Felix stepped off the curb, not fast, not slow—the gait of a man who belonged to his own street. Alfie kept pace at his shoulder, the summons tucked into his breast pocket like a shield.
At the carriage, Felix fixed the watcher’s gaze through glass. “You’ve sat long enough,” he said even as a diagnosis. “If you have business, speak it. If not, go.”
The man flinched.
He had not expected to be met head-on. Not by a Jew who did not lower his eyes.
The latch clicked. The watcher looked down, then up again—measured him and Alfie—and chose retreat. He flicked the reins once. The carriage rolled into the mist.
Felix watched until the wheels vanished around the corner. Cowards always preferred corners. And shadows. They never came alone.They always came in packs just like theBurschenschaft.
Alfie exhaled sharply. “That’s why they haunt the edges. They push where the law is thinnest, pick at the least defended, and call it order.”
Felix’s jaw locked. “Not today.”
A figure moved at the far end of the street. Then another.
Raphi Klonimus, hat brim jeweled with rain, lifted a hand and came to Felix’s right. From the other side, Nick Folsham appeared with Wendy on his arm, her nurse’s cloak neat, her eyes flint. Andre crossed from the mews, black case swinging at his side.
“We saw you through the window,” Wendy said. “What happened here?”
“I was just about to talk to you, but you’re all outside?” Raphi added.
No one pretended it was a coincidence, but Felix just swallowed, and they understood him. As did he: They came because this was the moment. They took their places beside Felix and Alfie—a line across Harley Street, shoulder to shoulder, as if fear itself had been called to account.
Silence stretched. The city breathed around them—wheels hissing on wet stone, drizzle pattering down, a costermonger’s cry carrying thin through the fog. In the glass panes along the terrace, their reflections stood: five men and one woman in her dark nurse’s cloak, a line across Harley Street.
Alfie broke the quiet, voice edged but steady. “He’ll never forgive me for poisoning him that night. Every shadow he sends is another reminder.”
Wendy’s chin lifted. “Then he hates me just as much. I’m betrothed to the prince whose gold he bleeds from Transylvania. He knows exactly what I stand for.”
“From our own trade routes,” Raphi said, voice low and grim. “He isn’t only a parasite—he’s a thief. Every coin he moves weakens thecrown I serve. And he cannot stand that we Jews earned our place at court.”
Nick gave a sharp laugh. “Despicable doesn’t cover it. He’s tried to ruin me—and yet the patients who matter most to his schemes still walk through our practice door.”
“They need us. They barely tolerate him.” Felix looked across the street at the practice they’d built.
Andre folded his arms, broad shoulders dimming half the lamplight. “And the people he manipulates are the same ones who trust us. He hasn’t broken through yet. He won’t.”
Felix looked from one face to the next, the ache in his chest shifting—less the solitude, more the gravity of belonging. He had walked this city for years with silence at his back.
Raphi’s voice steadied the damp air. “Then tomorrow, we stand together.”
The rain tapped harder against the cobbles, like an oath being sealed.
Felix drew breath as though for the first time all day. His voice came firm, unshaken.
“We do. For everything we’ve built despite people like him.”
The street heldstill for a heartbeat—just drizzle, lamplight, and the faint hiss of wheels turning far off. Then the sound grew clearer, a steady approach over wet stone.
Raphi pointed at his carriage right in front of 87 Harley Street. The Klonimus carriage. He tipped his chin toward it, rain dripping from the brim of his hat. “Come. We’ll talk where walls keep our words, not glass.”
Felix hesitated. “I won’t drag your house into this fight.”
Raphi’s reply was quiet but immovable. “Felix, you’ve never had a fight that wasn’t already ours.”
Alfie clapped his shoulder, solid and brotherly. “And tomorrow,”he added, “we’ll stand the same way at Westminster. A line. Let List count us.”
