G.Z.

She mirrors his words back to him, eliciting a sharp shard of a smile from Everett’s lips. If it were another Montague, he’d take it for the sneering mockery it likely would be, underhanded and cool, but with Genevieve he knows it’s different. It’s a tendril of the unspoken bond they share, however tentative and clandestine and prone to fraying at the seams. That, at least, he expects, despite the misgivings he still clings to after her betrayal of Vivianne.

What he doesn’t expect is for her to show her cards. For the Montague capobastone to gain from a Capulet victory, she has to benefit from another Montague’s loss. Who? Rallis? Roman? Everett carries little love for either, though he doesn’t have enough evidence to support either. …Damiano? It lights his mind like a faint, dull bulb as he sifts through all the information he knows about Genevieve’s relationship to the Montague capofamiglia.

“It is in my interest,” he agrees, watching her with a searching curiosity. “But I did not expect it to be in yours, capobastone.” A reminder, of course, of her position in the Montagues — and along with it, an implicit question.

--

Genevieve takes a long drag on her cigarette as she imagines the thoughts that surge through his mind. It is a risk, on her part, but a calculated one. Important, now, to show her hand, to flash the cards with a self-aware glint in her stare lest he assume she is bluffing; though she remained uncertain which one of them had the most to lose. 

The woman’s expression concedes to his point, head canting toward him accompanied by the vapour she exhales. Anyone else, anyone who dared to attempt treason (however minor this might have been) should have placed the knife to their own neck. Genevieve, however, had done worse and survived. What was one more step away from the umbrella of Montague?

“I have been in this business a long time, Everett,” a fact, the truth. “It has given me a broader insight into it.” her experience, far more vast than that of their other recruits, spanning decades, “because of that, I am more than aware of the battles we need to win and those we should... concede.” 

Everett doesn’t know how she knows. He’d been working with Easton a few weeks ago on the details on the newest arms shipment arriving in Genoa from Madrid, brainstorming precautions and defenses, settling details and private security. For Genevieve to have the date and location and time is immediately alarming, apprehension shivering up his spine.

It is a warning.

His attention snaps from the paper back to the Montague capobastone’s dark eyes, confusion and faint disbelief pooling in his mouth. Genevieve must be playing some sort of angle. Despite the near-friendship they’ve shared for years, there’s a thick, black line in loyalties between the two of them, and Everett’s not so foolish as to assume she’d cross them just for him. “How did you…” The question doesn’t leave his tongue, replaced a more pertinent question.

“Why are you telling me this?” He can’t help the careful suspicion that colors his voice, stubborn prejudice resistant to giving her the benefit of the doubt after what she’d done to Vivianne. And yet — Everett still can’t deny what Genevieve’s done for him in the past. Not the vote of confidence she’d offered him professionally when his competence was doubted, not the closure she’d freely given after Lillian’s death… not the tip she’s offering him now, to protect fellow Capulets from an inevitable brawl.

Who are you, Genevieve Zhang?

--

Everett’s gaze snaps upward to meet her own, prompting her brow to raise in response to the emotion that swims across his expression, Genevieve could imagine what he was thinking. It was unheard of, what she was doing, and she could not blame him for being cautious; otherwise she would think him foolish. “You haven’t pinned me down to a science yet, Everett.” Head cants, acknowledging how she mirrored his earlier words in spite of the intent differing somewhat, the truth being that she wasn’t ready to admit why she was doing it. Not in such blunt terms at least. 

He doesn’t know why he’s here.

There was the note slipped easily into the documents that the consulting team assigned to Zhang & Co. passed to Everett, citing that the company’s CFO requested a more careful eye to review the strategy they’d recommended for more efficient shipment over international waters. A note with a date, a time, a place, and a single ‘G’ stamped at the bottom. He’d weighed his options, set a shortcut on his phone to alert Mikael if he goes missing, then ventured out into the cool, foggy night.

He doesn’t know why he’s here.

