Eighteen
Roma descended the stairs. Though his physical body had carried him here, had moved him through the motions of waving his thanks at the bartender, through lifting the curtain at the back of the bar, his head remained miles away, still hovering outside the hospital room and watching Alisa in her induced coma —her arms and legs strapped down to the bed for her own safety.
“I am undefeated!”
At the roar that traveled up the spiraling staircase, Roma’s mind returned to him, and his anger slammed back into full force. Blood boiling, he jumped the last ve steps, landing upon the oorboards with a heavy, wooden thump.
Roma ventured deeper into this shallow underground, navigating the room underneath the bar. The construction of this place had sucked up almost all of his father’s funds a few years back—the oors were uneven from overuse and the lights on the low ceiling ickered on and o at random. It smelled of sweat and piss and there were so many voices shouting over one another that this could have been a gathering for delinquents, but there was no doubting the exorbitant design of this place. One look was enough—at the ghting pit in the center of the room, at the ashes of silver built into the ropes that secured the ring—to know that this underground arena was one of Lord Montagov’s most prized investments. It was no wonder, given the betting charges down here had earned him back his losses within weeks.
“Don’t you two have better things to do than hang out amid all this?”
Roma dropped into a seat at a spectator’s table, inspecting the ceramic cups in front of Benedikt and Marshall.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Benedikt replied.
“This is the last time. I promise,” Marshall said. “Afterward—no, get him by the legs!”
Marshall’s attention had been drawn away momentarily by the ght. The crowd around the barrier cheered as the loser went down and the victor pumped his sts into the air.
“Terrible form,” Marshall muttered, turning his gaze back.
Disgruntled, Roma lifted the cup in front of Benedikt and took a cautionary sni. His cousin snatched it from his hands.
“Don’t drink that,” Benedikt warned.
“Vodka?” Roma asked in response, at last identifying the smell that had been wafting under his nose. “In a teacup? Really?”
“Not my idea.”
Marshall leaned in with a sly grin. “Yes, don’t blame your sweet cousin. It was mine.”
Their table suddenly shuddered with the impact of another man going down in the ring, the crowd roaring with cheers. A woman was marking the scores with a piece of chalk. In ocks before every ght, spectators ran to her with cash, calling out bets on who would win.
Roma wasn’t entirely surprised to see Dimitri Voronin stepping into the ring next. He seemed like the type to spend all his free time down here, mingling with the lth that coated the oors and feeling right at home. Roma, meanwhile, made it his goal to avoid this place. He would come down only if the matter couldn’t wait, as was the case now.
“I just spoke with my father at home,” Roma said. He angled his head so he didn’t have to watch Dimitri pump his sts and bare his teeth to the crowd. “He has stopped caring about the madness. He thinks it is something that can be waited out. He thinks that Alisa will simply wake up and snap out of it when she has grown tired of trying to tear out her throat.”
That was a half truth. Lord Montagov no longer wished to investigate the madness, but it was not apathy. It was because Roma had hit a nerve and struck him right where it hurt most. This inaction was punishment. For calling his own
father a coward, Lord Montagov would show him just how cowardly he could be, and let Alisa wilt away.
“He is an idiot.” Marshall paused. “No oense.”
“None taken,” Roma muttered. It was as if his father did not realize that they could not run a gang without gangsters. Lord Montagov had too much condence in himself—most of it undeserved. If the worst-case scenario arrived, he probably thought he could face o with death and demand their assets back.
“I have to do something.” Roma held his head in his hands. “But short of siphoning all of our funds to the lab so Lourens has more resources to work on a cure—”
“Hold on,” Marshall said. “Why wait for Lourens to make a cure from square one when there is word on the street about someone already having made a vaccine? We can steal the vaccine, run our research—”
“There is no way to know if the vaccine is real,” Benedikt cut in. “If you are speaking about the Larkspur, he sounds like an utter charlatan.”
Roma nodded in agreement. He had heard the rumors too, but it was nonsense—merely a way to prot o the panic sweeping through the city. If trained doctors could barely understand the mechanisms of this madness, how could one foreign man have dreamed up the cure?
“We must still nd that live victim Lourens requires,” Roma decided. “But…”
The sound of bones being crushed rang out from the ring, and the woman shouted for another contestant to take on the “godly Dimitri Voronin.” Roma cringed, wishing he could block out all the noise.
From the table beside them, a man rose and ran up excitedly.
“But,” Roma tried to continue over the uproar, watching the man go with a grimace, “we cannot sit idle and wait for a cure that Lourens may or may not nd. And truly, I am at a loss as to what else—”
A roar came from the crowds then, this one not of murderous joy but of outrage and disappointment. Roma whipped around, cursing when he saw why the ght had been interrupted.
Dimitri had pulled a gun on his next competitor.
Benedikt and Marshall rose, but Roma quickly held out a hand, telling them to sit down. Dimitri’s competitor, on closer appraisal, was not Russian. Roma
had missed it before in his cursory glance when the man was running up, but the sweep of pomade in his hair gave him away as American.
“Let’s calm down now, old boy.” The American laughed nervously. His accent conrmed Roma’s assessment. “I thought this was a ght, not a showdown in the Wild West.”
