Roma did not have the time for this.
“They are colonialists.” He took the folder into his hands, crinkling the edges mercilessly. “They deserve to be robbed and looted, as they have done to others. We work with them to gain what we can. We do not work with them because we love them. Get it together.”
Dimitri didn’t appear chastised. It was hard to tell how much he actually believed in the words he was saying and how much he was saying them only to rile Roma up.
“So that’s how it is?” Dimitri asked. He brought his feet up to the desk. “All this hostility to your allies. But taking an enemy as your lover.”
The room had already been cold. Now it felt chilled like ice.
“You must be mistaken.” Roma stood up, releasing the folder. “I work with Juliette Cai until I can take a knife to her throat.”
“Then why haven’t you done so?” Dimitri countered. He kicked at the desk and tipped Lord Montagov’s whole chair back, letting it teeter dangerously on its hind legs. “In these prior months, before your father wanted to keep her alive for information, why did you never hunt her down?”
Roma stood up, fire stirring beneath his skin. Dimitri did not protest when he stormed out of the office. Dimitri was probably trying to drive him into storming off anyway, all the better to make him look bad when his father returned to find him missing. Uncaring about his father’s irritation, Roma swerved into the nearest empty room and dropped into a settee in the dark, biting back the curses he wanted to let loose.
The dust around him stirred in disturbance. When the room settled again, Roma felt covered by a grimy veneer. Three paces away, the windows had broken blinds, casting irregular silver shapes onto the opposite wall. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear a heavy clock in the corner ticking too, counting down his time in this abandoned room before someone inevitably found him.
Roma exhaled, then slumped ungraciously onto the armrest. He was exhausted by this; he was exhausted by Dimitri’s accusations. Yes—Roma had wet his hands with blood at fifteen years old for Juliette. For what it mattered, he might as well have lit the fuse that tore through a whole household of Scarlets. All to save Juliette, all to protect her, though she had never asked for such protection. Once, he would have burned the damn city to the ground just to keep her unharmed. Of course it was hard for him to hurt her now. It went against every fiber of his being. Every cell, every nerve—they had grown into place with one mantra: protect her, protect her. Even after knowing she had become someone else, even after hearing all the terrible things she had done in New York . . . she was still Juliette. His Juliette.
And now she was not. She had made that abundantly clear. He kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Much as he loathed Dimitri, one point was true—Roma kept refusing to commit to vengeance because some part of him screamed that he knew Juliette better than this. That something was up her sleeve, that she could never betray him.
But Marshall was dead. She’d made her choice. Just as Roma had chosen Juliette’s life over her Nurse’s. Just as Roma had done what he did to send her back to America, send her far, far away. Even if she lied about her coldness, even if she hadn’t feigned her weeping, soft eyes that day behind the Communist stronghold—it didn’t matter. Marshall was unforgivable.
Answer me something first. Do you still love me?
“Why wouldn’t you fight?” Roma whispered into the empty room. His head was light. He could almost imagine Juliette sitting next to him, the smell of her flowery hair gel dancing beneath his nose. “Why would you give up and give in to the blood feud in the most despicable way?”
Unless he was wrong. Unless this wasn’t a hard choice at all, and there was no love anywhere to be found in Juliette Cai.
Enough was enough. Roma jerked upright, his fists tightening. They were to work together at present, but that arrangement would end sooner or later. If Juliette wanted to play the route of the blood feud, she would get blood for blood. It would wound him just as deep, but he would plunge in the knife.
He had to.
The door to the sitting room opened then, and Lord Montagov poked his head in, frowning when he sighted Roma on the settee. Roma had half a mind to wipe at his eyes just in case, but that would have looked more odd than staring ahead blankly, not letting his father see his full expression.
“Dimitri said you might have wandered in here,” his father said. “Can you not sit still for a single minute?”
“Are we to resume the meeting?” Roma asked, diverting the question.
“We covered enough.” Lord Montagov frowned in distaste. “Stay inside. There’s a riot tonight.” He closed the door.
Ten
A revolution is never pretty. Nor is it clean, quiet, peaceful.
The city watches the crowds gather that night, clustering for an uprising that might finally be heard. Whispers travel about monsters and madness, and it hits a breaking point—how much misery can the streets hold before there is spillover? The unions flock together in effort. They threaten all who listen with what will happen if the gangsters and imperialists are not removed. The starving will wilt into nothing. The poor will blow away with the wind. And in Shanghai, where the factory workers number up to the hundreds and thousands, they are listening.
The people march, throngs coming upon police stations and garrison posts. They enter foreign concessions and swarm through Chinese territory alike. The foreigners bolt their doors with trembling hands; the gangsters step out onto the streets, adding numbers to the troops sent to break the crowds.
“Is this a good idea?” one worker among the crowd asks.
His friend casts him a glance askew, shivering. It is freezing cold in Shanghai. Ice crystals remain on the streets, and when a bird caws from somewhere afar, the sound hardly echoes because a gust blows fiercely enough to drown it out.
“What does it matter?” his friend replies. “The city can only get worse. We may as well try.”
They approach the station. From above, one might admire the way the crowd fans out, flaming torches raised to the sky, blots of orange running a perfect semicircle in formation, blocking off all paths of escape. It almost looks like warfare, and the wind leans forward.
“This is your first and only warning,” an officer bellows through a megaphone. “Those causing civil unrest will be beheaded on sight!”
It is not an empty threat. Here, at the outskirts of the city, where gangster royalty and foreigners would rarely go, there have already been sightings upon sightings of decapitated heads impaled upon lampposts. They decorate street corners like mere shop signs, used as a warning to other dissidents who dare attempt to overthrow the territory they live in. It has come to this; it is not enough to expect loyalty, not enough to scare by force.
The Scarlets have long known that the people are no longer afraid of them. And that is something for the Scarlets to be afraid of.
“No gangster rule!” the crowd demands at once. “No foreign rule!”
The officers ready in formation. Broadswords glimmer under the silver moonlight—an option far messier than bullets, but rifles are short on supply. The Nationalist armies have their pick of the weaponry, and they have taken the guns to fight a real war elsewhere.