And to be frank, Everett isn’t particularly in the mood to see Genevieve, either. He hasn’t been since Warren and Rosso strapped Vivianne down to a chair and carved a scalpel into her flesh. The memory still burns in his mind now with silent indignation, even if Everett already cut the rope tying himself to his ex-fiancée nearly a month ago. There’s no more personal stake for him in Vivianne’s life, only the vicarious hope that she’ll be happy elsewhere.

When he spies Genevieve’s figure, regal and elegant as always, he’s forcibly reminded that she’s a threat to that hope.

“You haven’t pinned me down to a science yet, Genevieve.” Everett stops a meter short of her, expensive wool coat pressing thick against his neck, warding away the mist that curls around the both of them. The Adige is blanketed in cloudy grey, street lamps casting an eerie glow on their conversation. His eyes flicker down to the paper in her hand. He takes it.

Another date, time and place. Genoa. 28/10/19. 20:30. Everett’s heart thunders, green eyes flashing with something sharp and wary. “Is this a threat, capobastone?”

--

In spite of the circumstance, the comment prompts a momentary upturn of the edge of her mouth, one that she ushers away with a nicotine hit. “Touché,” she responds, because Everett had a point. How well did they really know one another? How far could the lines between friends and enemies be blurred until they had to be drawn anew? The train of thought rested on a winding track, growing more convoluted the further Genevieve permitted her mind to dwell on it, needing to pull away from the notion before it ended up being her destruction. 

“No,” spoken as a sigh, there’s a lingering disappointment in the word that turns to vapour when it’s spoken. “It is a warning.” The Zhang woman lets the statement rest between them for a beat, the implication apparent. “The shipment has been compromised, by Montague operatives. Or, that is to say, it will be.” Little by little, she turns the cards in her hand - one by one, allowing him to appreciate them individually - drip feeding information that she didn’t necessarily think he would believe without question. 

Then again, he couldn’t say she didn’t warn him.

“I’m surprised you agreed to see me.” It was the first thing that escapes from her, each word misting in the evening air, when she notices his silhouette approaching in the near-darkness. Genevieve had been involved in the underbelly of Verona long enough to understand the consequences of her decision. However, her experience lent her a unique perspective that enabled her to understand when someone needed to be taken down a peg or two and the steps needed to ensure that it happened; unfortunately, the person in question was her boss.

The thought purses her mouth for a moment, ridding herself of residual tension through a hit of nicotine and subsequent exhale of smoke. Genevieve could feel her body guard’s gaze on her, the other woman enveloped in the shadows of a random side street, though it did little to assuage the seed of guilt that had begun to sprout in her stomach. “Here,” a folded piece of paper is pulled, with two fingers, from her jacket pocket and extended to him. Nothing scrawled onto the off-white page but a date, time, and place. The assumption being that Everett might have known, and been able to put together the puzzle pieces already, though she was present to fill in the gaps if needed.

Morte di un'Alleanza || ft. GZ

She doesn’t know what’s more humiliating; the fact that Genevieve thinks she’s desperate to hear an enemy’s apology— or the fact that she’s right. Even if it can’t be trusted in the grisly aftermath of her torture, and the Montague Underboss is still trying to draw some sort of distinction between herself and the Don. Genevieve or Damiano, Damiano or Genevieve… The cruel idea of the one, permissively sanctioned by the other. What difference did it make in the end?Had she not felt the blows from Matthias’ fists all the same? Had her body bled any less from the cut of his blade?… Genevieve’s right, her excuses aren’t of use to either of them anymore. 

‘I never asked you to risk the lives of your people for me.’

“Don’t you see?…” Vivianne replies, choking on a bitter laugh. “That’s the pathetic part. I would’ve done it anyway, whether or not you’d asked.” 

In almost two decades, it’s one of the most incriminating confessions that she’s ever made. That she would’ve sacrificed Capulet lives, endangered her own, even, to solve Genevieve’s biggest political problem… Risked her power and her resources in order to free a Montague, an enemy, from the Despot who overshadowed her every move.

Now here she is, only a few weeks later… Pointing a gun at that same woman. 

