by Chloe Gong
“Roma!”
Roma squeezed his eyes shut. He let out a long, excruciating breath, then turned to face his father.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Montagov demanded. He had arrived with five men behind him, and now they all piled into this thin section of the hospital until the room felt airtight, until the off-white walls were almost slick with sweat. “How did this happen?”
Roma turned his gaze to the ceiling, counting backward from ten. He noted all the various cracks in the chipping paint, the way that decay seemed to lurk in every corner. This hospital seemed so industrial from the outside, so different from the Scarlet-funded facility in the French Concession that Juliette had taken him to, but they were each falling apart in their own way.
“What are you doing merely standing there?” Lord Montagov went on. He reached out to scuff Roma over the head.
That was the final thing to send Roma veering off the rails.
“What took you so damn long to get here?”
Lord Montagov narrowed his eyes. “Watch yourself—”
“Alisa was dying, and you merely stood by to watch how the Scarlet Gang would react? What’s wrong with you?”
One of Lord Montagov’s men shoved Roma back the moment Roma leaned in too close. Perhaps it was something in his eyes, or something about the way fury set his words on fire. Whatever it was, it must have been threatening, because with a nod from Lord Montagov, the White Flower pulled a knife on Roma in threat for him to step back.
Roma remained where he was. “Go ahead,” he said.
“You are making a fool of yourself,” his father hissed. Lord Montagov thrived off the love of other people. He preened when surrounded and raged when stared at. Roma’s dramatics were embarrassing him, and that gave Roma a perverse sort of pleasure.
“If I am a fool, then be rid of me.” Roma splayed his arms. “Have Dimitri investigate this madness instead. Or better yet, why don’t you yourself take it on?”
Lord Montagov made no move to answer him. If they were alone, his father would be yelling, hands slapping whatever flat surface was closest to make a loud noise—any loud noise, for as long as it could make Roma flinch, his father would be satisfied.
It wasn’t obedience that Lord Montagov sought. It was the reassurance of his power.
At this moment Roma was reckless enough to take that away.
“I suppose you are too busy. I suppose Dimitri has more important tasks to uphold, more important people to sweet-talk. Or perhaps”—Roma’s voice grew quiet, speaking like he was reciting a poem—“it is because neither you nor Dimitri is brave enough to get close to the madness. You fear for yourself more than you fear for our people.”
“You—”
A terrifying scream rang from within the locked doors, and Roma pivoted immediately, uncaring if his sudden movements earned him a knife in his back. He was already reaching into his coat pocket and drawing his gun, shooting once, twice, three times until the glass panel of the door crumbled entirely, opening a space for him to insert his arm through and turn the lock on the other side.
“Alisa,” he bellowed, slamming open the doors. “Alisa!”
He skidded into the emergency room, a hand slamming up to cover his eyes from the harsh lights fixed to the droopy ceilings. Nobody objected to his presence. They were far too busy grabbing ahold of Alisa’s writhing body, keeping her still for just long enough to press a syringe into her neck. She fell slack in seconds, the bloodstained strands of her lanky blond hair falling over her eyes.
“What did you do to her?” Roma demanded, rushing forward. He brushed her hair back, swallowing the lump in his throat. Her eyelids—so pale and translucent under this lighting that her blue-purple veins stood out starkly—fluttered briefly, then remained closed.
The doctor, the same one who had locked him out and assured him of his sister’s safety cleared his throat. Roma looked to him, barely holding back his anger.
“We have injected her to keep her comatose.” The doctor thinned his lips, then scrubbed his forehead vigorously, as if he was thinking through a fog in his mind. “I—we—” He cleared his throat, then tried again. “We do not know what is wrong with her. She must remain asleep until there is a cure.”
Eighteen
Roma descended the stairs. Though his physical body had carried him here, had moved him through the motions of waving his thanks at the bartender, through lifting the curtain at the back of the bar, his head remained miles away, still hovering outside the hospital room and watching Alisa in her induced coma—her arms and legs strapped down to the bed for her own safety.
