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Twenty-Nine

Twenty-Nine

I can’t talk him out of it,” Benedikt Montagov said.

Juliette glanced at him. They were standing alongside the Huangpu River, looking out into the water. Two days until the duel, and the weather was starting to turn warm—or perhaps it was the glint of the sun over the choppy waves that made the day seem overly golden.

How strange it was that Benedikt would agree to meet her like this, hands stuck in his pockets, unflinching when she arrived. He maintained his berth, certainly. Even in making nice, there might always be a part of him that thought Juliette could shoot at any moment. But still, he had arrived. He had arrived and was sharing information like they were old friends, united on a cause.

“You’re sure that we cannot break Alisa out?”

“I don’t know where she is,” Juliette replied. “This city is too big. Just as I can hide Marshall Seo, Tyler can hide Alisa Montagova for as long as he wishes.”

“Then there is no way around it,” Benedikt said plainly. “Tyler will get the duel he wants.”

Juliette took a deep, deep inhale, holding it in her throat.

“He has dictated that it will be a Russian duel, so they both only get one shot,” she said, her words coming out as a croak. “But this is Roma and Tyler. Someone is going to die.”

In the duels of stories, that one shot often went awry—striking the ground instead, piercing through a cap instead. But neither Roma nor Tyler was capable of such ineptitude.

“It’s worse,” Benedikt said. “If we’re really going by the old rules, the person who challenged the duel receives first shot. What are the chances that Tyler will miss?”

Juliette squeezed her eyes shut, bracing against the intense prickling that had started up in her head. The wind was not helping. The wind was luring out what terror she was trying to clamp in, asking for a dance.

“None,” she whispered. “Absolutely none.”

She didn’t want to see this unfold. Scarlet against White Flower. Family against her whole heart, beating red and bloody.

“You can talk him out of it, Juliette.”

Juliette startled, opening her eyes again and turning to look at Benedikt Montagov. He had switched to using her first name. Perhaps he didn’t mistrust her as much as it seemed.

“I have tried. Tyler won’t listen to me.”

“Not Tyler.”

Her stomach dived, wondering if Benedikt was implying what she thought he was. When the wind blew across her face this time, it was as frigid as ice. A tear had tracked down her cheek, running sharply and quickly, dropping to the concrete before it could be seen. They were silent for a few moments while the Bund rumbled around them, with Benedikt looking out into the river and Juliette looking at him, wondering exactly how much he knew.

She got her answer when Benedikt caught her gaze and asked, “Why don’t you tell him?”

“Tell him what?” she replied. She knew, of course. The truth. Tell him the truth. Benedikt had been at the hospital that day. He had seen Roma’s unwillingness to walk away from Juliette. It was not hard to put together what they were to each other.

Lovers. Liars.

“It is not like Roma cannot keep a secret,” Benedikt said. “He cares little for his own life because he cares so much about everyone else’s. He would throw himself in harm’s way for Alisa because she’s all he has left. But if he knows he still has you, he might be less eager to rush into death. Tell him you lied. Tell him Marshall is alive. He’ll have to find a different plan.”

Juliette shook her head. Pretty as it might be to think it all came back to this—to her, to love—that was one mere fracture on a whole web of shattered glass.

“It won’t do anything,” she replied quietly. “Besides, I am not afraid of him revealing to the world that Marshall is alive. I am afraid of him forgiving me.”

Benedikt swerved to face her. He looked aghast at her words. “Whatever is there to be afraid of?”

“You don’t understand.” Juliette hugged her arms to herself. “So long as he hates me, we are safe. If we love again . . . this city may just kill us both for daring to hope.”

She would be saving him from one strike of death just to push him right into another.

Indeed, Benedikt’s long silence seemed to say. I don’t understand. Juliette had watched Benedikt walk into the safe house in search of Marshall Seo. She had almost taken a bullet to the face in Benedikt’s vengeance for Marshall Seo. She knew that Benedikt understood fear. Fear of love and all the ways that it might not come back, all the ways that it could hurt. But he didn’t fear a blood feud, and Juliette was glad he had been spared from at least one terrible thing.

“Spit it out, Benedikt Montagov,” she whispered when the silence drew on.

Benedikt turned his back to the river.

“I think,” he said eventually, so faintly that it seemed like his mind was elsewhere, “you do yourself a disservice by refusing to hope.”

Before Juliette could think to respond, Benedikt had already given her a friendly pat on the shoulder and was walking away, leaving her standing at the Bund, one lone girl with her coat billowing in the wind.

Kathleen had leafed through the correspondences, read the information that had been passed on. There was no doubting it anymore, no matter which direction one looked at it from. All the times Lord Cai had made threats to the Scarlet Gang, warning of a spy in the inner circle. All the times he had gone around the house, making note of which relatives resided within earshot of his meetings, cutting down their numbers one by one in hopes that he had managed to purge the spy out. It had been Rosalind. It had always been Rosalind.

And Kathleen wanted answers.

She trekked up the stairs, single-minded in her task. Her sister had promised. Even oceans apart, it had been her, Rosalind, and Juliette—promising to protect one another, promising that they were untouchable so long as they stuck together. What was possibly more important than that?

Kathleen stopped outside Rosalind’s door, ignoring the Scarlet standing guard. She knocked, her knuckles coming down harshly enough to hurt.

“Rosalind, open the door.”

“She’s hardly in a position to be walking around,” the Scarlet said. “Just go in.”

“No,” Kathleen managed. “No, I want her to get up and look me in the eye.”

