Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Seven

Juliette wasn’t one who liked relying on eavesdropping, but she was out of options. With her heels and dresses, she wasn’t the sort of person who was very good at being sneaky, either, which meant her current predicament was truly a last resort. At any moment, she almost expected someone to wander out into the gardens and ask what she was doing, hanging from a guest bedroom balcony, leaning as closely as she could to the open window of her father’s office.

“. . . forces?”

Juliette shifted forward, trying to hear more than a few snippets of each sentence. Fortunately, it was past dusk, and the purpling hour of the night obscured her strange position against the walls of the house. There weren’t many Scarlets around the house to catch her like this anyway. She had been sitting on the couch all afternoon, observing the quiet around her. For however many hours Juliette wasted away in the living room, dragging a sharp nail down the armrest, the front door had not opened once—no one coming in, no one going out.

In the twenty-four hours that had passed since learning Dimitri Voronin was the blackmailer, Juliette had assigned messengers to watch every corner of the city. Until Rosalind gave up a location, there was no way to seek Dimitri. Until the Nationalists actually acted, until the Scarlets acted, there was no way to know how the coming fight would unfold if Dimitri were truly going to unleash madness on behalf of the Communists. Lord and Lady Cai feigned ignorance. When Juliette gave them Rosalind’s accusation about the coming massacre, passed off as a rumor on the streets, her father had waved her off with assurances that this was nothing she needed to concern herself with. Which made no sense. Since when was the heir of the Scarlet Gang supposed to remain unconcerned? This was her job.

“. . . numbers . . . unknown.”

Juliette cursed under her breath, hooking her leg over the balcony when it sounded as though the meeting in Lord Cai’s office was ending. The thing was, she had been waiting to hear something—anything—from the eyes she had placed across the city. Scarlet messengers were commonly prone to false reports. Even when nothing was awry, the more dramatic ones who wanted to prove themselves always came in with a whisper or two picked up from unreliable sources.

Juliette was playing eavesdropper in her own house because she had received absolute silence. And silence didn’t mean the city had settled into peace and harmony. It meant the messengers weren’t reporting to her anymore. Someone—multiple someones—had clammed them up, and after all, there were only two people in this gang higher-ranked than her. Her parents.

“Have you seen Juliette?”

Juliette froze right in the middle of the guest bedroom. Slowly, when it seemed the conversation was only passing in the hallway, she crept forward to press her ear to the door.

“She was in the living room earlier, Lady Cai.”

For a second Juliette wondered if she was finally being summoned. If her parents were going to sit her down and explain what the Scarlet Gang was planning, assuring her that they would never collaborate with Nationalists if collaboration meant bathing their city in a wave of red.

“Ah, well. Her father asks to keep her away from the third-floor sitting room if you see her. We have a meeting.”

The voices faded. Juliette’s fists clenched tight before she even realized what she was doing, carving her nails deep into the skin of her palms. She could not fathom the meaning of this. Her mother was the one who told her time and time again that Juliette deserved to be heir. Her father was the one training her to take over, who summoned her into his meetings with politicians and merchants alike. What was different now?

“Is it me?” she whispered into the bedroom, her breath disturbing a fine layer of dust gathered on the wall. Juliette was a traitor. Juliette was a child. When push came to shove, maybe her parents had decided she wasn’t competent enough.

Or maybe it was them. Maybe whatever plans were being dreamed up behind closed doors were so horrid that they were too ashamed to pass them on.

Juliette pulled the door open, popping her head out. At the other end of the hallway, a group of gossiping relatives bade one another a good night and dispersed, parting ways like they were taking separate exits in a stage play. Only when the coast was clear did Juliette slink out, trekking down the stairs and poking her head into the kitchen, where Kathleen was skinning an apple.

“Hey,” Juliette said, leaning her elbows onto the counter. She switched to French, in case any maids were listening. “We need to do something.”

“And by something,” her cousin replied, thumb still working at the apple peels, “what are you referencing?”

Juliette’s gaze roamed around. The kitchen was empty, the hallways otherwise quiet. It was eerie for there to be so little noise, for the household to be absent of messengers dropping in and out. It made the mansion feel unwell, like some dark shroud had crept into the walls, muting sound and blocking sensation.

“I think we need to scare Rosalind,” Juliette said. “Juste un peu.”

The knife in Kathleen’s hands came to a stop. Her eyes flickered up. “Juliette,” she said sharply.

“I can’t sit around like this!” The days were counting down. The clock kept ticking forward. “I cannot claim to stop the Nationalists. I do not claim to have the power to stop a whole political movement. But we can stop Dimitri from making it worse. Rosalind is sitting on his location. I know it!”

When Juliette fell quiet, she was breathing so hard that her chest heaved up and down. Kathleen was unspeaking for a moment, letting Juliette put herself together again, before shaking her head.

