CHAPTER 72: ROHAN

Rohan enters the Devil’s Mercy’s inner sanctum for the first time as Proprietor and pores over centuries of ledgers documenting the levies—secrets paid by patrons and staff alike. He notes the evolution of evidence from ink to USBs and confessions, recognizing the Mercy’s true leverage: controlling knowledge.

Despite the power at his fingertips, Rohan feels nothing. His attention drifts to four objects he placed atop the bookshelf—a shredded ballgown, a hairbrush, a knife, and a glass rose—mementos tied to Savannah and their charged past. He shatters the rose but remains numb, then observes the founder’s inexplicable self-entry in the earliest ledger and ignores it.

Turning to the staff ledger, Rohan confronts his own childhood-scrawled secret and hears a woman’s taunting call: “We already have.” The phrase clicks; recalling the Mercy’s perpetual calla lilies and his maxim about repeating patterns, he realizes the Gilded Blade already made its move.

Rohan brings a ledger to the Proprietor’s study, where Alastair hints at the cane. Finding a fleur-de-lis on its underside, Rohan triggers a hidden compartment and withdraws aged paper. Concluding that the Mercy is power but not “the house,” he recognizes a deeper architect at play and that he has only just opened the true game.