Vivianne imagines what it might be like to shoot her down; right here, right now. No more heartache, no more envy. No more longing for a different lifetime; one in which she might’ve mattered something more to the woman standing before her. Would shooting Genevieve bring the same sickly feeling of retribution that she’d felt when twisting a knife between Matthias Warren’s ribs? Watching a former-friend-turned-warlord’s granite features crumple in undeclared pain?… But then, she’d already tried it once, enough to know that the satisfaction was empty. And that the nausea followed hours later, though she’ll never admit to that aloud.

“Go, before I change my mind.” Her voice is raw and loveless, even as she stows the gun away beneath her clothes. “... And Gertrude?” Vivianne forces her anguish down, shoulders taut as she tries to adopt the iron-like expression better-suited to an Underboss… Better suited to Gen. “Keep eyes on your son. Because next time he wants to jump off a building, I won’t be there to stop him.”

Whether or not it’s an empty warning, Genevieve Zhang no longer has the luxury of knowing. And as the woman walks away, Vivianne watches her recede, shutting the double-doors of her heart, which should’ve been barred a long, long time ago.

--

Genevieve swallows against the emotion that rises up the back of her throat, not something that she could afford to give into; not now. Rare as it is that the Zhang woman is lost for words, the other’s admittance stuns her into momentary silence. True that their relationship had not ended the way she would have liked all those years ago, when she had entertained the notion that they could have continued to foster their bond in secret, that candle having been snuffed out rather bluntly by her husband at the time. Vivianne had been the one to delineate the line between enemy and friend with such a firm hand that Genevieve hadn’t thought to question it, the fact she could have warmed the cockles of an iced-over heart.

The caution is acknowledged with an upward tilt of her chin, gaze rooted to the other for a moment longer than needed as strips the statement bare in her mind’s eye. Her son. Henry. Henry who had run from her when they had last spoken properly, the boy Vivianne had deposited on her doorstep what felt like years prior, the boy who had made seeming no effort to better himself in spite of her continuous pleas on the subject. The more she dwelled on the notion, the more she was forced to admit that, no, he wasn’t her son, he was Howard’s. Next time he wants to jump off a building, I’ve half a mind to let him. It’s cruel, almost unfeeling, but she cannot deny that it’s the first thing that she thinks of and the subsequent acknowledgement that she has run out of options. Although, in spite of everything, she cannot bring herself to say it. 

“I imagine he will get himself shot before then.” Genevieve settles on, still cruel, still devoid of the maternal feeling she had become known for within the ranks of the Montagues, but true. After all, he already had. And she hadn’t been the one he called. The thought enough to prompt a lone tear, sliding freely over the apple of her cheek after she’d turned away from the other, another following in recognition that she had burned the last bridge she might have had with the woman behind her; the rift between them now great enough that the foundations of it had finally crumbled.

Morte di un'Alleanza || ft. GZ

She doesn’t believe a word out of the woman’s mouth. And yet that isn’t entirely true, because she’s called her here all the same, waiting on answers that only Genevieve can give. It’s unclear whether it’s a subtle taunt or an invitation when the Montague flourishes a hand and points out that she could be shot at will. Indeed, there’s a pistol strapped beneath her clothing, and even now Vivianne feels the hard metal jutting against her hip. But it’s Genevieve’s next words which make her draw the weapon.

“Don’t ask questions you’re well aware of the answer to… Of course I knew.’

The reproach slices through her, and Vivianne flinches despite herself. She feels naught but six years old again, tugging, unwanted, at her mother’s skirts. 

Genevieve knew about the torture order. 

Sheknewsheknewsheknew…. And she did nothing to stop it. The cool confirmation leaves her empty, with nothing, but no— here’s the gun she’s drawn, clutching the hand grip hard enough that it turns her knuckles white. “You bitch,” Vivianne hisses, voice trembling as tears spring to her eyes.

