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The racket of their private room was loud enough to compete with the rest of the restaurant outside. Lord Cai was in the seat beside her, but these dinners were not opportunities for father-daughter discussions. Her father was always too occupied with other conversation to utter a single word to her, and her mother was taking charge of the second table in the room, leading the conversation there. This wasn’t the setting for personal conversations. This was prime time for members of the Scarlet Gang’s inner circle to jostle and brag and drink to the edge of death against one another to win favors.
Tyler was usually one of the loudest people at these tables. Today, however, he was off chasing rent money instead, as he had been for the past few days. While Juliette was put in charge of the madness, Tyler was running her heiress roles in her place, and he reveled in them. Juliette stiffened each time she heard him yelling through the house, gathering his entourage so they could set out—and it was happening often. It seemed like every minute had a new dodger, a new account going into the red. Tyler would wave his gun and threaten store owners and house tenants until they coughed up the necessary amount, until the Scarlets had made back what they were owed. It was hypocritical for Juliette to be looking down on Tyler for simply doing what was technically her job, she knew, but performing such a job in this climate made her uneasy. People were not refusing to pay now because they wished to rebel; they were simply not making enough income because all their customers were dying.
Juliette sighed, twiddling her chopsticks. The food spun before them on the glass turntable, presenting roasted ducks and rice cakes and fried noodles without pause. Meanwhile, Juliette was mechanically picking up servings from the center and bringing them to her plate, putting food in her mouth without really tasting it. It was a shame, really. One glance at the decadent greens of the vegetables, at the gleam of the scaled fish, at the glistening oils dripping off the meat was enough to water the mouths of anyone.
Except Juliette had zoned out yet again. Realizing that she was raising the ashtray to her mouth instead of her ceramic teacup, she shook herself back to reality and caught the very last syllable coming out of Rosalind’s mouth—not nearly enough to determine any of what her cousin had said, but just enough to know that it had been a question and something needing a worthwhile answer out of Juliette instead of a smile and a generic, inquisitive noise.
“I’m sorry, what?” Juliette said. “You were talking, weren’t you? I’m sorry, I’m terrible—”
And she was about to be even more terrible because she would never know what Rosalind had asked. At that moment, her father was clearing his throat, and the two tables in the private room fell silent immediately. Lord Cai rose, his hands clasped behind his rigid back.
“I hope everyone is well,” her father said. “There is something I must address tonight.”
Some gut feeling in Juliette tightened. She braced.
“Undeniable proof has come to my attention today that there is a spy in the Scarlet Gang.”
Utter quiet sank into the room—not an absence of sound, but a presence in itself, like an invisible, heavy blanket had been settled over all their shoulders. Even the servers stopped—one boy who had been pouring tea froze midmovement.
Juliette only blinked. She exchanged a glance with Rosalind. It was almost common knowledge that there were spies in the Scarlet Gang. How could there not be? The Scarlets certainly had people among the common ranks of the White Flowers. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to consider the White Flowers had invaded their messengers, especially given how often their people got the jump on the Scarlet Gang.
Lord Cai continued.
“There is a spy in the Scarlet Gang who has been invited into this room.”
For a short, horrific second, Juliette felt a pang of fear that her father was referring to her. Could he have found out about her association with the White Flowers—with Roma Montagov—and taken it the wrong way?
Impossible, she thought, clenching her fists beneath the table. She hadn’t given away any information. Surely something had to have happened to damage their business to elicit a declaration like this from her father.
She was right.
“Today three important potential clients pulled out of their planned partnerships with us.” Juliette’s father was holding himself with the air of exhaustion, as if he was sick and tired of battling nervous clientele, but Juliette saw through the guise. Her eyes skipped over him and traced the tense lines of her mother’s stiff shoulders across the room. They were furious. They had been betrayed.
“They knew of our pricing before it had even been proposed,” Lord Cai continued. “They went to the White Flowers instead.”
Doubtlessly after the White Flowers had approached them with lower prices. And how could a spy know of such protected information unless they were in the inner circle? This wasn’t the work of a messenger who had vague ideas regarding drop-off locations. This was the very core of Scarlet business, and it had sprung a leak.
“I know all your backgrounds,” Lord Cai went on. “I know you are all born and bred of Shanghai. Your blood runs thousands of years back to ancestors who link us together. If there is a traitor here, you have not been turned by true loyalty or anything of that caliber, but rather by the promise of money, or glory, or false love, or merely by the thrill of playing spy. But I assure you…” He settled back into his seat and reached for the teapot. He refilled his ceramic cup, his hand completely steady as the leaves overflowed to the very, very brim, spilling onto the red tablecloth and staining it until the darkness looked like a bloom of blood. If he poured any longer, Juliette feared the hot tea would spill down the tablecloth and burn her legs. “When I uncover who you are, the consequences by my hand will be far greater than what the White Flowers may do upon the notification that you will no longer act the traitor.”
To Juliette’s relief, Lord Cai finally set the pot down just before the overspill reached the edge of the table. Her father was smiling, but his eyes, despite the aged crinkle of crow’s feet, stayed as blank as an executioner’s. In this moment, Lord Cai didn’t choose verbal words to deliver his message. He let his expression speak for him.
There was no doubt which parent Juliette had received her monstrous smile from.
“Please,” Lord Cai said, when nobody moved after the close of his threat. “Let us continue eating.”
Slowly the powerful men and the wives who whispered into their ears picked up their chopsticks again. Juliette couldn’t quite sit still anymore. She leaned toward her father and whispered that she had to run to the washroom. When Lord Cai nodded, Juliette rose, making for the door.
Outside the Scarlet Gang’s private room, Juliette leaned against the cold wall, taking a second to catch her breath. She saw the other patrons of the restaurant to her left, where the volume was at a roar—a collective effort of different small tables each fighting to be heard over the others. To her right, there were separate doorways leading to the kitchen and the washrooms. With a sigh, Juliette marched into the washroom.
“Calm yourself,” she told herself, leaning her head against the large metal sink. She drooped her neck, breathing deeply.
Wha
t would her father say if he knew that she was working with Roma Montagov? Would he see it the way she did, that giving up this one point of pride could help all their people if they managed to stop the madness? Or would he get stuck on the very core of Juliette’s betrayal: that she had had unlimited chances to shoot Roma in revenge for all the blood his hands had spilled, and hadn’t?
Juliette pulled her chin up, facing the distorted bronze mirror before her. All she saw was a stranger.
Perhaps she was in over her head. Perhaps the correct course of action was to break off any alliance with Roma Montagov and go to her own people instead, to figure out a way to corner Walter Dexter with brute manpower and make him talk—
