Fear. That was something she didn’t think her father knew how to feel anymore. Fear was a concept for the men without guns. Fear was reserved for people like Alisa, small and slight and always looking over her shoulder.
If Lord Montagov was afraid, the rules were changing.
Alisa leaped from the ceiling and sprinted off.
Three
The moment Juliette barreled into the hallway, shoving the last pin into her hair, she already knew she was too late.
It was partly the maid’s fault for not waking her when she was supposed to and partly Juliette’s own fault for failing to get up with the sunrise, as she had been attempting since her arrival back in Shanghai. Those sparse moments just as the sky was brightening—and before the rest of the household rumbled to life—were the most peaceful few minutes one could get in this house. The days she started early enough to snatch a breath of cold air and a gulp of utter, complete silence on her balcony were her favorites. She could trail through the house with no one to bother her, skipping into the kitchen and snatching whatever she liked from the cooks, then taking whichever seat she pleased on the empty dining table. Depending on how fast she chewed, she might even have a while to spend in the living room, the windows thrown open to let in the tunes of early birdsong. The days when she failed to scramble out of her covers fast enough, on other the hand, meant grumpily sitting through the morning meals with the rest of the household.
Juliette stopped outside her father’s office door now, cursing under her breath. Today hadn’t only been a matter of avoiding her distant relatives. She had wanted to poke her nose into one of Lord Cai’s meetings.
The door opened swiftly. Juliette took a step back, trying to look natural. Definitely too late.
“Juliette.” Lord Cai peered at her, frowning. “It’s so early. Why are you awake?”
Juliette placed her hands under her chin, the picture of innocence. “I heard we had an esteemed visitor. I thought I’d come offer my greetings.”
The aforementioned visitor raised a wry brow. He was a Nationalist, but whether or not he was truly esteemed was hard to determine when he was dressed merely in a Western suit, void of the decorations his Kuomintang military uniform might bear on the collar. The Scarlet Gang had been friendly with the Nationalists—the Kuomintang—ever since the Kuomintang’s founding as a political party. Of late, relations had become even friendlier to combat the rise of their Communist “allies.” Juliette had been home for only a week, and she had already watched her father take at least five different meetings with the harried Nationalists who wanted gangster support. Each time she had been just too late to slip in without acting like an embarrassment, and settled for idling outside the door instead to catch whatever bits and pieces she could.
The Nationalists were afraid, that much she knew. The budding Communist Party of China was encouraging its members to join the Kuomintang in a show of cooperation with the Nationalists, only instead of demonstrating cooperation, the growing influence of Communist numbers within the Kuomintang was starting to threaten the Nationalists. Such scandal was the talk of the country, but especially in Shanghai, a lawless place where governments came both to be born and to die.
“That’s very kind of you, Juliette, but Mr. Qiao has another meeting to hurry to.”
Lord Cai gestured for a servant to lead the Nationalist out. Mr. Qiao politely tipped his hat, and Juliette smiled tightly, swallowing back her sigh.
“It wouldn’t hurt to let me sit in on one meeting, Bàba,” she said as soon as Mr. Qiao was out of sight. “You’re supposed to be teaching me.”
“I can teach you slowly,” Lord Cai replied, shaking his head. “You don’t want to get involved in politics yet. It’s boring business.”
But it was relevant business, especially if the Scarlet Gang spent so much damn time entertaining these factions. Especially if Lord Cai had hardly blinked an eye last night when Juliette told him the heir of the White Flowers had pranced into their most central burlesque club, telling her that he had been made aware already and they would speak of it in the morning.
“Let’s go to the breakfast table, hmm?” her father said. He placed his hand on the back of Juliette’s neck, guiding her down the stairs as if she were at risk of running off. “We can talk about last night, too.”
“Breakfast would be delightful,” Juliette muttered. In truth, the clamor of morning meals gave her a headache. There was something about mornings in this household particularly that made Juliette uneasy. No matter what it was that her relatives discussed, no matter how mundane—like their speculation on the rising prices of rice—their words dripped with scheming and relentless wit. Everything they discussed seemed more fitting for the late night, when the maids retired to their rooms and the dark crawled in on the polished wood floors.
“Juliette, darling,” an aunt crowed the moment she and her father approached the table. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Ā yí,” Juliette replied tightly, taking a seat. “I slept very well—”
“Did you cut your hair again? You must have. I don’t remember it being this short.”
As if her relatives weren’t vexing enough, there were also so many of them coming in and out of the Cai household for Juliette to care very much about any of them. Rosalind and Kathleen were dually her closest cousins and only friends, and that was all she needed. Everybody else was merely a name and a relation she had to remember in case she needed something from them one day. This aunt jabbering in her ear now was far too distant to be useful at any point in the future, so distant that Juliette had to stop for a second to wonder why she was even at the breakfast table.
“Dà jiě, for God’s sake, let the kid breathe.”
Juliette’s head jerked up, grinning at the voice who had chimed in from the end of the table. On second thought, there was only one exception to her apathy: Mr. Li, her favorite uncle.
Xiè xiè, she mouthed.
Mr. Li merely raised his teacup to her thanks, a twinkle in his eye. Her aunt huffed, but she ceased talking. Juliette turned in her father’s direction.
“So, Bàba, last night,” she started. “If talk is to be believed, one of our men met up with five White Flowers at the ports, then ripped his own throat out. What do you make of it?”
Lord Cai made a thoughtful noise from the head of the long rectangular table, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing deeply. Juliette wondered when her father had last gotten a full night’s sleep, uninterrupted by worrying and meetings. His exhaustion was invisible to the untrained eye, but Juliette knew. Juliette always knew.
Or maybe he was just tired of having to sit at the head of this table, hearing everyone’s gossip first thing in the morning. Before Juliette left, their dining table had been round, as Chinese tables rightfully should be. She suspected they had switched it up only to appeal to the Western visitors who came through the Cai house for meetings, but the result was messy: family members unable to talk to who they wished, as they could if everybody was seated around a circle.
“Bàba,” Juliette prompted, though she knew he was still thinking. It was only that her father was a man of few words and Juliette was a girl who couldn’t stand silence. Even while it was hectic all around them, with staff bustling in and out of the kitchen, a meal underway, and the table accommodating various conversations at oscillating volumes, she couldn’t stand it when her father let her question draw out in lieu of answering immediately.