“You two-faced bitch!! You requested my help to take him down. Did I refuse you?… Did I ask anything in return?” Fury sweeps through her as she ignores Genevieve’s question. She’s always admired the Montague’s refined stoicism, emulated it, even, but right now and for the first time, Vivianne finds herself disgusted by it. Could this be the same mother-figure whose warmth she’d once sought for shelter?… The same woman on whom she’d modeled her own political façade?… “I was going to risk the lives of my own people to help you, and you repay me by approving my torture?”

--

There were a handful of times Genevieve wished herself capable of emoting more, to break through the bubble that encased her which made information appear distorted but easier to digest. It was her coping mechanism - apathy - to prevent an onslaught of tears at the first indication of confrontation that taunted her with the invalidity of her own decision making. That didn’t mean she was incapable of feeling, even now, she finds herself swallowing down the cumulative lump that forms in her throat, comprised of everything she wished she could say. 

“I’m sorry for what happened to you, I am.” The anger that Vivianne exhibited now had been the same behaviour that her son had shown throughout his life, it didn’t matter what she said, didn’t matter how Genevieve tried to counter it, when it was simpler for them to pin the blame on the individual in front of them rather than the collective as a whole. “But it did not have my approval,” her mouth curves, sharpened, around each syllable, as though trying to avoid ingesting the distaste that the words left on her palette, “Could I have done more to stop it?” If I hadn’t feared for my life, the thought is completed internally, before she had rid herself of that fear. It didn’t matter now, none of it did. “Yes, but that is no use to either of us now.”

A beat, and then. “I never asked you to risk the lives of your people for me.” Quiet, the thought that Vivianne had even considered it enough for the indifferent mask to falter, a flash of lightening, before it was snapped back into place. Genevieve would think about that later - of course she would - but now it was not something she could afford to consider with any sense of depth. Gaze remains on the other for a moment, not needing to decipher the expression that found a home on the other’s features, whatever might have happened next was out of her hands. “I’ll see myself out.” Genevieve said, in lieu of what both of them knew it meant -- they couldn’t salvage something from that which had been as good as scrap metal in the first place.

There was little use in prolonging their suffering further.

Genevieve doesn’t refute him. Despite the cold, pyrrhic victory Everett clutches in his hands, it still does nothing to mollify the jaundiced weariness that poisons his mind every time he thinks of the nightmares that dog Vivianne’s steps. It’s why, in part, he’s found himself lingering at the hotel bar long after his colleagues have dispersed for the night. The fragility and fear in his ex-fiancée’s eyes whenever the dark of night creeps into her lonely periphery remains branded in Everett’s mind. The gin slows the fast-moving paranoia that nips at him on her behalf, wondering whether she’s safe and secure with a loved one, or uneasily sheltering alone in her apartment.

His attention fixes on the gloss of the bar table as his mind wanders to her, but all at once, his line of sight is interrupted by Genevieve’s mangled left hand. The pinking scars on her left ring finger have faded into white, a reminder of the price this war has demanded of her even by those on the periphery — an out-of-place one, given the topic of their conversation. Confusion flickers like candle flame in Everett’s eyes until — Don Montague.

His eyes widen, flickering from Genevieve’s hand to her face, the taste of bile rising faintly to the back of his throat. For once tonight, Everett finds himself at a loss for words. When she’d admitted it wasn’t a Capulet who’d inflicted such an injury upon her, he’d thought it was a third-party contender, not the capofamiglia himself… not when the closeness of the Zhangs and the Montagues was so well-known throughout Veronese society. He closes his eyes, brow knit with quiet upset.

It was fear then, that age-old survival instinct, that motivated her to sit by idly as the order was passed for Vivianne’s torture. Everett knows it full well. The same paralytic poisoned his own veins as he watched Celeste Duval suffer at the hands of Cosimo Capulet. And yet — did he not work at least to mollify her situation…? He, an emissary, against the wishes of the triumvirate. Everett knows by now he’s far from perfect — carries, too, the guilt of everything he could have done — but the lack of remorse in Genevieve’s haunts him, as if it was so easy to simply turn a blind eye to someone who saved her only child.

