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She hurried ahead, her elbow stinging where he had touched her
. Roma was fast to follow, as he always was, as he had always known how, trailing after her in a way that seemed natural to the untrained eye, so that anybody looking upon them would think it to be a coincidence Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai were walking near each other, if the prying eye recognized them at all.
The grandiose building ahead loomed into view. Number 17, Arsenal Road.
“We’re here,” Juliette announced coldly.
The same hospital where they had brought all the bodies after the explosion.
“Keep your head down.”
Just to defy her, Roma squinted up at the hospital. He frowned like he could sense the familiarity of such a place merely by the shakiness of Juliette’s voice. But of course he didn’t—he couldn’t. She watched him stand there, easy in his own skin, and felt her palms burn with fury. She supposed he knew exactly how deeply this city felt the weight of what he had done. The blood feud had never been as bloody in those first few months after his attack. If she had leaned in to smell the letters that Rosalind and Kathleen sent across the Pacific Ocean, breathed in the ink that they scrawled messily onto thick, white paper to describe the casualties, she imagined that she would have been able to smell the gore and violence that slicked the streets red.
She had believed Roma to be on the same side as her. She had believed that they could forge their own world, one free of the blood feud.
Nothing but lies. The explosion in the servants’ house was the most serious hit that the White Flowers could ever get away with. They would have been spotted trying to blow the main mansion, but the servants’ house was unwatched, dismissed, an afterthought.
So many Scarlet lives, gone in an instant. It had been a declaration of war.
And it could not have been achieved without Roma’s help. The way the men had snuck in, the way the gate had been left open—it was all intel that only Roma could have known from the weeks and weeks spent with Juliette.
Juliette had been betrayed, and here she was, still reeling from it four years later. Here she was, harboring this pulsating lump of hatred burning in her stomach that had only gotten hotter and hotter in the years she had been robbed of a confrontation, an explanation, and yet still she did not have the courage to sink her knife right into Roma’s chest, to get revenge in the only way she knew how.
I am weak, she thought. Even as this hate consumed her, it was not enough to burn away every instinct she had to reach for Roma, to keep him from harm.
Perhaps the strength to destroy him would come with time. Juliette simply needed to bide it.
“Head down,” she prompted again, pushing through the double doors to enter the hospital foyer.
“Miss Cai,” a doctor greeted as soon as Juliette approached the front desk. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Help me like this—” With one hand, Juliette mimed her lips zipping shut. With the other, she leaned over the desk and swiped the key to the morgue. The doctor’s eyes widened, but he looked away. The key cold in her palm, Juliette kept moving through the hospital, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. It always smelled like decay here.
Before long, they had reached the back of the hospital, and Juliette stopped in front of the door to the morgue with a huff. She turned around to face Roma, who had been walking while staring at his shoes, as commanded. Even with his best effort, his shrinking-violet act wasn’t convincing. Poor posture was ill suited on him. He was born with pride stitched to his spine.
“In here?” he asked. He sounded hesitant, like Juliette was leading him into a trap.
Without speaking, Juliette slid the key in, unlocked the door, and flipped on the light switch, revealing the single corpse inside. It was lying on a metal table that took up half the floor space. Underneath the white-blue lighting, the dead man looked to have already wasted away, mostly covered by a sheet.
Roma stepped in after her and took one look at the tiny room. He started toward the corpse, rolling up his sleeves. Only before he could lift the sheet, he paused, hesitating.
“This is a small hospital and someone else is probably going to die within the hour,” Juliette prompted. “Get a move on before they decide to transfer this man to a funeral home.”
Roma threw a glance back at Juliette, eyeing the impatient stance she had adopted.
“Do you have somewhere better to be?”
“Yes,” Juliette said without hesitation. “Get on with it.”
Visibly prickled, Roma yanked the sheet off. He appeared to be surprised when he found bare feet on the man.
Juliette pushed off from the wall. “For crying out loud.” She marched over and dropped to a crouch by the shelves beneath the metal table, retrieving a large box of bagged items and dumping out its contents. After tossing aside the slightly bloody wedding ring, the very bloody necklace, and the toupee, Juliette found the mismatched pair of shoes that had been on his feet that day. She peeled the bag open and shook the nicer one out.
“Yes?”
Roma’s lips were thinned, his jaw pulled tight. “Yes.”
“Can we agree that this man was indeed at the scene, then?” Juliette asked.
