by Chloe Gong
Her father tapped his fingers on the table slowly.
“I suspect he knows more,” Juliette continued, “but he was careful.”
Lord Cai fell into silence once again, allowing the noise around him to lull and pick up and fall. Juliette wondered whether his mind was elsewhere at this very moment. He had been terribly blasé at news of the White Flower heir on their territory, after all. Given how important the blood feud was to the Scarlet Gang, it only showed how much more consequential politics had become if Lord Cai was barely giving Roma Montagov’s infraction any serious consideration.
Before her father had the chance to resume speaking, however, the swinging doors to the kitchen slammed open, the sound ricocheting so loudly that the aunt seated next to Juliette knocked her cup of tea over.
“If we suspect the White Flowers have more information than we do, what are we doing sitting around discussing it?”
Juliette gritted her teeth, mopping the tea from her dress. It was only Tyler Cai who entered, the most irritating among her first cousins. Despite their shared age, in her four years away, it was as if he hadn’t grown up at all. He still made crude jokes and expected others to kneel before him. If he could, he would demand the globe turn in the other direction simply because he thought it was a more efficient way to turn, no matter how unrealistic.
“Do you make a habit out of eavesdropping at doors instead of coming in?” Juliette sneered, but her scathing remark went unappreciated. Their relatives jumped to their feet at the sight of Tyler, hurrying to fetch a chair, to fetch more tea, to fetch another plate—probably one engraved with gold and crusted with crystal. Despite Juliette’s position as the heir to the Scarlet Gang, they would never simper after her in such a manner. She was a girl. In their eyes, no matter how legitimate, she would never be good enough.
“It seems simple to me,” Tyler continued. He slid into a seat, leaning back like it was a throne. “It’s about time we show the White Flowers who really holds the power in this city. Let’s demand they hand over what they know.”
“We have the numbers, the weaponry,” an obscure uncle chimed in, nodding and stroking his beard.
“The politicians will side with us,” the aunt beside Juliette added. “They have to. They cannot tolerate the White Flowers.”
“A territory battle is not wise—”
Finally, Juliette thought, turning toward the older second cousin who had spoken up, a sensible voice at this table.
“—but with your expertise, Tyler, who knows how much farther we could advance our turf lines.”
Juliette’s fists tightened. Never mind.
“Here is what we shall do,” Tyler started excitedly. Juliette cast a glance at her father, but he seemed content to merely consume his food. Since her return, Tyler had been finding every opportunity to upstage her, whether in conversation or through sidelong remarks. But each time, Lord Cai had stepped in to shut him down, to remind these aunts and uncles in as few words as possible to remember who the true heir was, to remember that this favoritism they were showing for Tyler would take them nowhere.
Only this time Lord Cai remained silent. Juliette didn’t know if he was abstaining because he found his nephew’s tactics to be laughable, or because he was actually taking Tyler seriously. Her stomach twisted, broiling with acid at the thought.
“—and it’s not as if the foreign powers can complain,” Tyler was saying. “If these deaths have been self-inflicted, it is a matter that could affect anyone. It is a matter of our people, who require our help to defend them. If we do not act now and take back the city for their sake, then what good are we? Are we to suffer another century of humiliation?”
The voices at the table sounded their approval. Grunts of praise; wrinkled, scarred thumbs stuck into the air; claps of esteem against Tyler’s shoulder. Only Mr. Li and her father were quiet, their faces held neutral, but that wasn’t enough. Juliette threw her utensils down, shattering her fine porcelain chopsticks into four pieces.
“You want to deliver yourself into White Flower territory?” She stood up, smoothed down her dress. “Be my guest. I’ll have a maid untangle your guts when they send them back in a box.”
