“You would be risking Scarlet lives in the process. You cannot guarantee their safety like that.”
Despite her unflinching insistence, Juliette could feel her credibility slipping away. She was trying to stake her logic on the sanctity of one life saved as something worthy of all sacrifice, but this was the Scarlet Gang, and the Scarlet Gang did not care for such sentimental notions.
One of the Scarlets seated beside Lord Cai cleared his throat. Seeing that it was Mr. Ping, who Juliette usually liked, she looked to him and nodded, prompting him to go on.
“Where is the funding going to come from?” Mr. Ping asked. He winced. “Surely not us?”
Juliette threw her arms up. Why else would she bother to stand here, bleating the advantages of a free vaccine, if not for the funds of the Scarlet Gang’s inner circle? “We can afford it.”
Mr. Ping’s eyes darted about the table. He mopped his damp forehead. “We are not a charity for the weak and poor.”
“This is a city built on labor,” Juliette said coldly. “If madness tears through the streets once again, we are only as safe as the weakest and poorest. They fall, and we fall too. Do you forget who runs your factories? Do you forget how your shops open every morning?”
The table fell silent, but nobody jumped to put in their acknowledgment of her point. They merely shifted their gazes away and remained mum, until the silence extended for long enough that Lady Cai was forced to tap her fingers on the spinning glass and say, “Juliette, take a seat, would you? Perhaps this would be a better discussion once we actually make a vaccine.”
A beat later, Lord Cai nodded his agreement. “Yes. We shall decide if this research proves useful. Run it to the lab in Chenghuangmiao tomorrow and see what we can find.”
Begrudgingly, Juliette nodded her acceptance of the decision and eased back into her seat. Her mother was quick to change the topic and put the Scarlets at ease again. As Juliette reached for the teapot, her eyes met Tyler’s across the table, and he grinned.
“Allez, souris!” he said. His fast switch into French was to prevent the other Scarlets from understanding him, save for Rosalind and Kathleen, but even without knowing what he was saying, anyone could tell by his manner, his expression, his tone that he was goading Juliette and announcing his victory in a tug-of-war for favor. The simple fact that he had not been shot down on an idea that went starkly against Juliette’s, that her parents seemed to consider it on equal basis—indeed, Tyler had won.
“Je t’avertis . . . ,” Juliette snapped.
“What?” Tyler shot back, still in French. “You’re warning me of what, dearest cousin?”
It took everything in Juliette not to pick up her teacup and throw it right at him. “Stop playing god upon my plans. Stop intruding upon matters that have naught to do with you—”
“Your plans are always flawed. I am trying to help you out,” Tyler interrupted. His smile fell, and Juliette tensed, reading immediately what was coming next. “Look at how your last one turned out. In your whole time tricking the White Flower heir, what information did you gather from him?”
Under the table, Juliette dug her long nails hard into her palms, releasing all her tension through her hands so that her expression would not give her away. He suspected. He had always suspected, long before she told her lie in that hospital, but then Juliette had shot Marshall Seo, and Tyler had had to reevaluate his instincts, unable to align why she would have killed Marshall if she was truly Roma Montagov’s lover.
Except Marshall was alive. And all along, Tyler had been right. But if he knew this, then Juliette’s role as the heiress was over, and Tyler would not even have to lead a coup. He only had to tell the truth, and the Scarlets would fall in line behind him.
“You ruined my plan, Tyler,” Juliette said evenly. “You forced me to give myself away too early. I worked so hard to gain his trust, and I had to throw it away lest you misunderstood me. You’re lucky I haven’t tattled to my parents about your uselessness.”
Tyler’s eyes narrowed. His gaze flickered to Lord and Lady Cai, realizing that her parents did not have the full picture of the hospital, just like the rest of the city. It would have been impossible to keep the rumors away from them, but as far as they knew, Juliette and Tyler had shown up to that White Flower confrontation as a united force.
The thought was almost laughable. But it didn’t raise questions.
“Lucky,” Tyler echoed. “Sure, Juliette.” With a brief shake of his head, he turned away, engaging with the aunt beside him in Shanghainese.
Juliette, however, couldn’t lapse back into the casual socializing at the table. Her ears were a roar of noise, head buzzing with the threat lining every word of that conversation. There were goose bumps all along her neck, and even as she pulled her dress tighter around herself, clutching at the fur around her throat, she could not fool herself into thinking that it was merely the cold blowing in.
It was fear. She was deathly afraid of the power Tyler held over her after what he had witnessed at that hospital. Because he was right: he really did have reason to uproot her. Tyler would do all in his power to ensure the survival of the Scarlet Gang, while Juliette no longer had a single desire to be fighting the blood feud, not when it was so damn pointless. Let them both voice their truths to Lord Cai, and who would he choose to be heir?
Juliette reached for the liquor bottle passing on the spinning glass and poured a splash into her teacup. Without caring who was watching her, she choked it down.
“You’re hitting too high.”
Roma jabbed Alisa in the armpit, and she yelped, darting back several steps. Her scowl was half-hearted, shoulders coming up to her ears as she hunched into herself. Roma resisted his sigh, only because he knew Alisa would be annoyed if he seemed irritated by her slow progress.
“You said you were teaching me self-defense,” she grumbled, smoothing down her hair.
“I am.”
“You’re just—” Alisa waved around her hands, trying to imitate Roma’s fast movements. “It’s not very helpful.”
A breeze floated in from Alisa’s window, and Roma walked toward it, pulling down the pane to keep the cold out. He didn’t say anything as he huffed a breath onto the glass. He only blew until there was considerable mist, and then with his finger, he drew a little face that was smiling.
“Is that supposed to be motivating?” Alisa asked, watching over his shoulder.
He reached over to pinch her cheeks. “It’s supposed to be you. Tiny and annoying.”
Alisa smacked his hands away. “Roma.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t like spending time with his sister, but he had a suspicion she was asking for these lessons only to distract him from his other tasks. And it wasn’t that he didn’t like hanging around with his sister instead of tending to his other tasks, but he was also sure the little scamp had schemed this up only to prevent him from guarding their territory lines, not because she actually wanted to learn how to punch an attacker.
“This is very important, you know,” Alisa said now, as if she could sense where his train of thought was going. “I was in a coma for so long. I cannot be weak! I must know how to punch bad men!”
A thump came through the floor. It was either a sitting room in the house growing too raucous, or someone on the level below throwing knives at the wall. Roma heaved an exhale, then positioned Alisa, making her hold her arms out.