“It’s in your best interest,” he answers finally, green eyes glinting in the low light as he finally meets her gaze. “There are many in Verona who would wish to see the city change for the better. There are few who have the individual power to do so.” He finishes off his drink, feeling the burn of gin down his throat as he rises to his feet. “Don’t waste yours, Genevieve.”

Everett grabs his coat, looking back at her one last time before he leaves. “She deserved better.” A beat. His heart rises in his throat, but he swallows it down. “Anyone would.”

“You have more than most, Genevieve. Let’s not pretend otherwise,” he replies, measured disbelief sharp in his eyes. Everett knows how much power Vivianne holds, knows she could make his life absolutely miserable if he was so unlucky as to earn her ire. Everett knows, too, what the Montagues think of their capofamiglia and capobastone, respectively. He’s heard it from Brielle, read it in Grace’s measured tone of voice. Damiano holds the whip, but Genevieve holds their loyalties, and in a city steeped in violence, only one of those will last long enough to see the syndicate survive.

And then, she admits to standing by idly as his ex-fiancée suffered at the hands of two godless sadists — and Everett begins to simmer with quiet fury again. “You were wrong,” he agrees, in a clipped, weighty tone. You, who were like a mother to her. His muscles coil tight with self-control, a warning bell at the back of his mind to keep his anger in check. “And now she’ll have to live with the consequences of your inaction.”

He hasn’t forgotten the kindness Genevieve offered to a grieving man expecting nothing but scraps, and it’s that that stays his tongue. That, and the self-preservation instinct that restrains him from making an enemy out of the Montague capobastone. The two are more similar than different, she murmurs, bringing a smile of disbelief and near-pity to Everett’s lips.

“You’re the right-hand woman.” A beat. “You have more power than you want to believe.”

x

Genevieve could have defended herself - could have - but didn’t. The choice to offer a falsehood would do him a disservice, as good as severing the worn threads that tied them together with sharped words. Cold, the memory of the every growing dread that settled in her stomach resurfaces, recalling how each order penned in the Don’s hand had spilled from her mouth with a forced neutral tone. Aware of the other, but not of the extent that it would have been carried out. In the absence of defence, she opts for offence, resting her elbow on the table between them and turning her left hand so her palm is facing herself. The absence of her ring finger was starting to feel normal. Strange.

“Don Montague.” It’s all she said, all that needed to be said in accompaniment with the pointed glance toward the space between her middle and little finger. Hand is retracted seconds later, her arm settling across her lap, though her gaze remains on him. Fixed. Like a predator watching their prey, except this was not characteristic of the stealth she usually operated under. No, this was parasitic, infecting the mind with an idea ( true or not as it might have been ) and watching the influence dance across their expression. 

Morte di un'Alleanza || ft. GZ

‘I’m alone, and unarmed, what could I do…’ 

“Don’t play me for a fool!” She fires back abruptly, the first lick of anger surfacing in response to the woman’s lukewarm suggestion that she’s harmless. You’ll never be that, Vivianne thinks bitterly. She’s always respected Genevieve Zhang enough to know that she is not to be underestimated, but after recent events, she knows too, that she’d be stupid to assume the Montague wouldn’t bring her to harm. 

Directly, or indirectly. 

Still, she forces down that swell of fury. The last thing she needs right now is to look so weak before Genevieve that she’s incapable of mastering her own emotions. “Armed or otherwise, you’re no sheep, Gertrude, unless it’s in wolf’s clothing.”

The Montague’s steps come to a halt, and only then does Vivianne turn to face her. She doesn’t know what she expected to see upon turning; the face of that wolf? The ugliness of an adversary who’d asked for her aid under the pretense of peace, only to spit in her face a few weeks later?… Maybe it would’ve been easier if she could see those true colours. Instead, she looks upon Genevieve and sees only that queenly beauty and enviable composure. “A test of their loyalty?” Vivianne lets out a barking laugh. “Marcelo beat me to a pulp when they stormed the Cathedral. I’m sure you received their gleeful report. I had black eye, a brain bleed, and a concussion lasting weeks… Was that not enough to your liking? Not enough for your fucking Don?”