“I am undefeated!”
At the roar that traveled up the spiraling staircase, Roma’s mind returned to him, and his anger slammed back into full force. Blood boiling, he jumped the last five steps, landing upon the floorboards with a heavy, wooden thump.
Roma ventured deeper into this shallow underground, navigating the room underneath the bar. The construction of this place had sucked up almost all of his father’s funds a few years back—the floors were uneven from overuse and the lights on the low ceiling flickered on and off at random. It smelled of sweat and piss and there were so many voices shouting over one another that this could have been a gathering for delinquents, but there was no doubting the exorbitant design of this place. One look was enough—at the fighting pit in the center of the room, at the flashes of silver built into the ropes that secured the ring—to know that this underground arena was one of Lord Montagov’s most prized investments. It was no wonder, given the betting charges down here had earned him back his losses within weeks.
“Don’t you two have better things to do than hang out amid all this?”
Roma dropped into a seat at a spectator’s table, inspecting the ceramic cups in front of Benedikt and Marshall.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Benedikt replied.
“This is the last time. I promise,” Marshall said. “Afterward—no, get him by the legs!”
Marshall’s attention had been drawn away momentarily by the fight. The crowd around the barrier cheered as the loser went down and the victor pumped his fists into the air.
“Terrible form,” Marshall muttered, turning his gaze back.
Disgruntled, Roma lifted the cup in front of Benedikt and took a cautionary sniff. His cousin snatched it from his hands.
“Don’t drink that,” Benedikt warned.
“Vodka?” Roma asked in response, at last identifying the smell that had been wafting under his nose. “In a teacup? Really?”
“Not my idea.”
Marshall leaned in with a sly grin. “Yes, don’t blame your sweet cousin. It was mine.”
Their table suddenly shuddered with the impact of another man going down in the ring, the crowd roaring with cheers. A woman was marking the scores with a piece of chalk. In flocks before every fight, spectators ran to her with cash, calling out bets on who would win.
Roma wasn’t entirely surprised to see Dimitri Voronin stepping into the ring next. He seemed like the type to spend all his free time down here, mingling with the filth that coated the floors and feeling right at home. Roma, meanwhile, made it his goal to avoid this place. He would come down only if the matter couldn’t wait, as was the case now.
“I just spoke with my father at home,” Roma said. He angled his head so he didn’t have to watch Dimitri pump his fists and bare his teeth to the crowd. “He has stopped caring about the madness. He thinks it is something that can be waited out. He thinks that Alisa will simply wake up and snap out of it when she has grown tired of trying to tear out her throat.”
That was a half truth. Lord Montagov no longer wished to investigate the madness, but it was not apathy. It was because Roma had hit a nerve and struck him right where it hurt most. This inaction was punishment. For calling his own father a coward, Lord Montagov would show him just how cowardly he could be, and let Alisa wilt away.
“He is an idiot.” Marshall paus
ed. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Roma muttered. It was as if his father did not realize that they could not run a gang without gangsters. Lord Montagov had too much confidence in himself—most of it undeserved. If the worst-case scenario arrived, he probably thought he could face off with death and demand their assets back.
“I have to do something.” Roma held his head in his hands. “But short of siphoning all of our funds to the lab so Lourens has more resources to work on a cure—”
“Hold on,” Marshall said. “Why wait for Lourens to make a cure from square one when there is word on the street about someone already having made a vaccine? We can steal the vaccine, run our research—”
“There is no way to know if the vaccine is real,” Benedikt cut in. “If you are speaking about the Larkspur, he sounds like an utter charlatan.”
Roma nodded in agreement. He had heard the rumors too, but it was nonsense—merely a way to profit off the panic sweeping through the city. If trained doctors could barely understand the mechanisms of this madness, how could one foreign man have dreamed up the cure?
