A DAY AGO…
Two hundred miles away from the elegant, polished streets of London, the English coastline was a miserable, gray wasteland.
The violent storm that had nearly killed the Duke of Ford had struck the coastal cliffs with equal brutality.
High on a rocky bluff, hidden away from the main trading ports, stood an old, decaying wooden warehouse. It was known among the local smugglers simply as the "blind." It was a place where illegal goods were hidden in the dark before being secretly moved into the city.
Inside the warehouse, the air was thick, cold, and smelled terribly of wet earth.
A rough, dirty man known as Black Jack stood in the center of the massive room. He held a flickering oil lantern up high. The yellow light cast long, terrifying shadows over hundreds of large wooden crates stacked to the ceiling.