It’s rhetorical, even she knows the answer. Perhaps, only one question matters anymore. This one, not about Damiano, but about the once role-model standing in front of her now. “Did you know? Before it was meant to happen— did you know?”

Tell me you didn’t, some stupid, teenaged part of her still pleads. Tell me that it was all behind your back, that you’d have stopped it if you knew, that you’d have found a way to warn me. Tell me that I really don’t have a reason to fear you…

x

Laughter almost escapes from her following the realisation that Damiano’s perpetual state of barely-concealed anger, simmering eternally just beneath the surface. Numbed to the vitriol that spilled from Vivianne with little warning, feeling strangely hollow when she had been prepared to school a flinch that had never come. “Yet no one knows I’m here,” she tells the other, perhaps foolishly, but what was the point in retracting the cards she had set out during their previous meeting. Truth her final defence mechanism in a world that expected anything but. “And so should you wish to shoot me...” Genevieve trails off extending her hand in a slow deliberate gesture, anything sudden could have warped her truth into an assumed lie, that said be my guest. You’d be doing me a favour, the thought is bitter, but the truth of it stings the back of her throat. 

“He is paranoid,” she tells her. Treason. The thought grips her, an icy hand around a still-beating heart, but it was obvious to anyone who had seen the Don in the last number of weeks; an ever growing paranoia, anticipating a knife in his back, spent energy that could have been better used elsewhere. Not unfounded, not entirely, given that her confession some months prior had seemed to act as a catalyst that pushed Damiano into deeper waters - an all consuming concern that had the woman he promoted orchestrated murder beneath his nose, who was to say no one else would? Disapproval plays briefly on her mouth as Vivianne lists her injuries from the Cathedral siege, something that could be pointed toward the recollection rather than the fact that it was someone she had once considered a friend. 

Self-preservation implores her to answer no, while realism offers the rationale that Vivianne would know it to be a lie. Like with like, each Capobastone trained to seek out micro-expressions with the precision that sharpshooters sought their targets, sometimes knowing something was amiss before the target of their stare had known themselves. To utter a lie would be uncharacteristic of the woman who had spent the majority of her life clawing her way up to the throne; a moth drawn to a distant sun, relentless, longing to feel the flames kiss her skin. Genevieve was born for this, forged from hellfire in spite of icy circumstance. Something Howard didn’t have, lacking in his son as well. “Don’t ask questions you’re well aware of the answer to.” There is a flash, fleeting, as the familiar feeling of guilt settles in the pit of her stomach, and then. Quieter. “Of course I knew.”

Mouth purses, a twisted curiousness wrapping around her mind. “What is it you called me here for?” The corners of her gaze narrow with the thought. Of course, Genevieve remembers; the woman as a teen, the person whose hand she had held during childbirth, the one whom she had broken off a friendship with to maintain the favour of her husband. The husband she orchestrated the murder of. Huh. There might have been something ironic about that. A rose that had been plucked of their petals now rested with a majority of thorns, but that didn’t dismiss the fact that should she permit it - to allow herself to care - would be to tap into a part of her psyche that ( given the current state of affairs in Verona ) was better left untouched. Genevieve had made her peace with that, bleeding heart shoved, roughly, up her suit sleeve, only cradling it in her arms at night with no one else present to see the damage it had endured.

“Perhaps not, but I’m grateful nevertheless. I’ve lived long enough in Verona to not presume that personal loyalties will save me from being put on the chopping block,” he counters, the still-shattered remnants of his failed engagement cutting his tongue. “I know my worth. And I know not to overestimate it.” There are only a few he’s confident he can fully trust: Mikael, Catia, Katarina, Halcyon. There’s Easton, too, though Everett still can’t quite determine whether his faith in his little brother is a product of sound reasoning or wishful thinking. He thinks, when it comes to family, it might not truly matter.

