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The flickering lights were blurry through the tears in his eyes. The sounds of people trying to escape the burning house pierced his ears, stabbing daggers deep into his heart to think that they all wouldn’t make it - his father had made sure of that.
‘This is what you deserve, Roman,’
His father said grimly next to him as if he didn’t basically explode the house in the first place.
Roma gripped the silver lighter she had given him in his hand until the cold metal was pressed painfully against his dirty hands. Really, it was his fault. How did he think that his father would never find out about Juliette? He had half the city in his power and spies peering into every dark corner of the city. Roma had been too careless in his happiness, running through dirty alleys and busy streets with a girl in a shimmering dress, his face barely disguised in an ill-fitting hat. Now he was paying the price.
Watching frantic silhouettes pound against locked windows, he could only stand silent behind his father’s outstretched arm. The tears on their shadows seemed to glow like pearls in the orange light. An ache tore through his heart. It was his fault their lives would end. Damn his cursed heart. All these lives could’ve been saved if he had just chosen them over Juliette. But he knew he never could. He had fallen far too hard for her small smirks, the way she strode into rooms, even the little strand of hair that always escaped those perfect waves. Even if he wrenched out his heart with the knife in his pocket just to feel nothing at all, he was sure something - something in him - would stop him from plunging that same knife into her when he’d stab it into anything else without hesitation.
He tilted his head towards the familiar mansion towering next to the burning house. The one he had snuck into just a few months ago. Through burning eyes, he saw the front door being pushed open.
♥︎
Juliette stalked out of the house. She’d heard a loud noise and came out to investigate. The air smelled of gasoline and heavy smoke. Her eyes darted through the night until they fell onto the house encapsulated with licking flames - the servant house. Her pulse quickened. She ran towards it, her heart pounding in her throat. Nurse was inside and so were those countless people who snuck her sugary things in her sleepless nights, made her bed, and had stuck with her family for a while.
By the time she arrived at the burning building, the top was burnt to black ashes. At the smoky glass windows, familiar faces stared back at her, eyes pleading and brimmed with tears. They were furiously trying to smash the locked thick windows but barely made dents.
Juliette shook the locks at the window. When it didn’t work, she briskly patted down her dress, scattering loose sequins onto the blackened grass.
‘Ugh,’
She couldn’t find the usual pistol at her thigh to shoot at the lock. She wouldn’t be able to save them here. Juliette stepped away and made to move to a door at the back of the house.
She was too late.
The last faces had disappeared in a roar of flames. A burst of white-hot anger burned from within. Juliette was going to find who did this and point her shiniest pistol at -
a single piece of paper fluttered to her feet, seemingly untouched by fire. Juliette roughly picked it up and her eyes scanned the handwritten script.
Her whole body forgot how to move. So this was Roma’s fault then? Were the days spent on rooftops and the words whispered in alleyways all as counterfeit as the city they lived in?
Her eyes stung in an unfamiliar way. The last time she’d felt this way was what had felt like a million years ago, but at this moment salty tears threatened to spill onto her cheeks once again like rivers. Inside her, the blooming roses that had grown into the cracks in her wretched heart in the days she spent with Roma withered at that moment, ruining an already-ruined thing. Shining streaks of water ran like rivers over Juliette’s face as the building in front of her collapsed, the people inside utterly gone.
Just for a minute, she stood in silence, blurry eyes trained on the burning ashes that once held the people who had loved her but were now dead in the hands of Roma Montagov. Thinking of his name brought fresh tears into her hard brown eyes. Someone shifted behind her; it was her father. His dark eyes were glaring at the flames as if he only cared that the White Flowers had caused this and not that his servants had perished from life.
But he was right, Roma Montagov had caused this and she shouldn’t be crying over someone that had taken the lives of people like Nurse who had cared for her. She couldn’t fall apart into broken jagged pieces when people were betrayed and dead and she was the supposedly unbreakable heir of the Scarlet Gang. No, she couldn’t.
Her gaze hardened.
A strong hand clamped her shoulder. She turned to see her father.
‘Go into the house and don’t come out,’
He had an expression that suggested that he wouldn’t allow anything other than that.
As she stalked back to the house, trying to hate Roma Montagov, she swore she saw him and his white shirt and dark hair. Maybe it was a figment of her imagination, but she ran faster than ever.
♥︎
2 years later
Her face still echoed in Roma’s head in tragic screams even two years later. The betrayal and hurt you could see in her glassy eyes. Sweat had painted his face every night in salty beads for almost two years now. He just could not forget her.
That look she gave him made him feel as though he had ground up glass until it was only piercing shards, had thrown himself against it and died a death of a thousand cuts. Why couldn’t he just hate her more? If his heart had only been colder and more wretched he wouldn’t still be thinking about her two years after.
He sighed deeply. He reached into one of his drawers and pulled out stacks of paper. Each piece was filled with messy handwriting describing the emotions and tears of countless sleepless nights. Each one filled with thoughts of Juliette. Roma reached for a pen and addressed a letter to her.
Dear Juliette,
He acted as if he’d send it to her, telling her sorry and explaining everything. When his heart beat slower and the cold sweat on his forehead had dried, he put his pen down and stuffed the pile of letters into the drawer again.
He looked out his window. The sky was dark. Exhaling grimly, he went under his blanket and closed his eyes.
♥︎
They passed bottles of illicit liquor with sloppy hands, clinking the bottles with drunken splendor, precarious heels and scruffy leather shoes dangling over some roof of a random apartment in New York. They were laughing and smoking and enjoying themselves.
Juliette liked them.
They never seemed to care that Juliette was dangerous or something, in fact, they didn’t seem to care about anything at all. Maybe those people just didn’t care about her, but that was fine with her; she got free drinks. The group didn’t notice Juliette tipping her head up and draining the last dregs of wine from the stolen bottle.
The air smelled of cigarettes, and the lights were illustrated in wavering color onto the rain collected on the ground. So similar to Shanghai, yet it was missing the details like the smell of fried food or the shouts from vendors arguing that had wafted through the city. Ugh, she missed her old life so much. People wouldn’t look at her with disdain at the sight of her face back home; they would look with fear and admiration. She wouldn’t be this lonely back home either; she’d have Rosalind and Kathleen and Rom-
No.
She couldn’t think of him again. She couldn’t. Yet his face swam back into her thoughts. Juliette needed to get out of it.
‘I hate your smile, I hate your eyes, I hate your face ,’
She mumbled under her breath, closing her eyes.
‘I hate the way you laugh, hate the way you looked at me, hate the way you talk…’
Again and again, she repeated those words as if they were a prayer.
She grimaced and unclamped her fingers around the neck of the bottle, letting it plunge, shattered and broken onto the ground below.
No one around her noticed. They were listening intently to their friend dramatically recount the story of how he’d stolen the bottles in their hands, cackling like maniacs. But if they did, they would’ve noticed how the girl sitting just a few feet from them was now staring at the inky sky yelling someone’s name.
‘ROMA MONTAGOV,’
♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎
♥︎ The end ♥︎
♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