“I knew,” Juliette said. “I always knew. Your mother’s death is my doing.”
From her bed, Alisa had started to shake. She was looking at Juliette with wide, wide eyes.
“No.” Roma could barely get the word out. “You didn’t.”
Outside, the sounds of the workers’ protests rang in stark closeness. Metal struck the other side of the hospital walls in frenzy and hysteria.
Roma was having trouble breathing. He suddenly could not see clearly, could see only blurs of colors, vague figments of shapes, the barest glitter of a person who opened her mouth and spat, “I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.”
Juliette Cai strode forward, directly in front of Marshall. She knelt down callously, pulled his hand away from his wound, inspecting him as if he were nothing more than a piece of trash tossed before her feet.
“An eye for an eye,” Juliette said.
She struck Marshall hard across the face. He was sent skittering, his body colliding with the hard, cold floor, both his arms winding around his head, a hand in front of his face as if to protect himself. Blood. So much blood beneath him.
Juliette put both her hands around her weapon. She made a twisting motion to her pistol, securing her grip. Then:
“A life for a life.”
Bang.
“No!” Benedikt roared.
Marshall’s head lolled back. He was motionless.
Motionless.
Roma couldn’t breathe.
“Marshall, get up,” Benedikt spat. “Get up!”
Juliette made a flippant, waving motion to the Scarlets holding Benedikt captive. “Let him go,” she said. “Let him see for himself.”
And the Scarlets listened. They eased up on their guns just enough so that Benedikt could move away, but not so much that they could not shoot should he suddenly attack. Juliette had pulled herself up to the top again. She was slotted back above Tyler, and there she would remain, so long as she was terrible.
Benedikt walked to Marshall. Appearing utterly, utterly devoid of anything, anything—he put his hand to Marshall’s throat and kept it there, waiting.
A terrible noise tore forward from his cousin. Roma would hear that sound in his head forever.
“Wake up,” Benedikt demanded roughly. He shook Marshall’s shoulders. Marshall was unresponsive. Only a corpse, limp as a marionette. “Wake up!”
He would not wake up.
Juliette did not react to the scene before her. She looked at the body and the mourner like they meant nothing to her—and Roma supposed they didn’t.
“Go,” Juliette said to him. She aimed her gun at Alisa. “Go before we kill you all.”
Roma had no choice. He staggered to Alisa, held out his hand for her to take.
And the White Flowers retreated.
* * *
Juliette watched them leave. She burned the image into her mind, burned in the relief that flooded through her veins and tasted like sweetness on her tongue. She forced herself to remember this moment. This was what monstrosity achieved. Perhaps Paul Dexter was onto something after all. Perhaps there was something to terror and lies.
A cacophony of voices burst into the hospital. It echoed through the long corridors, calling for workers to fan out and sack the place, to enact as much destruction as possible.
“I’ll deal with him,” Juliette said, nodding to the body she was kneeling over. “Go, Tyler. Take your men. There’s a back door.”