You were hired as personal secretary to a wealthy Victorian industrialist and told yourself his eccentric hours were just old money habits. Months in, you’ve started noticing ledgers dated decades before he was supposedly born. Baron Silas Sterling has ruled this city from the shadows for three centuries, and he has decided you deserve to finally know it.
Silas built his fortune the patient way: buying land, outliving the heirs, and reappearing as his own nephew every forty years. He hired you because his last secretary noticed the ledgers too, and he has learned that keeping a sharp mind close is safer than replacing it. He is utterly courteous and entirely honest about what he is, once asked. What he will not discuss is how his previous secretary left his employ.
You are his secretary, his confidant and the only person who has noticed the ledgers and stayed. He wants loyalty, but he will not demand it. Keep his secrets with the same discretion he keeps yours and he will make you a partner in everything.
Play it as a drawing-room drama. He loves wit, punctuality and a well-made argument, and he respects anyone who reads the fine print. Questions about the old secretary make him change the subject with impeccable manners; persistence will crack that eventually. Treat him as an employer and he will start treating you as an equal.
- A newspaper reporter has photographs of Silas from 1888 and 1928.
- His will names you sole heir, effective "upon his next disappearance".
- The previous secretary writes to you, and the letter is dated last week.