Dimitri pulled a face, failing to comprehend what the American was saying.
“Scarlet merchants who sneak in here face the consequences.”
His competitor’s eyes widened. “I—I’m not with the Scarlet Gang.”
“You trade with the Scarlet Gang. I have seen your face on their side of the streets.”
“But I am not aliated,” the man protested.
“In this city, you are one or the other.”
Roma got out of his chair. He cast his two friends a sharp look, warning them not to follow, then turned, his face locked in its harsh expression. The American continued stammering away in the ring. Dimitri strode closer with his gun. By the time Roma had pushed his way through the crowd and climbed over the ropes, Dimitri was directly in front of the American, his nostrils ared wide in his anger.
What is he so worked up about? Roma genuinely wondered. Slights like these could be easily ignored. It wasn’t as if this man was a true Scarlet. If he was stupid enough to come into a White Flower ght club, his ship had probably landed in Shanghai only days ago.
Roma jumped into the ring, his steps smooth until he was sliding right between the American and Dimitri’s barrel. “That’s enough.”
“Move, Roma,” Dimitri thundered. He pushed his gun forward in threat, until the cool metal pressed an indent into Roma’s forehead. “Run o—this does not concern you.”
“Or what?” Roma replied coolly. “You’ll shoot me?”
Up here, under these lights, surrounded by a crowd of White Flowers, Roma was safer than he could ever be. There was a gun to his head, but he was unafraid. Dimitri had one choice here, and with an ear perked to the dissatised screaming coming from the spectators, he seemed to be realizing that Roma had him trapped. To Dimitri, perhaps Roma was the annoying kid in the household
that Lord Montagov did not trust. To the people around them, Roma was heir of the White Flowers—a killer of Scarlets and neck-deep in every drop of blood he had spilled in the name of vengeance. Like it or not, Roma was still a Montagov, and Montagovs had power. If Roma said this American wasn’t a
Scarlet, he wasn’t a Scarlet.
Roma waved for the American to leave.
But as soon as the American stepped out of the ring, hurrying for the exit,
Dimitri aimed and shot him anyway.
“No!” Roma roared.
The crowd became a mixed cacophony of cheering and horried booing, split between those who had secretly been waiting for Dimitri to draw the blood they craved and those who were eyeing the situation warily now, wondering what role Roma played here if he could not get Dimitri to listen to him.
Roma had been simmering all day. He could not get the doctors to heed his demands. He could not convince his own father to see reason. He was the heir of the White Flowers—heir to an underground empire made of killers and gangsters and toughened merchants who had ed a country ravaged by war. If he could not hold on to their respect, could not rule over them and feed on their fear, then what the hell did he have?
Dimitri made one move against him, and suddenly Roma was surrounded by the jeering of the people he was supposed to command, looked at as if he were a child and not their heir. If it had been Dimitri at the hospital, perhaps the doctors would have listened. If Dimitri had told Lord Montagov that the madness was threatening the city more furiously than they had ever anticipated, Lord Montagov would have listened.
Roma’s control was slipping through his ngers like ne grains of sand.
When he closed his st, there were almost no grains left for him to hold on to.
His hands were almost empty.
If he lost the respect of these White Flowers around him, he lost his status. If he was no longer Roma Montagov, heir of the White Flowers, then he could not protect those he actually cared to keep safe.
He had already failed Alisa.
He didn’t want to keep failing.
“We will not tolerate the Scarlet Gang!” Dimitri was pumping his sts up and down, his handgun raising and lowering callously, riling up the spectators. “We will kill them all!”
A long time ago, Roma had told Juliette that her anger was like a cold diamond. It was something she could swallow smoothly, something to be placed upon other people, gliding along their skin in glitter and glamour before they realized far too late that the diamond had sliced them into pieces. He had admired her for it. Mostly because his own anger was the precise opposite—an uncontrollable wave of re that knew no subtlety.
And it had arrived.
In two quick motions, Roma lunged for Dimitri and disarmed him, throwing the gun into the crowd.
“You didn’t give the American a fair ght,” Roma said. He gestured for Dimitri to approach. “So I’ll let you make it up.”
The crowd screamed their approval. Dimitri stood still for a second, trying to decipher Roma’s motivation. Then, with a glance outward into the cheering, he cricked his neck and charged.
Roma refused to let this descend into the monstrous, bestial grappling that these places were known for. As soon as he slammed his arm up for his rst block, he remained quick, light on his feet, each one of his punches thrown with intent. The ring was rocking with the intensity of the spectators, the entire club raging so loudly that its sounds were ringing with a faint echo.
To the observers, everything was a rapid blur.
To Roma, it was all instinct. He had spent years pretend sparring with Benedikt, and it was nally counting for something. Roma switched from oense to defense within heartbeats; his right arm came up to block a punch and his left arm tore forward at the same time, landing a hit so solidly upon Dimitri’s jaw that the other boy stumbled back, a mania playing in his eyes.
It did not matter how furious Dimitri was. Roma was not tiring. It almost felt supernatural, this exhilaration rushing through the lines of his limbs, this pulsating, absolute need to win against the favorite, to have the people remember who was the actual Montagov and who was the fraud, who was the one deserving of dignity as the heir.