“What does it matter, Juliette?” Kathleen asked quietly. “Don’t rush to answer me. Really ask yourself it first. What does it matter? Whatever is about to break out, what is one more element of chaos? It will be bullets against madness. Gangsters with knives against monsters with claws. It will be a fair fight.”

Juliette bit down on the inside of her cheeks. Of course it mattered. One life was one life. One life did not become forgettable merely because it was lost in the masses. She wouldn’t regret the lives she had taken, but she would remember them.

Before Juliette could say so, however, she was interrupted by the quiet groan of the front door opening. Its hinges squealed despite the messenger’s effort, and when Juliette rushed into the living room, his wince was immediate.

It was dusk. The house was dim with shadows. Nevertheless, Juliette immediately zeroed in on the letter the messenger held, marching his way.

“Give me that.”

“I’m sorry,” the messenger said. He attempted a firm tone, but his voice shook. “This isn’t for you, Miss Cai.”

“Since when has anything,” Juliette exclaimed, “in this house been not for me?”

The messenger resolved not to answer. His lips thinning, he simply tried to push by, heading for the staircase.

When Juliette was twelve, she had felt a sudden flare of pain inside her abdomen while watering the flowers over her Manhattan window. The feeling had spread like an internal invasion, had felt so hot and severe that she’d dropped the watering can with a spasm—watched it fall and smash to pieces on the pavement four stories below when she crumpled to the floor. Later, they would tell her that her appendix had ruptured, had refused to keep on functioning and had torn a hole in its own wall, pushing infection into the rest of her body.

That was what her anger felt like now. Like something had died, and now its vicious pus and poison had burst inside of her.

Juliette unwound the garrote wire from her wrist. In one lunge, she had it around the messenger’s throat, silencing his cry before it could escape.

“The letter, Kathleen.”

Kathleen snatched it quickly, and Juliette held on to the stranglehold for just a second longer until the messenger slumped. The moment he did, Juliette loosened the wire and let the messenger collapse in unconsciousness. By then Kathleen was already reading the letter. By then her hand was pressed over her mouth, so much horror in her eyes that she could have been a painting rendered by tragedy.

“What?” Juliette demanded. “What is it?”

“It’s for your father, from the highest command within the Nationalists,” Kathleen answered shakily. “The Central Control Commission of the Kuomintang have made their decision. The Communist Party of China is anti-revolutionary and has undermined our national interest. We have voted unanimously for them to be purged from the Kuomintang—and from Shanghai.”

“We knew it was coming,” Juliette said quietly. “We knew.”

Kathleen thinned her lips. The letter was not finished yet. Having paled tremendously, she didn’t speak the rest aloud, she merely flipped the letter around so Juliette could read it for herself.

Powers of execution should be reserved for the elite, imprisonment for the masses. All members of the Scarlet Gang are to report for duty at the turn of midnight on April 12. The White Flowers may be treated as Communists when the purge begins. When the city wakes again, we shall have no adversaries. We shall be one combined beast to fight the true enemy of imperialism. Put the Montagovs’ heads on pikes and be rid of them once and for all.

In their very living room, the clock tolled for ten o’clock.

Juliette staggered back. “At the turn of midnight April twelfth?” A faint buzzing started up in her ears. “Today . . . today is April eleventh.”

Put the Montagovs’ heads on pikes. Was that what this blood feud had come to? Total and utter annihilation?

Kathleen broke for the front door, the letter fluttering beside the unconscious messenger. She had already burst outside, progressing several steps down the main path before Juliette caught up to her, grabbing her cousin by the wrist and halting her in her tracks.

“What are you doing?” Juliette demanded. The night was cold and dark around them. Half the lamps in the gardens were turned off, perhaps to save on electricity, perhaps to hide the fact that there was not a single guard standing sentry by the front gate.

“I’m going to warn them,” Kathleen replied, her words a tight hiss. “I’m going to help the workers fight back! They’re allowing execution powers! It will be a bloodbath!”

The truth was, the bloodbath had long been building. The truth was, execution powers were already being used; it was only now coming right into the open.

“You don’t have to.” Juliette looked up at the windows across this side of the house, all illuminated. The night seemed so dark in comparison, its shadows almost liquid. When she lowered her voice, she almost thought she would choke on her next breath, like the darkness was pressing against her chest. “We can run. It’s over. Shanghai has been taken over by Nationalists. Our way of life is dead in the ground.”

Everything—either dead or dying. Juliette almost keeled over with the thought. All that she had worked for, all that she thought was her future: none of it mattered. Territories disappeared in minutes, loyalties switched in seconds, and revolution bowled over anything that was in its path.

“Mere moments ago,” Kathleen said tightly, “you were resolute to stop Dimitri.”

“Mere moments ago,” Juliette echoed, her voice breaking, “I didn’t know that there was an execution order for Roma’s head. We have two hours, biǎojiě. Two hours to leave. To run far, far away. Gangsters never belonged in politics anyway.”