“We must still find that live victim Lourens requires,” Roma decided. “But…”
The sound of bones being crushed rang out from the ring, and the woman shouted for another contestant to take on the “godly Dimitri Voronin.” Roma cringed, wishing he could block out all the noise.
From the table beside them, a man rose and ran up excitedly.
“But,” Roma tried to continue over the uproar, watching the man go with a grimace, “we cannot sit idle and wait for a cure that Lourens may or may not find. And truly, I am at a loss as to what else—”
A roar came from the crowds then, this one not of murderous joy but of outrage and disappointment. Roma whipped around, cursing when he saw why the fight had been interrupted.
Dimitri had pulled a gun on his next competitor.
Benedikt and Marshall rose, but Roma quickly held out a hand, telling them to sit down. Dimitri’s competitor, on closer appraisal, was not Russian. Roma had missed it before in his cursory glance when the man was running up, but the sweep of pomade in his hair gave him away as American.
“Let’s calm down now, old boy.” The American laughed nervously. His accent confirmed Roma’s assessment. “I thought this was a fight, not a showdown in the Wild West.”
Dimitri pulled a face, failing to comprehend what the American was saying. “Scarlet merchants who sneak in here face the consequences.”
His competitor’s eyes widened. “I—I’m not with the Scarlet Gang.”
“You trade with the Scarlet Gang. I have seen your face on their side of the streets.”
“But I am not affiliated,” the man protested.
“In this city, you are one or the other.”
Roma got out of his chair. He cast his two friends a sharp look, warning them not to follow, then turned, his face locked in its harsh expression. The American continued stammering away in the ring. Dimitri strode closer with his gun. By the time Roma had pushed his way through the crowd and climbed over the ropes, Dimitri was directly in front of the American, his nostrils flared wide in his anger.
What is he so worked up about? Roma genuinely wondered. Slights like these could be easily ignored. It wasn’t as if this man was a true Scarlet. If he was stupid enough to come into a White Flower fight club, his ship had probably landed in Shanghai only days ago.
Roma jumped into the ring, his steps smooth until he was sliding right between the American and Dimitri’s barrel. “That’s enough.”
“Move, Roma,” Dimitri thundered. He pushed his gun forward in threat, until the cool metal pressed an indent into Roma’s forehead. “Run off—this does not concern you.”
“Or what?” Roma replied coolly. “You’ll shoot me?”
Up here, under these lights, surrounded by a crowd of White Flowers, Roma was safer than he could ever be. There was a gun to his head, but he was unafraid. Dimitri had one choice here, and with an ear perked to the dissatisfied screaming coming from the spectators, he seemed to be realizing that Roma had him trapped. To Dimitri, perhaps Roma was the annoying kid in the household that Lord Montagov did not trust. To the people around them, Roma was heir of the White Flowers—a killer of Scarlets and neck-deep in every drop of blood he had spilled in the name of vengeance. Like it or not, Roma was still a Montagov, and Montagovs had power. If Roma said this American wasn’t a Scarlet, he wasn’t a Scarlet.
Roma waved for the American to leave.
But as soon as the American stepped out of the ring, hurrying for the exit, Dimitri aimed and shot him anyway.
“No!” Roma roared.
The crowd became a mixed cacophony of cheering and horrified booing, split between those who had secretly been waiting for Dimitri to draw the blood they craved and those who were eyeing the situation warily now, wondering what role Roma played here if he could not get Dimitri to listen to him.
Roma had been simmering all day. He could not get the doctors to heed his demands. He could not convince his own father to see reason. He was the heir of the White Flowers—heir to an underground empire made of killers and gangsters and toughened merchants who had fled a country ravaged by war. If he could not hold on to their respect, could not rule over them and feed on their fear, then what the hell did he have?
Dimitri made one move against him, and suddenly Roma was surrounded by the jeering of the people he was supposed to command, looked at as if he were a child and not their heir. If it had been Dimitri at the hospital, perhaps the doctors would have listened. If Dimitri had told Lord Montagov that the madness was threatening the city more furiously than they had ever anticipated, Lord Montagov would have listened.
