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“Please do not assign me an entourage,” Juliette said, shuddering. “I could outfight them in my sleep.”
Lady Cai glared at her through the mirror.
“What?” Juliette exclaimed.
“It is not about the fight,” her mother replied firmly. “It is about image. It is your people having your back.”
Oh God. Juliette could immediately sense the incoming lecture. It was an innate ability of hers, like how some people sensed incoming storms by the ache in their bones.
“Don’t forget, your father has been overthrown once or twice during his time.”
Juliette closed her eyes, sighing internally before forcing them open again. Four years had passed and her mother still delighted in recounting this story as if it taught the greatest life lesson known to mankind.
“When that despicable Montagov avenged his father’s death by killing your grandfather,” her mother said, “your father should have been the one to lead next.”
Lady Cai pulled the brush through another knot. Juliette winced.
“But he was even younger than you are now, so the businessmen removed him and decided one of their own would have the final say. They dismissed him as nothing but a boy and said that if he wanted to lead with no reason save his bloodline, then he should join the monarchy instead of a gang. But then, in—”
“—1892,” Juliette interrupted, taking over the story with theatrics, “with the p
eople on the streets of Shanghai directionless and running amok, with both the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers taken over by irrelevant associates while the rightful young heirs were shoved to the background, they at last revolted—”
Juliette snapped her mouth shut upon seeing the deathly glower her mother was giving her through the mirror. She grumbled an apology, folding her arms. She admired her father’s ability to climb back to the top, just as she could detachedly acknowledge that Lord Montagov—who had also been uprooted when his father died—was intelligent enough to do the same. Except in this period of time, while both gangs were led by men who cared naught for bonds and allegiance, only efficiency and money, the blood feud had been at its quietest.
“Your father,” Lady Cai said sharply, tugging on a strand of hair, “reclaimed his rightful title when he was older because he had people who believed in him. He appealed to the common majority—those who you see protecting him now, those who you see willing to give up their lives for him. It is all a matter of pride, Juliette.” Lady Cai ducked her head, pressing her face against her daughter’s until they were both staring ahead into the mirror. “He wanted the Scarlet Gang to be a force of nature. He wanted membership to be a badge that declared power. The commoners in the gang could think of nothing else more desirable, and behind him, they toppled the businessmen who had no choice but to accept their subservience.”
Juliette raised an eyebrow. “In summary,” she said, “it is a game of numbers.”
“You could say that.” Her mother clicked her tongue. “So don’t start believing that skill is all it takes to stay at the top. Loyalty plays its dirty hand too, and it is a fickle, ever-changing thing.”
With that Lady Cai set down her brush, squeezed Juliette’s shoulder, and said good night. Brisk, quick, and abrupt—that was her mother. She strode out of Juliette’s bedroom and shut the door behind her, leaving Juliette to mull on those parting words.
The rest of the world didn’t see it, but while Lord Cai was the face of the Scarlet Gang, Lady Cai did just as much work behind the scenes, running her eyes through every piece of paper that passed into the house. It was Lady Cai who had convinced her husband that a daughter would be far more capable of leading the Scarlet Gang next, rather than a male relative. So Juliette had been given the crown, and Lord Cai expected the gang to bend at the knee when Juliette became the head one day—out of expectation, out of blood loyalty.
Juliette leaned toward the mirror, touching her fingers to the lines of her face.
Was it loyalty that created power? Or was loyalty only a symptom, offered when the circumstances were favorable and taken away when the tides turned? It helped that Lord Cai and Lord Montagov were men. Juliette wasn’t naive. Their every messenger, every errand runner, every lower-tiered but fiercely loyal gangster was male. Most of the Scarlet Gang feared and revered Juliette now, but she was not in control yet. How would they react when Juliette tried to exert true power over them? Would she have to shed all that she was—ditch the glittery dresses and wear suits to be listened to?
Juliette finally pushed away from her vanity table, rubbing at her eyes tiredly. The day had worn on for far too long, yet her body felt restless instead of weary. When she collapsed onto the blankets atop her bed, her nightgown was sticky against her skin. She could hear her heartbeat thudding, and with the longer she lay there in the dark, the thudding only became more intense, until the sound was playing through her eardrums.
Wait—
Juliette bolted upright. Someone was knocking rhythmically on the glass doors of her second-floor balcony.
“No,” Juliette said aloud dully.
The knocking came again, slow, purposeful.
“No,” she repeated.
More knocking.
“Ah!”
Juliette clambered to her feet and stormed toward the sound, opening the curtains with more force than necessary. As the fabric settled, she found a familiar figure seated casually on the railing of her balcony, his legs swinging and his body backlit by the glow of the crescent moon. She swallowed hard.
“Really?” Juliette demanded through the glass door. “You climbed my house? You couldn’t have simply thrown a few pebbles?”
