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“You give me no choice,” Roma replied. His voice was strained. “I need your cooperation.”
The music rang sharp and then it moved fast, and as Roma twirled her outward, her skirts clinking alongside the tune, Juliette’s resistance snapped to attention. When she came back, she wasn’t content to let Roma lead. Despite their stance, the moves, the steps, the angle of their hands—despite everything about the waltz that determined she was the subservient partner, Juliette started to dictate where they were stepping.
“Why do you not dance with my father, then?” she asked, taking in a deep gulp of air as the next spin came. “He is the voice of this gang.”
Roma was fighting back. His grip was tight on her hand, his fingers pressing into her waist like he was trying to press his fingerprints into her dress. If she had only heard his voice, she would not have known the pressure he was under. His voice was easy, casual.
“I fear your father would shoot me in the face.”
“Oh, and you don’t fear that I would do the same? It would appear my reputation doesn’t precede me.”
“Juliette,” Roma said. “You have power.”
The music came to an abrupt stop.
And they froze too, just as they were—eye to eye, heart to heart. As the people around them broke away in light laughter, switching partners before the music started again, Roma and Juliette simply stood there, heaving for breath, chests rising and falling, as if they had just engaged in close-contact combat instead of the waltz.
Step away, Juliette told herself.
The pain of it was almost physical. The years had worn on between them, had aged them into monsters with human faces, unrecognizable against old photos. Yet no matter how much she wanted to forget, it was like no time had passed at all. She looked at him and she could still remember the terrible dip in her stomach when the explosion happened, could still feel the tightness in her throat that signaled the onslaught of tears, worsening and worsening until she was breaking down against the exterior wall of her house, holding her scream back with nothing but the palm of her silk-gloved hand.
“You must consider it.” Roma spoke quietly, like any loud noise could startle the bubble that had formed around them, could stomp down the strangeness between them, boiling and boiling to the surface. “I give my word that this is no ambush. This is a matter of preventing chaos from descending onto the streets.”
Once, a long time ago, at the back of a library while a storm raged on outside, Juliette had asked Roma, “Do you ever imagine what life would be like if you had a different last name?”
“All the time. Don’t you?”
Juliette had thought about it. “Only sometimes. Then I consider all that I would miss out on without it. What would I be if I weren’t a Cai?”
Roma had lifted onto his elbow. “You could be a Montagov.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Very well.” Roma had leaned in, close enough that she could see the twinkle in his dark eyes, close enough to see her own blushing face in the reflection of his gaze. “Or we could erase both names and leave this entire Cai–Montagov nonsense behind.”
Now she wanted to tear out the memories, launch them as a wad of spit right at Roma’s face.
You give your word. But you have always been a liar.
She opened her mouth, the words to turn Roma away balanced right at the tip of her tongue. Then her gaze went to a rapidly approaching blur of movement coming toward him, and she blanched, her jaw wiring shut.
Roma became stock-still when he sensed the gun that Tyler had pointed to his head.
“Juliette,” Tyler said. Where the loose sleeves of his dress shirt billowed with the light wind, his hands were perfectly still, not a single tremor to the steady grip on his weapon. “Step away.”
Juliette considered the situation. Her eyes darted a quick inventory of the foreigners around them, taking in their scandalized gasps and their confused, wide eyes.
She needed to deescalate this right now.
“What is wrong with you?” Juliette scolded, feigning outrage as she stepped away.
Tyler frowned. “What—”
“Put away your gun and apologize to this kind Frenchman,” she c
ontinued. She placed her hands on her hips, like she was Tyler’s snappy aunt instead of a girl with a heartbeat that threatened to tear through her rib cage.
Tyler’s expression morphed from furious to perplexed and back to furious again. He was buying it. It was working.