Roma’s control was slipping through his fingers like fine grains of sand. When he closed his fist, there were almost no grains left for him to hold on to. His hands were almost empty.
If he lost the respect of these White Flowers around him, he lost his status. If he was no longer Roma Montagov, heir of the White Flowers, then he could not protect those he actually cared to keep safe.
He had already failed Alisa.
He didn’t want to keep failing.
“We will not tolerate the Scarlet Gang!” Dimitri was pumping his fists up and down, his handgun raising and lowering callously, riling up the spectators. “We will kill them all!”
A long time ago, Roma had told Juliette that her anger was like a cold diamond. It was something she could swallow smoothly, something to be placed upon other people, gliding along their skin in glitter and glamour before they realized far too late that the diamond had sliced them into pieces. He had admired her for it. Mostly because his own anger was the precise opposite—an uncontrollable wave of fire that knew no subtlety.
And it had arrived.
In two quick motions, Roma lunged for Dimitri and disarmed him, throwing the gun into the crowd.
“You didn’t give the American a fair fight,” Roma said. He gestured for Dimitri to approach. “So I’ll let you make it up.”
The crowd screamed their approval. Dimitri stood still for a second, trying to decipher Roma’s motivation. Then, with a glance outward into the cheering, he cricked his neck and charged.
Roma refused to let this descend into the monstrous, bestial grappling that these places were known for. As soon as he slammed his arm up for his first block, he remained quick, light on his feet, each one of his punches thrown with intent. The ring was rocking with the intensity of the spectators, the entire club raging so loudly that its sounds were ringing with a faint echo.
To the observers, everything was a rapid blur.
To Roma, it was all instinct. He had spent years pretend sparring with Benedikt, and it was finally counting for something. Roma switched from offense to defense within heartbeats; his right arm came up to block a punch and his left arm tore forward at the same time, landing a hit so solidly upon Dimitri’s jaw that the other boy stumbled back, a mania playing in his eyes
.
It did not matter how furious Dimitri was. Roma was not tiring. It almost felt supernatural, this exhilaration rushing through the lines of his limbs, this pulsating, absolute need to win against the favorite, to have the people remember who was the actual Montagov and who was the fraud, who was the one deserving of dignity as the heir.
Then Dimitri got a hit on Roma’s cheek, and something stung, far more than he expected.
Roma hissed, stumbling back three steps to gather his bearings. Dimitri swung his arms, rolling out his shoulders, and under the lights, a flash of something glinted between his index and middle fingers.
He has a blade between his fingers, Roma realized dimly. Then, as if it was new information: Cheater.
“Ready to give up?” Dimitri bellowed. He thumped his chest. Roma could not look away from the glinting flashes of the blade. He couldn’t stop the fight now without losing face. But if he continued, all it would take was one swipe of Dimitri’s fist across Roma’s neck to kill him.
The panic set in. Roma started to get sloppy. Dimitri kicked out and Roma took the hit. A fist flashed in his periphery, and in his haste to get away, Roma dodged too hard, overjudging his balance and stumbling. Dimitri struck again. A flash of the blade: a slit opened on Roma’s jaw.
The crowd jeered. They could sense Roma’s energy depleting. They could sense that he seemed to have given up before the fight had even finished.
Are you a Montagov, or are you a coward?
Roma tore his gaze back up, steeling his throbbing jaw. What was he fighting so damn fair for? What kind of deluded world was he living in where the White Flowers wanted someone who ruled by honor, instead of sweat and blood and violence?
Roma reached out and grabbed a fistful of Dimitri’s shoulder-length black hair. Dimitri hadn’t been expecting it. Nor had he expected Roma to slam a knee right into his nose, to take his arm and twist backward until Roma had a grip on his neck and a foot stomping down on the back of his knees.