Page 72 of Our Violent Ends
“Juliette,” Rosalind emphasized when she didn’t get an answer. “Didn’t your collaboration with the White Flower heirend?”
Juliette had neither the time nor the energy for this. She pressed at her hair, choking back a deep exhale. The chiming of bells sounded nearby, signaling nine o’clock.
“I’m working with him willingly.”
“Willingly . . .” Rosalind’s echo trailed off, the confusion and absolute disbelief in her expression deepening. Her eyes flicked from Juliette to Roma and then back again, and Juliette resisted the urge to flinch, knowing that her cousin could not possibly see what Juliette was afraid she might see. “You’re openly colluding with the enemy. You have a straight shot, right now, through his head—”
Rosalind spoke as if Roma weren’t standing right there, listening to her plot his death.
“Just trust me on this.” Juliette tried to sound reasonable. “There is an incredible amount of difference between killing an enemy too soon and killing them when the time is right. This isn’t a good time.”
Rosalind took a step back. “It always comes to this,” she said softly. “You decide when the blood feud does and does not matter. The Cais decide when they are enemies and when they are not, and the rest of us must fall in line.”
“Rosalind,” Kathleen said sharply.
Juliette blinked, surprised by the accusation. She wanted to guess that Rosalind was just being spiteful, that Rosalind thought it unfair Juliette could collaborate with Roma without consequence while she had to sneak around with her lover. Only that didn’t quite align with the resentment in Rosalind’s voice. It felt larger than that. It feltolder—not a burst of anger from the heart but something that had been building up from the sludge of the gut.
Rosalind shook her head. “Whatever,” she said softly. “I need to go to my shift at the burlesque club.”
She turned and walked off, heels clicking quickly into the crowd of Chenghuangmiao, leaving a pocket of silence in her wake. Juliette’s eyes flitted to Roma. He did not give any indication that this had shaken him in any way. All he appeared was bored, and it was too dark for Juliette to check for his other tells.
“We’re wasting time,” Juliette said, her voice raspy when she spoke up again. “I’m going to pull the electric panel at the back of the restaurant and then lure Tyler up to his apartment upstairs. On my cue, Kathleen, you can accompany Roma into the lab. Between the two of you, I’m sure you can figure out which papers are relevant. Are we ready?”
Kathleen nodded. Roma, too, offered an affirmative shrug.
Juliette sighed. “All right, then.” She plunged into the restaurant.
“I suppose we should have clarified what exactly Juliette’s cue will be,” Kathleen remarked when the restaurant fell dark. A few of the patrons inside gave a shout of surprise. Otherwise, they merely continued eating.
“Yes, well,” Roma Montagov said, “given that it is Juliette, I am sure it will be loud and obvious.”
An unbidden sound of amusement escaped from Kathleen, and though she clamped down on it immediately, Roma’s expression twitched too—not entirely enough to qualify as amused, but certainly not stoic, either. Kathleen’s inappropriate levity turned to scrutiny. As they fell into a taut, waiting silence, she bit her lip, fighting the urge to speak further. This was far from the first time she had observed Roma Montagov and Juliette working together despite their multiple attempts to kill the other. And if Juliette would not say anything about why...
“I hope,” Kathleen said, unable to resist the temptation, “you understand that Juliette is doing you a great favor.”
Roma immediately scoffed. “There are no favors in this city. Only calculation. You heard what she said to your sister, did you not?”
Kathleen had.There is an incredible amount of difference between killing an enemy too soon and killing them when the time is right.And it seemed she was the only one who had heard the hitch in her cousin’s voice that indicated she was lying. How strange it was. Both that Roma Montagov seemed angered by Juliette’s intent to destroy him and that Kathleen could see Juliette didn’t intend to at all.
“She is saying what she thinks Rosalind wants to hear.”
Roma frowned. “I do doubt that.”
Kathleen tilted her head. “Why?”
This time Roma really did laugh. It was a disbelieving sound, like Kathleen had asked him if it were possible to breathe without air.
“Miss Lang,” he said, his voice still soaked with incredulity, “in case you forgot, Juliette and I are blood-sworn enemies. You and I, too, are blood-sworn enemies.”
Kathleen looked at her shoes. They were getting dusty, picking up the weird bits and pieces always littered about the sidewalks.
“I do not forget,” she said quietly. She bent down to wipe at the strap across her heel. “I used to think this feud could be stopped if both gangs would just understand each other. I used to draw so many plans to send to Juliette when she was in America. So many things we could say, we could propose, we could put into effect so the White Flowers would see that we were people who didn’t deserve to die.”
She straightened up. There was still no cue from Juliette. Only a dark, foreboding building, rumbling with confusion as some of the restaurant patrons wandered outside. Roma lowered his hat to avoid recognition, but he was listening.
“Only it’s not that, is it? It was never the problem of alienation. It doesn’t matter how deeply we tell the White Flowers of our pain. You know. You have always known, because you tell us of your pain too.”
Roma cleared his throat. “Isn’t that the whole point of a blood feud?” he finally asked in response. “We are equals. We do not try to colonize the other, as the foreigners have done. We do not try to control the other. It is only a game of power.”
