Alisa swore she saw Dimitri’s jaw twitch.
“I hear that the Scarlets have already received multiple threats, starting from months prior,” Dimitri insisted. “They have paid the amount demanded each time.”
“Ha!” Lord Montagov turned toward his window, opting to observe the street below. “How are we to know it is not the Scarlets pulling this, a scheme to loosen the gold in our pockets?”
“It is not,” Dimitri replied surely. A beat passed. Then he added, “My source reports that Lord Cai believes the threat to be real.”
“Interesting,” Lord Montagov said.
“Interesting,” Alisa echoed up in the rafters, so quietly that she was audible only to the dust motes. How would Dimitri know what Lord Cai believed?
“Then the Scarlet Gang are merely made up of fools, which we have known all along.” Lord Montagov threw the card to the floor. “Forget it. We are not paying an anonymous blackmailer. Let them do their worst.”
“I—”
“It is marked from the French Concession,” Lord Montagov interrupted, before Dimitri could get another word in edgewise. “What are the French to do? Will they walk themselves here and intimidate us in their ironed suits?”
Dimitri had no further leeway to argue. He merely leaned back into his seat, lips pursed, thinking for a long moment.
“Indeed,” he said eventually. “Whatever you believe to be correct, then.”
The conversation turned to the White Flower clientele lists, and Alisa frowned, wriggling along the rafter. Once she was far enough from her father’s office not to be overhead, she slowly eased herself down a thin gap in the wall to emerge in the hallway. This house was a Frankenstein-esque experiment in architecture: multiple apartment blocks mashed together with barely finished stitching. There were so many nooks and crannies above and below various rooms that Alisa was surprised only she alone used them to get from place to place. At the very least, she was surprised no White Flower had accidentally pressed up too close to a wall and fallen through the floorboards when they trod upon a loose tiling.
Alisa started up the main stairs, taking them two at a time in her hurry. The plain necklace dangling at her clavicle jumped up and down with each of her hard steps, cool against her flushed skin.
“Benedikt!” Alisa exclaimed, coming to a stop on the fourth floor.
Her cousin hardly paused. He pretended not see her, which was ridiculous because he was walking right for the staircase, and Alisa was still standing at the head of it. Benedikt Montagov was a wholly different person these days, all gloom and dark frowns. He may not have been the happiest person a few months ago, either, but he lacked a certain light in his eyes now that made him seem like a complete marionette, moving through the world at command. Mourning periods in this city were often short affairs. They came in rapid succession, like cinema showings ushered in and out of the theater to make room for the new.
Benedikt was not only in mourning. He was half-dead himself.
“Benedikt,” Alisa tried again. She stepped in his path so he couldn’t wind past her. “There are honey cakes downstairs. You like honey cakes, right?”
“Let me through, Alisa,” he said.
Alisa stood firm. “It is only that I haven’t really seen you eat, and I know you no longer live here so maybe it occurs outside of my sight, but the human body needs nourishment or else—”
“Alisa!” Benedikt snapped. “Get out of my way.”
“But—”
“Now!”
A door flew open. “Don’t yell at my sister.”
Roma was calm when he stepped into the hallway, hands behind his back like he had been patiently waiting at his door. Benedikt made a noise deep in his throat; he spun to face Roma with such menace that Alisa would have thought the two to be enemies, not cousins of the same blood.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Benedikt said. “But wait—you seem to only have something to say when it doesn’t matter, don’t you?”
Roma’s hand jerked up to his hair on instinct before his fingers halted an inch away from his newfound style, unwilling to mess up the gel and the effort. Roma had not broken as Benedikt had, had not shattered into a thousand sharp pieces to cut anybody who got too close . . . only because Roma Montagov had swallowed it all inward instead. Now Alisa looked at her older brother—her only brother—and it was like he was being corrupted from the inside out, turning into this boy who wore his hair like a foreigner, who acted like Dimitri Voronin. Each time their father lavished praise on him, clapping his shoulder solidly, Alisa flinched, knowing it was because another dead Scarlet had been discovered on the streets with scrawls of vengeance beside the body.