Page 60 of Our Violent Ends
“The Communists and the White Flowers are working together,” she said to Kathleen, who startled, not expecting to see her back so soon.
Kathleen’s magazine slid right out of her hands. “I beg your pardon?” she said. “Since when?”
Juliette twisted her arms around her middle and sat primly on her bed. Their two enemies had just merged like the head of a reverse hydra. “I don’t know. I—” She stopped, blinking at her cousin, who was now sliding off the blankets and getting her shoes on. “Where are you going?”
“Making a phone call,” Kathleen answered, already walking out the door. “Give me a minute.”
Juliette dove backward, splaying her arms and legs like a five-point star atop her sheets. Roma was supposed to have found the Frenchman by now. They were supposed to have threatened or tortured a name out of him and eradicated the threat of a blackmailer. But in all honesty, it didn’t even seem to matter. Who cared about a few dead bodies if revolution was sweeping into Shanghai? What was one blood-soaked nightclub up against a blood-soaked city? This blackmailer was not Paul Dexter. They didn’t want the city flooded with monsters and madness; they only wanted... well, Juliette didn’t know.
“See, this is why we always check our sources.”
Juliette bolted upright, her hair crackling with her movements. The pomade in her curls would start to loosen if she kept disturbing it like this. “Is it false?”
“Not false exactly,” Kathleen replied. She closed Juliette’s bedroom door, leaning up against it like her body was an additional barrier against eavesdroppers. “But it is not Lord Montagov who has allied with them. It is a sect within the White Flowers that the Communists are bragging about having secured. Honestly, with the way Da Nao was talking...” Kathleen trailed off, her thin, arched brows furrowing together in thought. “I wonder if the Montagovs even know about it.”
The intrigue only seemed to thicken. Juliette shuffled back on her bed, drawing her leg up and pressing her chin to her knee. For three long seconds, she stared into space, trying to make sense of what Kathleen was saying.
If he is a White Flower,Juliette had asked on that train platform,then why does he look rather murderous toward you, too?
“What do you mean by a sect?”
Kathleen shrugged. “I mean exactly what I think Da Nao meant. A group within the White Flowers seems to have enough power and influence to be making agreements with the Communists on their own. They may have been working together for quite some time now—it is only that the information has recently slipped to the Nationalists.”
And just like that, the connection snapped in place.
“Huh.”
Kathleen blinked. “Huh?” she echoed, mimicking Juliette’s casual tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Juliette drew her other leg onto the bed too. If any of her relatives saw her right at this moment, they would surely chastise her for sitting in such an appalling manner.
“The blackmailer was asking for money and money and more money, and then suddenlyweapons? Why weapons?” She inspected her fingers, the varnish on her nails and the barely visible chip on her pinkie. “What if it’s the Communists? They need weapons for revolution. They need moneyandweapons to break from the Nationalists and take the city.”
The Communists working with a sect of the White Flowers who did not heel to Lord Montagov’s nor Roma’s word. It made perfect sense. It was why, for months, the monetary demands had only come to the Scarlet Gang before ever approaching the White Flowers. Because they werealreadysiphoning resources out of the White Flowers.
“Slow down,” Kathleen said, though Juliette was speaking plenty slow. “Remember what happened the last time you accused a Communist of the madness.”
She remembered. She had accused Zhang Gutai and killed the wrong man. She had been led astray by Paul Dexter.
But this time...
“It makes sense, does it not?” Juliette asked. “Even if the Communists have their revolution, even if they get rid of us gangsters, they cannot overthrow their Nationalistallies. The only way they can win this revolution without the Nationalists swooping in afterward and claiming that Shanghai has been taken for the entire Kuomintang to enjoy”—Juliette splayed her hands out—“is by preparing to fight a war.”
Silence swept into the room. All that could be heard were the sprinklers outside watering the gardens.
Then Kathleen sighed. “You better pray it is not. You may be able to kill a monster, Juliette. You may purge all the insects that a foreign man has brought in. But you cannot put yourself in the middle of a war.”
Juliette was already scrambling up, opening her wardrobe. “If the Communists are using these monsters to start the war, then I sure can.”
“I fear you will killyourselftrying.”
“Kathleen, please.” Juliette poked her head into her hangers, searching the floor of the wardrobe. She caught sight of a few revolvers, discarded necklaces, and a shoebox—which contained a grenade, if she was remembering correctly. At the back of the mess, her lightest coat had fallen into a bundle. She retrieved it and shook it out, then held the garment in the crook of her elbow. “I’m not that easy to kill.”
Kathleen was trying her best to pull an angry face. It wasn’t as effective when she was smoothing a hand along her softly curled hair, twisting a strand along her finger.
“A secret White Flower working with the Communists still doesn’t add up,” she argued. “This all began with Paul Dexter’s note.In the event of my death, release them all.He wrote to someone he knew. He wrote into the French Concession.”
“A French White Flower,” Juliette replied in answer. “It still tracks.”
