These Violent Delights

The stars incline us, they do not bind us.

Do you not listen to me when I speak?” he answered shakily, his lip quirking up. “I love you. I have always loved you.

You know me. Running around. Living life. Committing arson.

I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.

Memories were beastly little creatures, after all—they rose with the faintest whiff of nourishment.

She…hoped. And hope was dangerous. Hope was the most vicious evil of them all, the thing that had managed to thrive in Pandora’s box among misery, and disease, and sadness—and what could endure alongside others with such teeth if it didn’t have ghastly claws of its own?

You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me a reason to hat you and then you give me a reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is the a ploy or your heart reaching for me?

Don’t you dare,” Roma said. “Don’t you dare fall apart now, dorogaya.

Even the land of dreams needs to wake up sometimes.

These days Juliette,” he said, low and warily, “the most dangerous people are the powerful white men who feel as if they have been slighted.

Astra inclinant,” he would whisper into the wind, so heartachingly sincere even when quoting in Latin, “sed non obligant.

This is why my betrayal was so terrible. Because you believed me incapable of hurting you, and yet I did.

And he mourned for her. He didn’t wish to, but he did—he ached with the knowledge that the softness of their youth was gone forever, that the Juliette he remembered was long dead. He ached even more to think that though he was the one who had dealt the killing blow,

Wasn't playing with her heart once enough? Hadn't he already torn her into two and left her to the wolves once before?

That is what this city is. The party at the end of the world.

You’re fluent in Russian and that’s the best you could come up with?” Roma asked, flabbergasted. “What is a Montague? It sounds Italian.” “There are Italian Communists!” “Not in Shanghai!

This place hums to the tune of debauchery. This city is filthy and deep in the thrall of unending sin, so saturated with the kiss of decadence that the sky threatens to buckle and crush all those living vivaciously beneath it in punishment.

The land of dreams. Where men and women in white hoods roam the streets to murder Black folks. Where written laws prohibit the Chinese from stepping upon its shores. Where immigrant children are separated from immigrant mothers on Ellis Island, never to be seen again.

Sometimes it was hard for Kathleen to remember that she was still her own person, not just shards of a mirror, reflecting back a thousand different personalities most fitting for the situation.

If Roma were ever again to run a tender finger down her spine, it would be to count her vertebrae and gauge where he could stab his knife in.

Entitlement that encouraged their wives to place a delicate handkerchief to their nose and sniff, wholeheartedly believing the tirade was deserved. They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai. Everywhere they went—entitlement. And Juliette was so tired.

Those who do not care, those who are violent, those who delight in that which is terrible”—Marshall shrugged, waving his hands about as he chose the right words—“they thrive. They come outside.

Her feminine beauty was a concept as fleeting as power. If she acquired a tan, put on some weight, and let a few decades pass, the street artists would not be rendering her face to sell their creams anymore. Chinese and Western standards alike were arbitrary, pitiful things. But Juliette still needed to keep herself in line, force herself to follow them if people were to look up to her.

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.

Roma wasn’t sure if Benedikt and Marshall were fated to eventually kill each other or kiss each other.

The problem with hatred was that when the initial emotion weakened, the responses still remained. The clenched fist and hot veins, the blurred vision and quickened pulse. And in such remains, Juliette was not in control of what they might develop into.

There was so much luck to be had in the genetic lottery; one different code and it was a whole lifetime of forced adaptation.

How are you this bad?" Juliette asked in disbelief. "I thought you were Russian." "I am Russian, not an alcoholic," Roma muttered.

Was it loyalty that created power? Or was loyalty only a symptom, offered when the circumstances were favorable and taken away when the tides turned? It helped that Lord Cai and Lord Montagov were men. Juliette wasn’t naive. Their every messenger, every errand runner, every lower-tiered but fiercely loyal gangster was male. Most of the Scarlet Gang feared and revered Juliette now,