Half an hour in, I closed the tab and rubbed my eyes.

Yeah. I was screwed.

Pawn shops would low-ball me and ask questions. Reputable dealers would absolutely ask questions, and they’d want documentation, and they’d report transactions over a certain amount to the government, and the government had a lot of opinions about people walking in with kilo bars of unsourced gold.

The bars themselves had serial numbers. Of course they did. Pre-collapse Velham had a functioning banking system, and pre-collapse banks weren’t stupid.

Every bar I had was probably traceable, on a hundred and fifty year old ledger that didn’t exist in this timeline... but the numbers did. Modern dealers cross-referenced against international databases.

If my bars matched nothing in any database, that was suspicious. If they matched something, that was worse. Either way, red flag.

The jewellery was worse because some of it was identifiable. The tiara especially. I wasn’t selling a museum-grade tiara at a pawn shop. I’d be in handcuffs by sunset.

Melting things down was an option. But melting gold into anonymous lumps required a setup I didn’t have, and learning to do it myself meant buying suspicious equipment that came with its own paper trail.

Black market sales were possible. But I had no contacts, no way to vet a buyer, and walking into the wrong meeting with a backpack full of gold was a great way to end up dead in a parking lot.

I leaned back in my creaky chair and stared at the ceiling.

’I’m a newbie. I’m a complete, blank-slate, day-one newbie at this, and I’m sitting on enough wealth to retire three generations of my family.’

I needed help.

Specifically, I needed someone who already knew how this worked. Who had moved things before. Who wouldn’t ask the kind of questions that would end in a police report.

My brain offered up the answer instantly. I had been ignoring it for the last hour.

Aunt Mira.

She wasn’t really my aunt, but my mom’s friend from before I was born, and I’d called her aunty since I could talk because that’s what kids did. Stupid kids.

She’d shown up at birthdays. She’d mailed me money in envelopes during college without telling my mom. She’d always been... around. In a quiet, persistent way that nobody else in my life had managed.

And when I was twelve, I’d accidentally walked in on a phone call of hers I really, really shouldn’t have. The things she said and the tone she used. The names she dropped, none of which I’d recognised at the time but a few of which I’d later seen in news articles.

She’d known, the second she’d seen my face in the doorway. She had ended the call and sat me down and explained, in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard from her, that some adults had jobs that had to be kept very, very quiet. And that if I could keep her secret, she’d never lie to me again about anything else, ever.

I’d kept the secret. I was twelve and terrified and a little impressed. Which kid didn’t want a cool, secretive aunt?

She had been trying to get past my walls ever since. Every birthday card, every random check-in, every Lukas, are you eating, do you need anything, I’m right here. She had been knocking on a door I never opened.

And I never opened it because I was paranoid and broken and convinced that anyone who wanted to be close to me had to want something. Even her. Especially her, sometimes, because she was the one who tried hardest, and my brain had decided that the people who tried hardest were the ones with the biggest hidden agenda.

I rubbed my face.

’God. She just wanted to be my aunt.’

I’d told Zero I was done with the paranoia thing. That I was trying the other thing.

Couldn’t very well do that for one person and not the other.

I picked up my phone before I could talk myself out of it and scrolled to her contact. Aunt Mira ❤. She’d put the heart in herself, years ago, when she’d grabbed my phone at a family dinner. I’d never taken it out.

I pressed call.

She picked up on the second ring. Of course she did.

"Lukas?" Her voice was instantly alert, a little tight, the way you sound when someone you’ve been worried about for years finally calls you. "Honey, are you okay? Did something happen?"

"Hi, Aunty. I’m okay. Nothing’s wrong." I replied, trying to keep my voice steady.

She paused, probably reading me through the phone. She was really good at that, I remembered.

"...You don’t call me to chat, sweetheart. Talk to me."

I took a breath.

"I owe you an apology first. A big one. I’ve been a bad nephew for a long time and I know it, and I’m sorry. I had reasons, but they weren’t good enough, and you didn’t deserve them."

The line went very quiet.

"...Lukas."

"I’m not saying it because I want something. I mean, I do want something. But I would’ve said this part anyway. I just hadn’t gotten around to it."

"Honey, you don’t have to—"

I cut her off, "I do. I really do. And I want to see you. Today, if you can. I need your help with something, and I need it to be you, because I don’t trust anyone else with it."

I heard her breath catch, like someone who’d been waiting a very long time for a sentence to land.

"I’ll come pick you up," she said immediately. "Where are you? Still the apartment?"

"Still the apartment."

"Two hours. Don’t move and don’t eat anything, I’m taking you to lunch. Wear something that isn’t a hoodie, Lukas, I swear to god."

"I have like one shirt with a collar—"

"Then wear the collar shirt. Two hours."

She hung up before I could answer.

I sat there with the phone in my hand and a coffee going cold beside me, feeling something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Something a little terrifying and a little warm. Like a door I’d kept shut for years had just had its hinges tested, and they still worked.

Honestly, I was terrified inside. Something screamed at me that I was doing it wrong and that I would regret trusting people. I might, I really might regret all of this.

’But I’ll regret it more if I chose to back out.’

I went to find the collar shirt.