Better to speak none of it. Better to pretend and pretend until maybe, just maybe, there came some chance to salvage the fractured state this city had fallen into.
“The picture is starting,” Juliette said in lieu of a reply.
“Juliette,” Kathleen insisted.
Juliette gritted her teeth hard. She wondered if her tone still fooled anyone. In New York, she had been so good at lying, so good at playing pretend as an utterly different person. These last months had been wearing her down until there was nothing left of her but . . . her.
“He’s not doing anything. Look, he’s taking his seat.”
Indeed, Roma appeared to be walking away from the merchant after a mere greeting, settling into an end seat two rows behind. This did not have to be a big deal. They did not need to engage in a confrontation. Juliette could quietly keep an eye on him from where she sat and make sure she approached the merchant first when intermission came. It was a surprise that she had even been sent after a merchant. The Scarlet Gang rarely chased after new clientele; they waited for clientele to come to them. But this merchant did not dabble in drugs like the rest of them. He had sailed into Shanghai last week carrying British technology—heavens knew what kind; her parents had not been specific in their briefing, save that it was some sort of weaponry and the Scarlet Gang wanted to acquire his inventory.
If the White Flowers were trying to get in on it too, then it had to be something big. Juliette made a note to ask for details as soon as she got home.
The lights went dark. Kathleen glanced over her shoulder, fingers twisting into the loose sleeves of her coat.
“Relax,” Juliette whispered. “What you’re about to watch came directly from its premiere in Manhattan. Quality entertainment.”
The picture started. Screen One was the largest viewing room in the whole Grand Theatre, its orchestral sound booming from all sides. Each seat was equipped with its own translation system, reading out the text that appeared alongside the silent film. The couple to Juliette’s left were wearing their earpieces, murmuring excitedly to each other as the lines filtered through in Chinese. Juliette didn’t need her earpiece, not just because she could read English, but because she wasn’t really watching the film. Her eyes, no matter how much she tried, kept wandering down.
Don’t be a fool, Juliette scolded herself. She had tipped herself into this situation at full speed. She would not regret it. It was what had needed to be done.
But still, she couldn’t stop looking.
It had been only three months, but Roma had changed. She already knew that, of course, from the reports that came back to her about dead gangsters with Korean characters slashed in blood beside them. From the bodies piling up farther and farther inward into Scarlet territory lines, as if the White Flowers were testing the limits they could encroach upon. It was unlikely that Roma had sought out Scarlets specifically for vengeance killings—he didn’t have it in him to go that far—but each time a conflict erupted, the message left behind was clear: This is your doing, Juliette.
It was Juliette who had escalated the feud, who had pulled the trigger on Marshall Seo and told Roma to his face that whatever happened between them had been nothing but a lie. So now all the blood left in his wake was his revenge.
He looked the part too. At some point, he had traded his dark suits for lighter colors: for a cream jacket and a golden tie, for cuff links that caught the light each time the screen flashed white. His posture was sharp, no more slouching to feign casual, no more stretching his legs long so he could slump into the chair and avoid being seen by anyone giving the room a cursory glance.
Roma Montagov wasn’t the heir scheming in the shadows anymore. It seemed that he was sick of the city seeing him as the one slitting throats in the dark, the one with a heart of coal and the clothing to match.
He looked like a White Flower. He looked like his father.
A flash of movement blurred in Juliette’s peripheral vision. She blinked, pulling her gaze away from Roma and searching the seats across his aisle. For a moment, she was certain she had merely been mistaken, that perhaps a lock of hair had come undone from her front curl and fallen into her eyes. Then the screen flashed white again as a shrieking train derailed in the Wild West, and Juliette saw the figure in the audience rise.
The man’s face was cast in shadow, but the gun in his hand was very, very illuminated.
And it was pointed right at the merchant in the front row, who Juliette still needed to speak to.
“Absolutely not,” she muttered angrily, reaching for the pistol strapped to her thigh.
The screen dropped into shadows, but Juliette took aim anyway. In the second before the man could act, she pulled the trigger first with a loud bang.
Her pistol kicked. Juliette pressed back into her seat, her jaw hard as the man below dropped his weapon, his shoulder wounded. Her gunshot had hardly drawn any notice, not when there was a shoot-out going on in the picture, too, drowning out the scream coming from the man’s mouth and covering up the smoke wafting from the barrel of her pistol. Though the picture had no dialogue sound, the orchestral backing track had an uproarious cymbal banging in the background, and the theatergoers all assumed the gunshot a product of the film.
All except for Roma, who immediately swiveled around and looked up, eyes searching for the source of the gunshot.
And he found it.
Their gazes locked, the click of mutual recognition so forceful that Juliette felt a physical shift in her spine, like her body was finally righting itself into alignment after months out of configuration. She was frozen, breath caught in her throat, eyes pulled wide.
Until Roma reached into his jacket pocket and drew his gun, and Juliette had no choice but to jolt herself out of her daze. Instead of combating the would-be assassin, he had decided to shoot at her.
Three bullets whizzed by her ear. Gasping, Juliette struck the floor, her knees grazing the carpet hard as she threw herself down. The couple to her left started screaming.
The theatergoers had realized the gunshots were not a part of the soundtrack.
“Okay,” Juliette said under her breath. “He’s still mad at me.”
“What was that?” Kathleen demanded. Her cousin dropped quickly too, using the railing of the second level for cover. “Did you shoot into the seats? Was that Roma Montagov shooting back?”
Juliette grimaced. “Yes.”
It sounded like a stampede was starting on the floor below. The people on the upper level were certainly starting to panic too, hurtling out of their seats and rushing for the exit, but the two doors on either side of the theater—marked EVEN and ODD for the seat arrangements—were rather thin, and all they managed to achieve was a bottleneck situation.
Kathleen made an indecipherable noise. “He’s not doing anything . . . he’s taking his seat!”
“Oh, don’t mock me!” Juliette hissed.
This situation was not ideal. But she would salvage it.
She scrambled to her feet.
“Someone was trying to shoot the merchant.” Juliette made a quick glance over the railing. She didn’t see Roma anymore. She did see the merchant pulling his suit jacket tightly around his middle and securing his straw hat, trying to follow the crowds out of the theater.
“Go find who it was,” Kathleen huffed. “Your father will have your head if the merchant is killed.”