With her relatives too shocked to protest, Juliette marched out of the kitchen. Her heart was thudding despite her calm demeanor, afraid that maybe this time she really had pushed it too far. As soon as she was in the hallway, she paused and glanced over her shoulder, watching the kitchen doors settle. The wood of those doors, imported from some distant nation, was carved with traditional Chinese calligraphy: poems that Juliette had memorized a long time ago. This house was a mirror of their city. It was a fusion of East and West, unable to let go of the old but desperate to mimic the new, and just like the city, the architecture of this house didn’t quite meld well with itself.
The beautiful but ill-fitted kitchen doors flew open again. Juliette barely flinched. She had expected this.
“Juliette. A word.”
It was only Tyler who had followed her out, a frown etched onto his face. He had the same pointed chin that Juliette had, the same single dimple at the lower-left corner of his lip that appeared in times of distress. How they looked so alike was beyond her. In every family portrait, Juliette and Tyler were always placed together, cooed at as if they were twins instead of cousins. But Juliette and Tyler had never gotten along. Not even in the cot, when they played with toy guns instead of real ones, and Tyler never missed a single wooden pellet aimed at Juliette’s head.
“What is it?”
Tyler stopped. He folded his arms. “What is your problem?”
Juliette rolled her eyes. “My problem?”
“Yes, your problem. It’s not amusing when you shut down my every idea—”
“You’re not stupid, Tyler, so stop acting like it,” Juliette interrupted. “I hate the Montagovs just as you do. We all hate them, so much that we bleed from it. But now is not the time to be waging a territory war. Not with our city already carved up by the foreigners.”
A beat passed.
“Stupid?”
Tyler had missed the point entirely, and yet he was offended. Her cousin was a boy with steel skin and a heart of glass. Ever since he lost both his parents too young, he had become this faux Scarlet anarchist, pretentious for the sake of it, wild within the gang for no reason, and because like called to like, his only friends were those who hung around hoping to shortcut a connection with the Cais. Everyone tiptoed around him, happy to throw choreographed punches and let him think himself powerful when each hit bounced off, but give him one sudden kick down his middle and he would shatter.
“I hardly think defending our livelihood is stupid,” Tyler went on. “I hardly think that reclaiming our country from those Russians—”
The problem was that Tyler thought his way was the only correct way. She wished she could find it in herself to not fault him. After all, Tyler was just like her; he wanted what was best for the Scarlet Gang. Only in his mind, he was what was best for the Scarlet Gang.
Juliette didn’t want to continue listening. She turned on her heel and started to leave.
Until her cousin snagged her by the wrist.
“What kind of an heir are you?”
Quick as a flash, Tyler slammed her into the wall. He kept one hand scrunched against her left sleeve and the rest of his arm splayed against her clavicle, pushing just enough to make a threat.
“Let me go,” Juliette hissed, jerking against his hold, “right now.”
Tyler did not. “The Scarlet Gang is supposed to be your first priority. Our people should be your first priority.”
“Watch yourself—”
“You know what I think it is?” Tyler breathed in, his nostrils flaring, deep wrinkles marring his face into absolute disgust. “I’ve heard the rumors. I don’t think you hate the Montagovs at all. I think you’re trying to protect Roma Montagov.”
Juliette became utterly still. It was not fear that overtook her, nor any sort
of intimidation that Tyler had sought to incite. It was indignation, and then hot, hot anger. She would tear Roma Montagov apart before she ever protected him again.
Her right hand jerked up—fist clenched, wrist hard, knuckles braced—and made centered, perfect contact with her cousin’s cheek. There was a moment when he could not react. A moment when Tyler was only blinking, the lines of his pale face trembling in shock. Then he stumbled, letting go of Juliette and whipping his head to look at her, hatred stamped into the hollows of his eyes. A red slash bruised the line of his cheekbone, the result of Juliette’s glittering ring scraping through skin.
It wasn’t enough.
“Protecting Roma Montagov?” she echoed.
Tyler froze. He hadn’t had a chance to move, hardly had a chance to take the slightest step back, before Juliette had pulled forth a knife from her pocket. She pressed it right to his cut and hissed, “We are not kids anymore, Tyler. And if you are to threaten me with outrageous accusations, then you will answer for them.”
