These Violent Delights: Chapters 19–28

Juliette could immediately sense the incoming lecture. It was an innate ability of hers, like how some people sensed incoming storms by the ache in their bones.

“So don’t start believing that skill is all it takes to stay at the top. Loyalty plays its dirty hand too, and it is a fickle, ever-changing thing.”

This was all too reminiscent, too wistful, too much.

“Okay,” Juliette conceded quietly. She supposed there was no going back.

Then he was gone, his lithe shadow working quickly down the exterior wall and darting through the gardens.

“Come on, Juliette. I’ve been here a lot longer than you have. You’re an American girl at heart.” And the implication of the words left unspoken were clear: Do us all a favor and go back.

Roma wore his hat low over his forehead, which was a good decision when he presently looked so unkempt that any onlooker on the street might run in the other direction upon sighting him.

The houses here were dilapidated and crowded, the spaces between each building barely wide enough for a child to squeeze through.

Perhaps a grandiose village gate had stood here once, etched with golden characters to welcome its incomers, but it was gone now, torn apart for cityscapes and depravity.

She didn’t expect the man to clear his throat imperiously and say, “I am Mr. Zhang.”

He was perfectly valid to suspect her, but that didn’t mean Juliette liked the insinuation she would sabotage this operation.

Mr. Qi absently pointed down the hallway while he placed the cups onto the table, and Juliette flounced off, leaving Roma to glare daggers after her as he started making up a story on the spot about the founding of Shanghai University’s Communist union club, which neither of them were actually sure existed.

She had to squint because the sun was glaring brightly behind his head, flaring rays that illuminated him into overt clarity while they walked down the pavement.

To avoid being recognized when she colluded with Roma, she threw coats over her gaudy costumes, of course, but she was always treading the line of recklessness.

As soon as those words came out, Juliette felt a pang of nausea hit her throat—an immediate visceral realization that she had said too much.

If she leaned in, she could count the individual specks of pollen that had landed on the bridge of Roma’s nose. The atmosphere here was too heady and strange and pastoral.

The longer they remained—lined up with the pearly white walls, standing in the swaying grasses—the more Juliette felt ready to slough off a whole layer of skin.

She had learned to imitate the way Rosalind sank her shoulders down when their father engaged in his endless rants, becoming small by intent so he would remember that she was demure and stop, even if there was an imperceptible smirk playing on her lips.

“You do not think Mr. Zhang to be capable?” she asked, perplexity soaking into her voice.
“Why would you think him to be?” one of the three men shot back, returning the genuine bemusement.

“Maintenant, s’il vous plaît,” the officer snapped, his hackles visibly rising with Kathleen’s insolence.

Those who had not run off fast enough would be processed and placed on a list, names to watch should the Party grow any bigger and need culling.

Juliette poured deftly, then offered the half-full cup to Rosalind.

“You are a dancer, yes—but one in the Scarlet inner circle, privy to meetings and correspondences even your own father cannot stick his nose into. How can you doubt whether or not you are a Scarlet?”

That monster sighting—it had affected her more than she had let on. It had sent her on long nights and spirals, and now she was questioning everything that her life was stacked atop of, which was dangerous for someone like Rosalind, whose mind was already an eternal, sepulchral place.

Do not fight those who cannot understand what it means to fight. Nurse had known exactly what working for the Scarlet Gang entailed.

It was an idiosyncrasy, a way she spoke her vowels that made them uniquely Juliette.

There wasn’t a single chair to be seen, only a maelstrom of pillows and cushions, each “seat” occupied by the many under the Larkspur’s thumb.

Meanwhile, oblivious to what was going on right under her nose, the woman shrugged, infuriatingly calm. Her aloofness spilled gasoline upon the tension already brewing thick in the room, one spark away from explosion.

It was a silhouette that Benedikt saw first—a primordial thing hunched over in two, looking more like an animal than a person.

All those times when she had brushed Walter Dexter off, she could have been gathering information instead. Now it would appear suspicious if she tried sidling back into his good graces.

While Juliette was put in charge of the madness, Tyler was running her heiress roles in her place, and he reveled in them.

Surely something had to have happened to damage their business to elicit a declaration like this from her father.

They were pulled wide open, letting a strong breeze trail in with confidence, billowing at the gossamer white curtains in a way that reminded Juliette of dancing showgirls.

It turned out that Juliette needn’t have worried about searching for Walter Dexter’s locus of business.

I accosted Hobson and demanded this elusive tiger balm of him, but he was unreceptive to my hurry.

In contrast, Roma must have appeared downright leaden while he sipped from his glass and waited.

Here, visitors squandered their wages and traded food for forgetting.

“Fine. It is my turn to divulge my findings, then.”

Men this brusque could not pull together such an intricate scheme.

Satisfied that there would be no altercation needing intervention, the policeman walked off too.