Slowly, Kathleen shook her head. “You have to leave. I’m not going anywhere. They’re going to kill them, Juliette. Civilians. Shop owners. Workers. That letter was a pretense—there will be no imprisonment. With the force of gangsters alongside the soldiers, anyone who takes to the streets in support of the Communists will be shot on sight.”

It would be terror. Juliette did not deny that. If she went to her parents right now and demanded answers, they would not deny it either. She knew them too well to think otherwise. Maybe that was why she was afraid of confronting them. Maybe that was why she was choosing to run instead.

“Do you realize?” Her tears refused to fall, but they hovered in a thick sheen over her eyes. “We have passed violence, passed mere revolution. Nationalist against Communist—this is civil war. You’re enlisting yourself as a soldier.”

“Maybe I am.”

“But you don’t have to!” Juliette did not mean to yell. But here she was. “You’re not actually one of them!”

Kathleen pulled away vehemently. “Aren’t I?” she asked. “I am at their meetings. I draw their posters. I know their protest calls.” She tore her jade pendant off. Held it up, in the moonlight. “Short of these riches, short of my last name, what is stopping me from being one of them? I could just as easily be another face in the factories. I could just as easily have been another abandoned child thrown onto the streets, begging for scraps!”

Juliette breathed in. And in. And in. “I am selfish,” she whispered. “I want you to come with me.”

Around them, the lamps flickered, then turned off completely. With only moonlight illuminating the gardens, Juliette wondered briefly if this was some indication that trouble was coming to the Scarlet house. It was not; at times like these, trouble no longer needed to act under the guise of darkness. Trouble was a roaring, raging fire.

Kathleen offered a small, shaky smile, then tied her pendant back on. “We have been allowed selfishness,” she said. “But so many others in this city have not. I cannot find my own peace unless I help them, Juliette. I cannot find my peace with this city unless I stay.”

Juliette knew what a losing argument looked like. A long second passed, and Juliette waited to see if her cousin would falter, but she did not. Kathleen’s expression remained determined, and some part of Juliette knew that this was a goodbye. Her face crumpling, she reached for Kathleen, pulling the two of them close in a tight hug.

“Do not die out there,” she snapped. “Do you understand me?”

Kathleen choked out a laugh. “I’ll try my best.” Her embrace was equally fierce, as was her expression when they released each other. “But you . . . We’re under martial law. How are you to—”

“They can block off our trains and dirt roads, but we’re the city above the sea. They cannot monitor every swath of the Huangpu River.”

Kathleen shook her head. She knew how stubborn Juliette was when she needed something done. “Find Da Nao. He’s a Communist sympathizer.”

“Da Nao the fisherman?”

“The one and the same. I’ll get a note to him telling him to wait for you.”

Juliette felt a hot stone of gratitude roil in her stomach. Even at a time like this, Kathleen was running tasks for her. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t care if this makes me too much of a Westerner. I need you to hear my indebtedness.”

“You only have two hours, Juliette,” Kathleen said, waving her off. “If you’re going to run . . .”

“I won’t make it, I know. I’ll buy everyone more time. I can hold off the purge until morning at least.”

Kathleen’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to approach your parents, are you?”

“No.” Juliette didn’t know how they would react. It was too risky. “But I have a plan. Go. Don’t waste time.”

Afar, a bird had started cawing. The sound was high-pitched, a warning from the city itself. With a firm nod, Kathleen stepped back, then gave Juliette’s hand one last squeeze.

“Keep fighting for love,” she whispered. “It is worth it.”

Her cousin disappeared off into the night. Juliette allowed herself one ragged breath. She let the quavery sound rush outward and tear a rip into her composure before she inhaled deeply and clutched her hands over the silk of her dress.

When Juliette stepped back inside her house, the living room remained silent, the messenger still lying on his side. She picked up the fallen letter and lifted her head, staring up the staircase. The light in her father’s office was off. Now she knew: in the third-floor sitting room, her parents and whoever else they had deemed worthy to invite in were discussing senseless massacre for the sake of the Scarlet survival.

Juliette squeezed her eyes shut. The tears fell then, finding an easy path down her cheeks.

Keep fighting for love. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to hold love to her chest and run, run like hell so the rest of the world couldn’t touch it. It was exhausting to care about everyone in the city. She thought she had the power to save them, protect them, but she was still one girl, shut out of everything important. If she was going to be treated like a mere girl, then she would act like one.

The wind blew into the living room, the front door still cast ajar. Juliette shivered once, then suddenly couldn’t stop shivering, the tremors rocking from head to toe.

I will fight this war to love you, Roma had said, and now I will take you away from it.

Enough was enough. In this moment, Juliette decided she did not care. This was a war they had never asked to be a part of; this was a war that had dragged them in before they had the chance to leave. Roma and Juliette had been born into feuding families, into a feuding city, into a country already fractured beyond belief. She was washing her hands of it.

She was not fighting for love. She was protecting her own, everyone else’s be damned.