that Kaz and Wylan have walked into an ambush.