Everett’s gaze sharpens, briefly wondering if Genevieve takes him for a fool. It wasn’t my decision — that, at least, brings him meagre comfort, but her unwillingness to face a decision she allowed to turn into reality grates at his conscience. “Isn’t it endorsing, if you have full power to change a wrong and do nothing instead?” he asks carefully, echoing a question he’s lobbied at himself more nights than he can count. “I esteem you too much to think you’d contrive something so brutal, but I wonder that you wouldn’t have used the influence I know you to have to mitigate it.”

He brings his glass to his lips, letting the gin burn down his throat. “Less needless violence. That’s what you told me months ago, the difference between the Montagues and the Capulets.”

x

A low hum unfurls itself from the back of her tongue, an acknowledgement of what he said. “And if I didn’t have full power?” Genevieve counters, in complete awareness that responding to a question with another did not constitute an answer; wondering if it would change the initial one he posed to her. “I did nothing to stop it, I won’t pretend otherwise.” It was another nail hammered into her own cross to bear, but that was her business and her business alone. To open herself up to Everett Craven would be to allow herself to seem vulnerable in the company of someone who, for all intents and purposes, was the enemy,  and she couldn’t do that.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” she concedes defeat graciously, worlds apart from how her superior had chosen to handle it; a reminder that she shouldn’t harbour such expectation, the higher she raised the bar the lower it had to fall. “And the two are more similar than different.” It was not what people liked to think, either side prouder of their differences and often reluctant to admit that they were the same, introspection the tip of a slippery slope and a long way to fall if they indulged.

Genevieve cites her effort to prioritize the personal over the political, and while a month prior, he’d have taken her word in relatively good faith, he finds himself plagued with doubt. And what of Vivianne? Was she not personal enough…? Not important enough to stay the hand of the only woman who had the power to affect the command, in Genevieve’s eyes. Everett can’t help his frustration as he grapples with the duality of what he knows of the Montague underboss — her capacity for both surprising compassion and harmful inaction.

“You surprised me, in June,” he begins carefully, wearily pensive, staring at the indistinct shapes that stretch and blur in the clear gin in his tumbler. “I wasn’t expecting you to offer me any closure in regards to Lillian’s passing. I knew you were aware of our close friendship, but I’d assumed that your loyalties carried enough importance to outweigh that.” 

If he travels back, he could still smell the sweet smoke from Genevieve’s favored cigarettes, still feel the surprise an ensuing thankfulness when she’d offered him more insight. “You offered me it anyway, despite the risk,” he clarifies, blissfully unaware that the woman who stopped his late friend’s lungs is sitting across the table from him. “And for that, Genevieve, I’m grateful.” He swirls his glass, watching the gin whirlpool. “I hadn’t expected to find such compassion in Verona.”

And now, the truth — ugly and uncomfortable as it may be, slowly but surely eating at Everett’s heart. His eyes lift to meet hers, uncertainty and something sharper gleaming in his eyes. “You surprised me again, in July.” A beat. “I’d thought, given the character I know you to posses and given your propensity for mercy and sympathy, that you would be above endorsing the needless torture of another human being.” And he thinks of Vivianne, he thinks of the way she’d tense until he dipped into bed beside her, waiting for warm solidity at her back as she fretfully drifted to sleep. Thinks of the fleeting terror that simmers in her eyes when she thinks he doesn’t notice, thinks of the trepidation creasing her brow when she has to walk the long, shadowed hallways of Twelfth Night alone.

“I despise being wrong. Even more so,” he admits, “given how much I esteem you.” Esteemed, he doesn’t say, a foolish part of him still hoping she’ll prove him wrong.

.

“Loyalty should never be assumed,” she said it regardless of the implication it holds, not tasteless enough to chalk it up to a slip of the tongue or something to be said for the sake of it, because it was the truth. Often overlooked by her superior it was a simple truth that he had seemed to forget, abandoning it in favour of chaining people to their cause through barbarism and cruel tests to prove their worth. Genevieve had no qualms about telling Everett what had happened to Lillian, because she hadn’t given him the full truth. Loyalty should never be assumed but it clung to you even when you tried to shake it off, like the scent of cigarette smoke long after kicking the habit. 

