“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.