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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.