“Vivianne,” the acknowledgement is intertwined with a question, seeking his confirmation that she had, glancing up at him for a moment before emitting a small sigh. “I’d thought,” she begins, mirroring his own phrasing, “that you were smarter than to assume I would endorse such a thing.” It annoyed her to admit it, but it was true, power stripped of her with little more notice than the three second warning when pulling a band-aid off. “It wasn’t my decision,” the admittance furrows her brow, hoping to offset the gesture by draining the rest of her glass and placing the drink back on the table. 

Exhaling a long breath, she turns to look at him, brows arching to ask if there was anything else. 

Morte di un'Alleanza || ft. GZ

Date: August 3rd, 2019. Time: Late Evening. Place: [REDACTED] Availability: Closed to @gertrudezhang···

There’s a cool evening wind that rustles against her skin, causing a littering of her still-healing wounds to ache in protest. The bruises are finally fading, save some of the more molten ones on her face and neck. The cuts are taking their time however, still gouged deep enough to promise the eventual formation of scars. She hasn’t attempted to cover any of them with makeup or carefully-chosen clothing tonight. 

Let the arriving Montague appreciate her people’s handiwork.

“Non fare scherzi.” Don’t try anything, the Capulet Underboss suggests, voice cold and loveless as she listens to the woman approach. Even now there’s something regal and unhurried in Genevieve’s footfall, as if this encounter is happening according to her terms, and not the other way around. As if she’s foreseen everything that is to come, and has lain in wait for many lifetimes. Every question, every answer, every conclusion. Vivianne watches the other’s reflection and counts each echoing step, but doesn’t turn around to greet her. “There are eyes on every exit of this building, and Tiberius is prepared to send in a team if he doesn’t hear back within fifteen minutes. If any harm comes to me, no Montague will leave the premises alive.”

She’s considered the possibility that she might die here tonight. She’d be a fool not to, given recent betrayals. Ever since her mutilation at Montague hands ten days ago, it’s been difficult to find any drive to continue. At first, it was to see her son to safety. Then, it was to exact revenge against Matthias Warren. But now Cyrus is finally out of the city, and what vengeance she took still tastes like ash on her tongue. There’s little reason to fear death, if it comes for her tonight.

“When your goons tortured me, no questions were asked, no information sought. So it wasn’t intended as an interrogation. Tell me then, Gertrude,” It’s more demand than invitation despite the even tone in which it’s delivered. “—Why?”

.

Genevieve knew the sacrifices she was making in meeting her rival, having also been privy to watching those who had enacted torture on the same traipse past her office the week prior and report to Damiano. To flinch would be an admittance of wrong doing, and as far as she was concerned, she had done nothing wrong (from a political perspective). Had she lent herself toward the personal, she could be at fault, yet they weren’t friends - Vivianne had made that abundantly clear - the word ‘enemy’ still seared into the base of her skull.  To have warned her would have been as good as signing her own death sentence, and in their world the goal had evolved to survival. 

“I’m alone, and unarmed, what could I do.” Genevieve, unlike the pawns in the mafia, knew her worth. The spark for reigniting the war between the Montagues and Capulets had begun with the death of an Underboss. In spite of the recent revelation that said death had been enacted by a Montague under the influence of a Capulet, it had picked at the ugly scab of the past until the wound was fresh and raw. Had Vivianne chose to kill her, it could have been a mercy, sparing her from a far more turbulent Verona had Genevieve Zhang left in a way other than she anticipated.

“Not mine,” she speaks out into the chasm between them, physical and metaphorical, “To imply that they are mine implies that i had any influence over what they did. I did not. It was a test of their loyalty presented by the Don himself.” There is no point in shrouding the truth in secrecy, it would only serve to implicate herself, defending Damiano when she could not justify defending what he did only her own penchant for survival. “I imagine it stemmed from your coup, he didn’t want any of his own getting ideas.”