Page 93 of Our Violent Ends
“The hell you are.”
“Quit running from me,” Roma snapped. “We need to talk.”
“Really?” Juliette exclaimed. A bullet struck the mouth of the alley, and Juliette knew that they had been spotted. “You want to talknow?While the city undergoes revolution?”
Behind them, Benedikt and Marshall were wide-eyed, uncertain if they needed to step in and facilitate this. They could either demand that Juliette to accept it, or persuade Roma to back off, and neither option seemed very likely to have success. Only Alisa offered a little thumbs-up as Roma turned over his shoulder, waiting to see if another bullet was coming.
“Benedikt, Marshall,” he said. There was a note of awe in his voice that he could at last say those two names together again, the way that things were supposed to be—the return to a normal he knew even if the world around him was splitting apart. “Please take Alisa to the safe house.”
“Roma—”
“I’m standing here until Juliette agrees to talk,” he warned. “If the workers storm this alley, then they themselves can move me.”
Juliette stared at him, flabbergasted. “You have lost your mind.”
True to his word, he was unmoving as Benedikt and Marshall exchanged a quick nod, nudging Alisa to hurry and go. Alisa reached over to squeeze Roma’s arm as they passed by, whispering a quick, “Stay safe,” before the three of them disappeared. Then it was only Roma and Juliette and an alley soaked in red.
“It is not a difficult choice, Juliette,” he said. Voices now, coming right by the main road, seconds away from turning into the alley. “We can leave, or we can die here.”
Juliette felt the press of his fingers on her wrist. She wondered if he noticed her pulse beating a cacophony under his touch.
“For crying out loud,” she said darkly, shaking his grip loose so that his fingers entwined with hers instead, blood mixing on skin, pulling him away from the mouth of the alley. “You are so dramatic.”
Just as the workers rounded into the alley and loosed their ammunition, Juliette and Roma disappeared through the narrow back passages and merged into the city.
Thirty-Two
Blockades were already forming on the streets, an attempt to close the Concessions before the havoc traveled here, too. Roma and Juliette reached their intended destination in the nick of time, turning onto a thin street before British soldiers could rope it off. Every window they hurried past had its curtains drawn tight. The sounds of gunfire followed on their heels. Fighting would soon arrive in the vicinity.
“Quick,” Juliette whispered, opening the door to the safe house. After accepting that he was going to keep playing vigilante, she had warned Marshall to keep his temporary residence unlocked when he was not there—to ensure that it seemed unoccupied if any Scarlets were to come looking—and she was relieved to find that he had listened. This was the closest Scarlet location. She figured there was no harm in taking shelter here, especially when it was outside proper International Settlement territory, hovering at the edges of Zhabei.
Just as Roma hurried in and Juliette bolted the door, there came shouting from the British soldiers at their makeshift barricade. Their voices coursed down the street, bringing a hush upon the apartments as every resident inside waited for chaos to erupt.
“Are the windows boarded?” Roma demanded.
Juliette didn’t answer; she only waited for Roma to beeline for the windows and pull at the curtains, breathing out in relief when he found them to be nailed shut with wooden panels.
“The darkness didn’t give it away?” she muttered, bringing her lighter to a candle on the table.
The first echoes of shooting began outside. Perhaps Juliette should have tried to get home instead, tried to organize the Scarlets to fight back. Somehow, she had a feeling it would not make a difference. For the first time, the gangsters were not only outnumbered but vastly overpowered.
Roma pulled the curtains shut tightly. He waited there for a moment, then turned around, folding his arms and leaning up against the boards. There was nowhere really to sit: Marshall had made the place cozy, but it was still as small as a crawl space. One chair, propped near the stove, and a mattress on the floor, the blankets resembling a nest atop it.
Juliette opted to lean up against the door. They remained like that, on opposite ends of the room, unspeaking.
Until Roma said: “I’m sorry.”
Juliette’s eyes widened a fraction. For whatever reason, there was anger roiling in her belly. Not anger at Roma. Just anger—at the world.
“Why areyousorry?” she asked quietly.
Slowly Roma inched away from the window. She watched as he trailed his fingers across the surface of the table and found no dust, a hint of fascination flashing in his eyes before his gaze flickered to the coat hanging on the wall. It seemed Roma had come to the realization that this was where Marshall had been living.
Roma took another step across the room. In answer to her question, he gestured at the blood on her hands.
“He was still your cousin, Juliette. I’m sorry.”
Juliette closed her fists, then tucked them under her arms, folding her posture. Her head was a storm. She had fired on her cousin. Fired on his men—her own men—Scarlets, all of them. Still, she couldn’t quite regret it. She would live with this forever, live with her cousin’s blood on her hands, and in the dark of night when no one could hear her, she would cry her tears and mourn the boy he could have been. She would mourn the other Scarlets just as she mourned the White Flowers she had destroyed in the blood feud, and even more so, because their loyalty should have been their protection, and yet Juliette had turned on them.
