“First of all, you’re welcome,” he said.
Roma could feel an immediate headache starting up at his temples.
“All the clientele in that folder, all these Scarlet merchants on the edge of defection to the White Flowers—that is my doing, Roma. All you have to do is make the killing blow. Should be easy enough.”
“Congratulations,” Roma said, resting his arm on the back of his chair. “You did your job.”
Dimitri shook his head. The gesture was drenched with feigned pity, accompanied by an unspoken tut-tut-tut in the air.
“It is not enough to see the merchants as a job,” Dimitri urged. “You must accept them. Respect them. Only then will they listen.”
Roma did not have the time for this.
“They are colonialists.” He took the folder into his hands, crinkling the edges mercilessly. “They deserve to be robbed and looted, as they have done to others. We work with them to gain what we can. We do not work with them because we love them. Get it together.”
Dimitri didn’t appear chastised. It was hard to tell how much he actually believed in the words he was saying and how much he was saying them only to rile Roma up.
“So that’s how it is?” Dimitri asked. He brought his feet up to the desk. “All this hostility to your allies. But taking an enemy as your lover.”
The room had already been cold. Now it felt chilled like ice.
“You must be mistaken.” Roma stood up, releasing the folder. “I work with Juliette Cai until I can take a knife to her throat.”
“Then why haven’t you done so?” Dimitri countered. He kicked at the desk and tipped Lord Montagov’s whole chair back, letting it teeter dangerously on its hind legs. “In these prior months, before your father wanted to keep her alive for information, why did you never hunt her down?”
Roma stood up, fire stirring beneath his skin. Dimitri did not protest when he stormed out of the office. Dimitri was probably trying to drive him into storming off anyway, all the better to make him look bad when his father returned to find him missing. Uncaring about his father’s irritation, Roma swerved into the nearest empty room and dropped into a settee in the dark, biting back the curses he wanted to let loose.
The dust around him stirred in disturbance. When the room settled again, Roma felt covered by a grimy veneer. Three paces away, the windows had broken blinds, casting irregular silver shapes onto the opposite wall. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear a heavy clock in the corner ticking too, counting down his time in this abandoned room before someone inevitably found him.
Roma exhaled, then slumped ungraciously onto the armrest. He was exhausted by this; he was exhausted by Dimitri’s accusations. Yes—Roma had wet his hands with blood at fifteen years old for Juliette. For what it mattered, he might as well have lit the fuse that tore through a whole household of Scarlets. All to save Juliette, all to protect her, though she had never asked for such protection. Once, he would have burned the damn city to the ground just to keep her unharmed. Of course it was hard for him to hurt her now. It went against every fiber of his being. Every cell, every nerve—they had grown into place with one mantra: protect her, protect her. Even after knowing she had become someone else, even after hearing all the terrible things she had done in New York . . . she was still Juliette. His Juliette.
And now she was not. She had made that abundantly clear. He kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Much as he loathed Dimitri, one point was true—Roma kept refusing to commit to vengeance because some part of him screamed that he knew Juliette better than this. That something was up her sleeve, that she could never betray him.
But Marshall was dead. She’d made her choice. Just as Roma had chosen Juliette’s life over her Nurse’s. Just as Roma had done what he did to send her back to America, send her far, far away. Even if she lied about her coldness, even if she hadn’t feigned her weeping, soft eyes that day behind the Communist stronghold—it didn’t matter. Marshall was unforgivable.
Answer me something first. Do you still love me?
“Why wouldn’t you fight?” Roma whispered into the empty room. His head was light. He could almost imagine Juliette sitting next to him, the smell of her flowery hair gel dancing beneath his nose. “Why would you give up and give in to the blood feud in the most despicable way?”
Unless he was wrong. Unless this wasn’t a hard choice at all, and there was no love anywhere to be found in Juliette Cai.
Enough was enough. Roma jerked upright, his fists tightening. They were to work together at present, but that arrangement would end sooner or later. If Juliette wanted to play the route of the blood feud, she would get blood for blood. It would wound him just as deep, but he would plunge in the knife.