Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(26)
“Understood,” Ah Tou replied. “Oh, and I asked around for Mai tàitài. An angel tattoo around these parts isn’t an insignia of loyalty to a gang, it’s the mark of a former mercenary group. My source is shocked they’re still around. They used to take British funding before the group collapsed when the civil war started.”
Roma put his hand on his forehead. He dragged it down his face. That meant the first man who had attacked Mila was an entirely different group to the Russians in the alley. For the love of God.
“Do you know how many members might still be around?”
Or rather, how many might have known about the first man’s task and would come sniffing around to find out what happened to him.
“My guess is not many. Again, they have dwindled drastically in number.”
“All right,” Roma said. If they were lucky, maybe the mercenary group had dwindled down to their last member. “Are you on your way?”
“On it, lǎobǎn.”
Roma put the phone down. He waited there for a moment, feeling the wind on his face and the morning sun rising and rising. Sometimes he frightened himself with how easy it was to make these calls and deliver these instructions. Not only because morals became a slippery slope, but because a certain authority slipped into his voice when he wasn’t watching, and he never thought that would have come so naturally. He used to think he would have made a terrible leader to the White Flowers; at every misstep as the heir, his father had chided him, telling him that he couldn’t seem to do a thing right. Of course Roma believed it—he wouldn’t have tried so hard to prove himself otherwise.
Look at him now. Perhaps in some other reality, one where he hadn’t ever met Juliette, he was miserable and unhappy heading the White Flowers but doing a fantastic job.
“Mai xiānshēng, catch!”
A ball came hurtling toward his face. With barely any time to react, Roma threw his hands up and knocked the ball out of the way, gaping bewildered at the young boy who had thrown it.
“What have we said,” he chided, “about throwing objects at me?”
“That I should keep doing it!”
The boy ran off cackling. Roma picked up the ball, wiping any appearance of his true amusement from his expression, because while every child in this township adored bullying him, he could hardly give them permission to keep doing it.
“Aiya, watch where you’re going!”
Another voice carried across the canal as the boy turned a sharp corner, almost running into the man there. Roma followed after the boy, nodding his apology to the postman delivering letters, then rolled his eyes and set the ball down outside the door that the boy had disappeared through.
Even from the next alley over, Roma could still hear the postman grumbling with complaints, an unending stream of thoughts sent out into the open.
Roma stopped. He swiveled on his heel.
Wait a minute.
How was it possible to hunt down one girl out in the rural countryside, among all the many houses and swaths of fields? How was it possible to narrow anything down, especially when people stayed in their own towns and communication moved at a snail’s pace?
Well, all you needed was to ask a postman.
* * *
Roma barged in through the front door. There was already a commotion going on in the living room, though he wasn’t surprised when he realized it was Juliette directing Mila around in a step-by-step drill for an offensive attack, using Yulun for practice while Yulun darted left and right in terror. Mila looked like she was having fun—in comparison to her catatonic response earlier, at least. When her eyes crinkled, she resembled Alisa so fiercely that Roma had to do a double-take, trying to make sense of the dissonance in his head. Logically, he was aware that this was not his sister. The shock did not lessen each time.
“Hello, my love,” Juliette called. “Has Ah Tou arrived?”
“He’s clearing the alley as we speak,” Roma replied. “Should you be doing that before you’ve disinfected your injuries?”
“I’m teaching Mila how to stab any man retrieving her. More important than disinfection.”
Roma tutted, going over and forcibly directing Juliette to sit down before he had an aneurysm. Then he turned to Mila and Yulun.
“I have a question for you both,” he said. “Are your names registered in the postal system?”
Yulun furrowed his brow. Mila set the knife in her hand down, tilting her head.
“Yulun is, but I am not,” she said. “There’s no one to send me letters.”
A beat passed.
“Wait, wait, that’s not entirely true,” Yulun countered, visibly jolting as a thought occurred to him. “Our marriage license required an address. We’re in the system together even if you aren’t registered.”
There it was.
“And every time you fled after Mr. Pyotr’s threats,” Roma said to Yulun slowly, “I’m sure you wrote letters to your mother from your new residence, yes? I imagine you wanted to keep in contact with her so she didn’t worry.”
How the two girls in Shanghai had been found was child’s play. The city talked incessantly, and showgirls commandeered attention. Ask around enough, and someone had to know someone who knew the girl you were looking for. The two outside Suzhou must have been a tougher case, but still, anyone who lived near a city must have a job, and anyone who held a job had a circle of people who could be traced.