“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” she replied. “You can see it is true. You only have to send people out to poke around the corners of the city, and you will see the gangsters dressed pretending to be workers.”
“Hmmm.” The man’s gaze flickered to her now. “Your face looks familiar. Aren’t you Scarlet-affiliated?”
Celia stood up, fetching her dirty gloves and dropping them into the trash can.
“No,” she said. “I am not.”
Benedikt slammed up against the doors of the lab, blocking the exit with his body. Some paces away, a tired Lourens who had been awoken from his sleep was blinking in trepidation, not knowing why Roma was acting this way.
“Listen to me,” Benedikt said lowly. “You’ll be shot on sight.”
“Move aside.”
Roma’s voice was lifeless. So too were his eyes, a mass of darkness swallowing up his stare. The strangest thing was that Benedikt recognized himself in that expression, recognized that same twisted sense of rage that showed itself in recklessness.
Is that what I looked like?
“You said we were coming here to check on the vaccine!” Benedikt hissed. He made another grab for the jar in Roma’s hands. “Now, instead, you’re running off with some concoction to blow up the Scarlet house a second time. That’s not what Juliette would have wanted!”
“Don’t tell me what Juliette would have wanted!” Roma snapped. “Don’t tell—”
Benedikt took his chance to dive for the jar. Roma saw it coming and darted back two steps, but Benedikt outright lunged, pushing his cousin to the linoleum floor and pinning his arm down. Lourens made another concerned noise but otherwise remained motionless by the tables, his eyes swiveling about the scene.
“At least wait,” Benedikt said, his knees on Roma’s stomach. “Wait to see why. Since when did Juliette have any reason to take a dagger to her own heart—”
“So they killed her,” Roma seethed. “They killed her, and they’re going to get away with it—”
Benedikt pushed on Roma’s attempt to sit up. “This isn’t some murder on the streets, this is the Scarlet Gang! You’ve always known the danger of gangsters. You live it every day!”
Roma stilled. He breathed in, then again, then again, and suddenly Benedikt realized it was because his cousin was struggling to fill his lungs.
“She would never,” he managed. “Never.”
Benedikt swallowed hard. He couldn’t allow this. It was for Roma’s own good.
“There are Scarlets everywhere in the city right now,” he said slowly. “They’re plotting something. You cannot go make it worse.”
His words had the opposite effect. Benedikt had intended to pacify, and instead a vein started to throb at Roma’s neck. Roma shoved Benedikt off, fast, and got to his feet, but Benedikt wouldn’t give up so easily. He lunged for the jar again. When he only managed to catch Roma’s wrist, he switched from trying to wrest away the explosive and simply grabbed ahold of his cousin with both hands, keeping him from opening the lab’s doors, keeping him from running through the building and out into the night.
Roma came to a halt. Slowly, he turned around. The deadness in his eyes had acquired a murderous glint.
“Tell me,” he said. “Were you not the one who sought revenge when you thought Marshall was dead?”
Benedikt scoffed. That was a mistake. The fire in Roma’s eyes only grew stronger.
“I never stormed into the Scarlet house. I never did anything rash!”
“Maybe you should have.”
“No,” Benedikt spat. He hardly wanted to think about Marshall right now, when he was trying to talk Roma out of a death wish. “What good could it have done?”
“What good?” Roma hissed in echo. “It doesn’t matter, does it? He came back to life!”
Roma tried to pull away; Benedikt would not relinquish. In a flash, Roma had his pistol in his free hand, but it was not to point at Benedikt.
He brought it to his own temple.
“Hey.” Benedikt froze, afraid that any sudden movement would nudge at the trigger. All he could hear through his ears was the sound of rushing blood. “Roma, don’t.”
“Roma, do not be a fool,” Lourens urged from where he stood.
“So let go of me,” Roma said. “Let go of me, Benedikt.”
Benedikt let out a low breath. “I will not.”
It was a standstill, then. It was a matter of Benedikt believing that his cousin could not be this lost, and yet he was not certain. He could not know if in the next few seconds Roma would call him on his bluff and splatter his brains across the lab.