Her heart, thrumming just beneath her rib cage.
“I have loved him so long that I do not remember him as a stranger,” Juliette answered. “I loved him long before we were told to work together in spite of the hate between our families. I will love him long after you tear us apart merely because you pick and choose when it is convenient to partake in the blood feud.”
Her mother released her wrist. Lady Cai thinned her lips, but there was otherwise no surprise. Why would there be? It was not difficult to guess why else Juliette would be running away with him.
“We listened to the modern age and never thought to control what you do,” Lord Cai said then, finally choosing to speak. His words were a low rumble that gave everything in the room a telltale tremor. “I see that it was our mistake.”
Juliette choked out a laugh. “Do you think any of this could have turned out better if you had kept me trapped in the house? Do you think I would have never learned defiance if you had kept me in Shanghai all these years, educated only by Chinese scholars and their ancient teachings?” Juliette slammed her hand against her vanity table, swiping all her brushes and her powders to the floor, but it wasn’t enough—nothing was enough. Her words were so bitter in her mouth that she could taste them. “I would have ended up the same. We are all held up on the city’s strings, and perhaps you should first ask why we have a blood feud before asking why I defied it!”
“Enough,” Lord Cai boomed.
“No!” Juliette screamed back. Her heart was pounding. If she had been in hyperawareness of the room before, now she could hear nothing except her raging, violent pulse. “Do you hear what the people are saying? This execution of Communists and White Flowers—they are calling it the White Terror, a terror, as if it is merely another madness that cannot be helped! It can be helped! We could stop it!”
Juliette took a deep breath, forcing herself to lower her volume. The more she yelled, the more her parents narrowed their eyes, and she feared that one more outburst from her would have them choose to stop listening. This wasn’t over. She still had a chance to convince them otherwise.
“Both of you have always said that power lies with the people,” Juliette tried, keeping her tone steady. “That the Scarlet Gang would have fallen apart if Bàba had not made membership a badge of pride with ordinary civilians. Now we let them die? Now we let the Nationalists slaughter whoever is suspected of unionizing? The blood feud was about fairness. About power and loyalty splitting the city. We were equals—”
“You wish to say,” Lord Cai interrupted coldly, “that you would rather we return to a time when the White Flowers blew up our household?”
Juliette staggered back. Her chest squeezed and squeezed until she was sure there was no oxygen left in her lungs.
“That is not what I mean.” She hardly knew what she meant. All she knew was that none of this was right. “But we are above massacre. We are above a kill order.”
Her father had turned away, but her mother’s gaze remained. “What have I tried to teach you?” Lady Cai whispered. “Do you remember not? Power lies with the people, but loyalty is a fickle, ever-changing thing.”
Juliette swallowed hard. So this was the Scarlet Gang. They had said yes when the foreigners demanded an alliance, choosing capital over pride. They had said yes when the politicians demanded an alliance, choosing survival over all else. Who cared about values when the history books were being written? What did it matter if the history books rewrote everything in the end?
“I beg you.” Juliette dropped to her knees. “Call an end to the White Terror, demand the Nationalists cease, demand the White Flowers be held separate from the Communists. We have no right to eradicate a populace. It is not fair—”
“What do you know about fair?”
Juliette lost her balance, folding sideways and sprawling upon her carpet. She could count on one hand the number of times her father had raised his voice at her. He had shouted so loudly just then that it hardly seemed real. She was half convinced the sound had come from elsewhere. Even Lady Cai was blinking rapidly, her hand pressed to the neck of her qipao.
Juliette recovered faster than her mother did. “Everything you taught me,” she said. She pulled herself upright, the loose fabric of her dress gathering around her knees. “Everything about our unity, about our pride—”
“I will not hear it.”
Juliette straightened to her full height. “If you won’t do anything, I will.”
Lord Cai looked to her again. It was either the electricity flickering at that very moment or a light in her father’s eyes dimming. His expression turned blank, as it did when he encountered an enemy, as it did when he was readying to torture for information.
Her father, however, did not resort to violence. He only put his hands behind his back and let his volume sink into a steady quiet once more.
“You will not,” he said. “Give up this malarkey and remain heir to the Scarlet Gang—remain heir to an empire that will soon be backing the country’s rulers—or leave us now and live in exile.”
Lady Cai swiveled toward him. Juliette’s fists grew tighter and tighter, letting out all her dread so that it did not show in her face.
“Are you mad?” Lady Cai hissed to her husband. “Do not give such a choice—”
“Ask her. Ask Juliette what she did to Tyler.”
Utter silence descended on the room. For a second, Juliette was experiencing that weightlessness right before free fall, her breath cold in her throat and her stomach upended. Then the significance of her father’s words registered like a shock of ice water, and she was rooted once more in the thick threads of her carpeting. Suddenly his refusal to bring her in on Scarlet planning made sense. Shutting her out of the Nationalist meetings made sense. How long had her father known? How long had he known she was a traitor and kept her here anyway, let her pretend that everything was normal?
“I killed him.”
Lady Cai reared back, her lips parting in shock.
“I shot him and his men,” Juliette went on. “I live with his blood on my hands. I made the choice to put Roma’s life over his.”
Juliette watched her mother, the line of her brow furrowed and carved from stone. Juliette watched her father, his gaze as blank as ever.
“I suspected, when they said he was found with only one bullet wound,” Lord Cai said. “I suspected, when all of his men went down with no struggle, which seemed odd given the workers of the uprising were ruthless in their artillery spray. It was only after I received reports about Tyler challenging Roma Montagov to a duel that my suspicions seemed to have motive.”
Juliette slumped against the frame of her bed, her whole body collapsing against the footboard slat. She had nothing to say. No defense to give, because she was guilty to the very core.
“Oh, Juliette,” Lady Cai said softly.
It was hard to tell whether her mother was admonishing her or pitying her. Pity that came not out of sympathy, but out of abhorrence that she could be so thoughtless.
“I had no intention of punishing her. No intention of asking for an explanation when this was the daughter I raised.” Lord Cai brushed at his long sleeves, smoothing out the wrinkles in the fabric. “I wished to observe her. To see whether I could right her course, wherever she had strayed. Juliette is my heir, my blood. I wished to protect her above all else, even against Tyler, even against the Scarlets below us.”