A soft laugh. “How so?” Tyler rasped. “Will you kill me right here in the hallway? Ten paces away from the breakfast table?”
Juliette pressed the knife in deeper. A stream of blood started down her cousin’s cheek, trailed into the lines of her palm, dripped along her arm.
Tyler had stopped laughing.
“I am the heir of the Scarlet Gang,” Juliette said. Her voice had grown just as sharp as her weapon. “And believe me, tángdì, I will kill you before I let you take it from me.”
She shoved Tyler off the blade of her knife then, the metal flashing red. He said nothing more, offered no response save a blank stare.
Juliette turned, her heeled shoes twisting grooves into the carpeting, and walked off.
Four
There’s nothing here.”
Bristling, Roma Montagov continued his search, prodding his fingers into the cracks along the boardwalk.
“Shut up. Keep looking.”
They had yet to find anything of note, that much was true, but the sun was still high in the sky. White-hot rays reflected off the waves quietly knocking against the boardwalk, blinding anyone who looked out for too long. Roma kept his back turned to the murky, green-yellow waters. While it was easy to keep the bright sun out of his field of vision, it was much harder to keep at bay the incessant, annoying voice jabbering on behind him.
“Roma. Roma-ah. Roma—”
“By God, mudak. What? What is it?”
The hours left in the day were aplenty, and Roma wasn’t particularly fond of stepping foot back into his house without finding something for his father. He shuddered at the thought, imagining the thunderous disappointment that would pockmark his father’s every word.
“You can take care of this one, can’t you?” Lord Montagov had asked this morning, clapping a hand over Roma’s shoulder. To a casual observer, it may have looked like Lord Montagov had applied a fatherly gesture of reassurance. In reality, the clap had been so forceful that Roma still bore a red mark on his shoulder.
“Don’t let me down this time, son,” Lord Montagov whispered.
It was always that word. Son. As if it even meant anything. As if Roma hadn’t been replaced by Dimitri Voronin—not in name but in favoritism—relegated to the roles that Dimitri was too busy to take. Roma hadn’t been given this task because his father trusted him greatly. He was given it because the Scarlet Gang was no longer the only problem plaguing their business, because the foreigners in Shanghai were trying to replace the White Flowers as the new force against the Scarlets, because the Communists were being a constant nuisance trying to recruit within White Flower ranks. While Roma scoured the ground for a few bloodstains, Lord Montagov and Dimitri were busy dealing with politicians. They were fending back the tireless British and Americans and French, all of whom were drooling for a slice of the cake that was the Middle Kingdom—most hungry for Shanghai, the city above the sea.
When was the last time his father had actually ordered him to go near the Scarlet Gang as he had last night, like a proper heir who was to know the enemy? It wasn’t because Lord Montagov wanted to protect him from the blood feud. That had long passed. It was because his father didn’t trust him one bit. Giving Roma this task was a last resort.
A long, irritated groan brought Roma’s attention back to the present.
“You know,” he snapped, turning around and shielding his eyes from the light reflecting off the river, “you chose to come today.”
Marshall Seo only grinned, finally satisfied now that he had drawn Roma’s attention. Rather than shooting back a quip, Marshall stuck his hands into the pockets of his neatly pressed slacks and casually changed the topic, jumping from Russian to rapid, ranting Korean. Roma managed to pick up a few words here and there: “blood,” and “unpleasant,” and “police,” but the rest were lost, adrift in the void of lessons he had skipped when he was young.
“Mars,” Roma interrupted. “You’re going to have to switch. I don’t have the brain for translation today.”
In response, Marshall only continued with his tirade. His hands were gesticulating with his usual vigor and enthusiasm, moving at the same pace as he was speaking, syllable stacked upon syllable until Roma wasn’t quite certain if Marshall was still using his native tongue, or merely making noises to express his frustration.
“The general gist is that it smells like fish here,” a third, quieter, wearier voice sighed from a few paces away, “but you don’t want to know the sort of analogies he’s spouting to make the comparison.”
