“I suppose it is truly the only option,” her father said. “Very well. We keep the vaccine within our own circles.”
In the corner of the room, Tyler lifted the corner of his mouth in a smirk.
Juliette spat a curse and swung the door open, then pulled it shut after herself with a loud slam. Let the men jump. Let them be afraid of how she moved, like a hurricane intent on destruction. Her father might chide her for leaving so suddenly, but she doubted he had the time for discipline.
Why the hell would the White Flowers ally with the Communists? There is no benefit at all.
Juliette stormed back into her bedroom, almost short of breath.
“The Communists and the White Flowers are working together,” she said to Kathleen, who startled, not expecting to see her back so soon.
Kathleen’s magazine slid right out of her hands. “I beg your pardon?” she said. “Since when?”
Juliette twisted her arms around her middle and sat primly on her bed. Their two enemies had just merged like the head of a reverse hydra. “I don’t know. I—” She stopped, blinking at her cousin, who was now sliding off the blankets and getting her shoes on. “Where are you going?”
“Making a phone call,” Kathleen answered, already walking out the door. “Give me a minute.”
Juliette dove backward, splaying her arms and legs like a five-point star atop her sheets. Roma was supposed to have found the Frenchman by now. They were supposed to have threatened or tortured a name out of him and eradicated the threat of a blackmailer. But in all honesty, it didn’t even seem to matter. Who cared about a few dead bodies if revolution was sweeping into Shanghai? What was one blood-soaked nightclub up against a blood-soaked city? This blackmailer was not Paul Dexter. They didn’t want the city flooded with monsters and madness; they only wanted . . . well, Juliette didn’t know.
“See, this is why we always check our sources.”
Juliette bolted upright, her hair crackling with her movements. The pomade in her curls would start to loosen if she kept disturbing it like this. “Is it false?”
“Not false exactly,” Kathleen replied. She closed Juliette’s bedroom door, leaning up against it like her body was an additional barrier against eavesdroppers. “But it is not Lord Montagov who has allied with them. It is a sect within the White Flowers that the Communists are bragging about having secured. Honestly, with the way Da Nao was talking . . .” Kathleen trailed off, her thin, arched brows furrowing together in thought. “I wonder if the Montagovs even know about it.”
The intrigue only seemed to thicken. Juliette shuffled back on her bed, drawing her leg up and pressing her chin to her knee. For three long seconds, she stared into space, trying to make sense of what Kathleen was saying.
If he is a White Flower, Juliette had asked on that train platform, then why does he look rather murderous toward you, too?
“What do you mean by a sect?”
Kathleen shrugged. “I mean exactly what I think Da Nao meant. A group within the White Flowers seems to have enough power and influence to be making agreements with the Communists on their own. They may have been working together for quite some time now—it is only that the information has recently slipped to the Nationalists.”
And just like that, the connection snapped in place.
“Huh.”
Kathleen blinked. “Huh?” she echoed, mimicking Juliette’s casual tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Juliette drew her other leg onto the bed too. If any of her relatives saw her right at this moment, they would surely chastise her for sitting in such an appalling manner.
“The blackmailer was asking for money and money and more money, and then suddenly weapons? Why weapons?” She inspected her fingers, the varnish on her nails and the barely visible chip on her pinkie. “What if it’s the Communists? They need weapons for revolution. They need money and weapons to break from the Nationalists and take the city.”
The Communists working with a sect of the White Flowers who did not heel to Lord Montagov’s nor Roma’s word. It made perfect sense. It was why, for months, the monetary demands had only come to the Scarlet Gang before ever approaching the White Flowers. Because they were already siphoning resources out of the White Flowers.
“Slow down,” Kathleen said, though Juliette was speaking plenty slow. “Remember what happened the last time you accused a Communist of the madness.”
She remembered. She had accused Zhang Gutai and killed the wrong man. She had been led astray by Paul Dexter.