Then Dimitri got a hit on Roma’s cheek, and something stung, far more than he expected.
Roma hissed, stumbling back three steps to gather his bearings. Dimitri swung his arms, rolling out his shoulders, and under the lights, a ash of something glinted between his index and middle ngers.
He has a blade between his fingers, Roma realized dimly. Then, as if it was new information: Cheater.
“Ready to give up?” Dimitri bellowed. He thumped his chest. Roma could not look away from the glinting ashes of the blade. He couldn’t stop the ght now without losing face. But if he continued, all it would take was one swipe of Dimitri’s st across Roma’s neck to kill him.
The panic set in. Roma started to get sloppy. Dimitri kicked out and Roma took the hit. A st ashed in his periphery, and in his haste to get away, Roma dodged too hard, overjudging his balance and stumbling. Dimitri struck again. A ash of the blade: a slit opened on Roma’s jaw.
The crowd jeered. They could sense Roma’s energy depleting. They could sense that he seemed to have given up before the ght had even nished.
Are you a Montagov, or are you a coward?
Roma tore his gaze back up, steeling his throbbing jaw. What was he ghting so damn fair for? What kind of deluded world was he living in where the White Flowers wanted someone who ruled by honor, instead of sweat and blood and violence?
Roma reached out and grabbed a stful of Dimitri’s shoulder-length black hair. Dimitri hadn’t been expecting it. Nor had he expected Roma to slam a knee right into his nose, to take his arm and twist backward until Roma had a grip on his neck and a foot stomping down on the back of his knees.
Dimitri fell at to the ground of the ring. The crowd rushed for the ropes, shaking and shaking and shaking the ring.
Roma had him now. With his hands positioned where they were, he could snap Dimitri’s neck if he wanted. He could do anything and play it o as a mere accident—a slip of the moment.
“Roma Montagov, our victor!” the woman with the chalkboard announced.
Roma leaned down to Dimitri, close enough so Dimitri could not mishear
his words over the roar of the crowd.
“Don’t you forget who I am.”
With that, he stood, wiping his forearm across his bleeding mouth roughly.
He ducked under the ropes and landed solidly amid the crowd. This place was a boiling pot of volatile activity and emotions. Roma couldn’t get away fast enough.
“You,” he snapped. A man with a white handkerchief in his pocket jerked to attention. “Get someone to take the American’s corpse out of here.”
The man ran o to fulll his task. Roma found his way back to his friends, dropping into his seat with the weight of a thousand years.
“What a hero,” Marshall crooned.
“Shut up,” Roma said. He breathed in deeply. Again. Then again. In his head he saw the American crumple to the ground. Alisa’s unmoving body. The complete lack of emotion on his father’s face.
“Are you quite all right?” Benedikt asked in concern.
“Yes, I’m ne.” Roma looked up with a glare. “Can we go back to what we were discussing before? With Alisa in the state she is in”—ashes of her face were burned into his mind, vivid and stark and already wasting away—“I need answers. If this madness sprouted from somebody’s bad intention, I must hunt them down.”
“Didn’t your father send you after the Communists?”
Roma nodded. “But it’s a dead end. We have only struck dead ends wherever we go.”
“We could plead with the Scarlet Gang for their information,” Marshall suggested. “This time with more guns—”
Benedikt pressed a hand over the Marshall’s mouth, shutting him up before he could expand further on a nonsensical plan.
“Roma, I truly cannot fathom what else there is to do,” Benedikt admitted. “I think the meeting made it clear that the White Flowers know nothing. We are at a loss unless we wish to spread our resources thin and put an ear in every corner of Shanghai.”
“How many spies do we still have in the Scarlet Gang?” Roma asked.
“Perhaps they can gure out what it is. The Scarlet Gang practically admitted to having information, but they won’t tell us—”
“I doubt asking the spies would be eective,” Benedikt interrupted. His hand was still over Marshall’s mouth. Marshall appeared to have started licking Benedikt’s palm in an eort to be released. Benedikt acted as if he hadn’t noticed. “If the Scarlet Gang really do know something, it would be discussed within the inner circle. Letting rumors slip to the regular gangsters is a surere route toward causing panic.”
Marshall nally writhed free of Benedikt’s hand.
“By God, you’re both dull in the head,” he said. “Who in the Scarlet Gang keeps appearing everywhere you go, who appears to also have a personal stake in nding the necessary answers?” He leveled his gaze with Roma’s. “You’ve got to ask Juliette for help.”
Suddenly, Roma held up his nger, asking Benedikt and Marshall to be patient as he thought it over.
When he nally seemed to have ruminated on it for some time, he said, “Pass
me that bucket over there.”
Benedikt blinked. “What?”
“Bucket.”
Marshall stood and retrieved the bucket. As soon as he brought it under Roma’s nose, the brutal heir of the White Flowers stuck his head within it and retched as a result of all the violence at his hand.
A minute later Roma resurfaced, the contents of his stomach emptied.
“Okay,” he said bitterly. “I’ll ask Juliette alone for her help.”