The translation came from Benedikt Montagov, Roma’s cousin and the third person who closed off their trio within the White Flowers. His blond head could usually be found bent toward Marshall’s dark one, a matching pair conspiring some move to aid Roma’s next task. Presently it was inclined downward, his attention focused on examining a stack of crates as tall as he was. He was so focused that he was unmoving, only his eyes scanning left and right.
Roma folded his arms. “Let’s be thankful it smells like fish and not dead bodies.”
His cousin snorted, but otherwise did not react. Benedikt was like that. He always seemed to be simmering over something right below the surface, but nothing ever came through, no matter how close he came to it. Those on the streets described him as the watered-down version of Roma, which Benedikt embraced only because such an association with Roma, no matter how disparaging, gave him power. Those who knew him better thought him to have two brains and two hearts. He was always feeling too much but thinking twice as fast—a modestly loaded grenade, putting its own pin in anytime someone tried to pull it out.
Marshall did not have the same control. Marshall Seo was a raging, two-ton explosive.
He had finally stopped with his fishy comparisons, at least, dropping to a sudden crouch by the water. Marshall always moved like this—like the world was on the verge of ending and he needed to jam as many movements in as possible. Ever since Marshall had been embroiled in a scandal involving another boy and a dark storage closet, he had learned to hit first and hit fast, countering the talk that followed him around with a Cheshire-cat grin on his face. If he was tougher, then he could not be beat down. If he was more vicious, then nobody could drop their judgment upon him without fearing a knife pressed to their throat.
“Roma.”
Benedikt waved his hand, and Roma strode over to his cousin, hoping that he had found something. After last night, the bodies had been removed and sent to the local hospital for storage, but the blood-splattered crime scene remained. Roma, Marshall, and Benedikt needed to put together why five of their men, a Scarlet, and a British police officer would tear out their own throats, only the crime scene was so sparse of clues that obtaining answers felt like a lost cause.
“What is it?” Roma asked. “Did you find something?”
Benedikt looked up. “No.”
Roma deflated.
“This is the second time we have searched the scene from corner to corner
,” Benedikt went on. “I think we’ve done all we can—there cannot be anything we have missed.”
But other than examining the crime scene, what else could they do to understand this madness? There was nobody to question, no witnesses to interrogate, no backstories to piece together. When there was no perpetrator to a crime, when the victims did such a terrible thing to themselves, how were answers supposed to be found?
Over by the water, Marshall sighed loudly in exasperation, resting his elbow on his knee, his head on his fist. “Did you hear about an alleged second incident last night?” he asked, switching to Chinese now. “There are whispers, but I received nothing conclusive.”
Roma pretended to find something of particular interest in the cracks along the ground. He couldn’t hold back his grimace when he remarked, “The whispers are true. I happened to be there.”
“Oh, excellent!” Marshall bolted upright, clapped his hands together. “Well, not quite excellent for the dead victim, but excellent! Let us go search the new scene instead and hope it will offer more information than this foul-smelling—”
“We cannot,” Roma cut in. “It occurred within Scarlet territory.”
Marshall stopped pumping his fists, disheartened. Benedikt, on the other hand, was watching his cousin curiously.
“And how did you happen to be on Scarlet territory?” he asked. Without bringing us, no less was the unspoken addition tacked to the end of his question.
“My father sent me to obtain answers from the Scarlets,” Roma replied. That was half a truth. Lord Montagov had indeed waved Roma off with the order to determine what the Scarlets knew. Walking up to the burlesque club had been Roma’s own doing.
Benedikt arched an eyebrow. “And did you obtain answers?”
“No.” Roma’s gaze wandered off. “Juliette knew nothing.”
A sudden bang echoed loudly into the relative calm of the waterfront. Benedikt had accidentally elbowed the crates in disbelief, sending the one at the top of the stack hurtling onto the ground and splintering into dozens of wooden slabs.