Never had Kathleen felt such treachery stab her through the gut. She understood if Rosalind had lost her loyalty to the Scarlet Gang. She understood if Rosalind had finally snapped, determined to ruin the Cai name after years and years of being kept out from the core of the family. That alone was something Kathleen could forgive, even if it was a slap to Juliette’s face.

What Kathleen couldn’t comprehend was why she hadn’t been told.

“Rosalind,” she snapped once more.

She was answered with silence. Too much silence. When she finally tried to open the door, it was locked.

“How long has it been since you checked in on her?” Kathleen demanded.

The Scarlet blinked, staring at the handle that wouldn’t turn. “Merely an hour.”

“Merely an hour?”

Something was wrong. That much was immediately clear. The Scarlet quickly waved for Kathleen to take a step back. She shifted out of the way, and the Scarlet kicked the door hard, blowing it off its hinges with a thud. The door whipped back against the wall and the room came into view: an empty bed, a chair pushed over, and the window wide open, the gossamer curtains blowing in the breeze.

Kathleen rushed to the window. There was a rope hanging over the ledge, made entirely of bedsheets, secured to one of the legs of the four-poster bed. It trailed down, down, down to the flower beds below, where the roses were trampled into the soil.

Kathleen heaved a long, bitter sigh. “She made a run for it.”

If Roma hadn’t been polishing his pistol in the storage room on the ground floor, he wouldn’t have heard the rustle in the alley outside.

The window was pulled open, the afternoon sunlight pouring into the dusty corners, reflecting off the brass lamps. When he set the cloth down, he heard a splash and then a quiet curse. It sounded like a girl whimpering in pain, footsteps coming nearer and nearer.

Roma’s immediate thought was that it was Alisa—that she had managed to escape and had found her way back home. Without even thinking, Roma pushed the window as wide as it would go and climbed through, his shoes clunking down on the wet clay ground outside. Nothing on the northern side. He spun around.

And saw Rosalind Lang, dressed in what looked like a nightgown, a heavy coat thrown over her shoulders.

Roma resisted the urge to rub his eyes, wondering if he was hallucinating. His lack of sleep in the last few days might finally be getting to him, because if Rosalind’s presence here wasn’t strange enough, her bedraggled state certainly was.

Then a beat passed, and Rosalind pulled a pistol from her coat. She raised it fast, seeming to expect a fight.

Roma didn’t return the gesture. He only raised his hands slowly and said, “Hello. What are you doing here?”

There was humor in this—it wasn’t lost on him, despite the utterly unhumorous situation. Once upon a time, before Roma met Juliette, before Roma rolled a marble at her feet and fell in love with her, he had been sent into Scarlet territory with another mission.

He had been sent in for Rosalind.

That was why his father had started to suspect him in the end. Rosalind Lang had become the talk of the town as the best dancer the Scarlet burlesque club had ever seen, and there had been plans for Roma to mingle into the Scarlet crowds, to get closer to Rosalind and obtain Scarlet information under the guise of a great, star-crossed love affair. Instead, Roma had heard rumors of Juliette Cai’s return to Shanghai and had switched gears while crossing onto Scarlet territory, wanting to see this terrible Scarlet heir for himself.

He hadn’t stood a chance. The moment he saw Juliette Cai for the first time, saw that smile playing on her lips, standing there at the Bund, it was a done matter. That false star-crossed love affair pivoted and turned real. Roma would claim, in reporting back, he hadn’t had any luck with their plan, yet he kept slinking into Scarlet territory regardless. Of course his father caught on.

How strange it was to find Rosalind Lang here, mere paces away from his father’s domain, five years later.

“One shout,” he said when Rosalind kept the pistol pointed in his direction. “That’s all it takes before White Flowers rush out of the house and you are riddled with bullets. Think carefully, Miss Lang.”

“About what?” Rosalind managed. Her hand was trembling. “I may think carefully and shoot you, or I may forget to think entirely and shoot you.”

Roma frowned. When he took a step closer, he saw the redness in her eyes, like she had been freshly crying. “Teach me how one should forget to think,” he remarked. “That sounds like a feat most valuable.”

He did not know what he was quite stalling for. It didn’t seem right, somehow, to draw forth a crowd of White Flowers and kill Rosalind Lang. Perhaps it was because he did not dislike her sister, and Roma had no inclination to bring hurt onto Kathleen Lang.

Perhaps it was because she reminded him of Juliette.

“Don’t think I won’t shoot,” Rosalind spat. “Shout for help. Do it!”

Roma did nothing. He only stood there, frowning. What could she possibly be doing here?

Finally, Rosalind gave up, a fresh tear tracking down her face as she lowered the gun.

“How much easier it would have been,” she whispered, “if it had been you instead. How good you are. How noble.”

Rosalind quickly pressed the back of her hand to her lips, like she was stopping herself from saying more. With a hard blink to clear her eyes of tears, she charged forward and hurried by, her shoulder brushing Roma’s as she passed. Roma stared on even after she disappeared, fixated on the mouth of the alleyway as if mere concentration could dissolve his bewilderment.

Maybe he should have shot her. It would have been what Juliette deserved. An eye for an eye. A life for a life.

Roma shook his head. But that wasn’t who he was. It wasn’t who he wanted to be. The Scarlet Gang had taken Alisa, and he would get her back honorably. The Scarlet Gang wanted to stoop low, and he would steer in an entirely new direction. He had washed his hands with enough blood. He was tired of it. Tired of the smell that permeated into his sleep, tired of hating so deeply that it burned him from the inside out.

Quietly, Roma climbed back in through the window.

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