Forbidden Alliances // Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders

(89) Pedophilic Priest

*edited 03/24/23*

Come Sunday, Freya pulled on a pair of black slacks, a white button-up, a black vest, and a flat cap over her loosely braided hair and met Tommy at the front of her house.

"You already know these fuckers are not the type to be messed with-"

"I'm here to listen and observe. I just wanna see what they want," she assured her brother.

When they arrived at Charlie's scrapyard, they walked side by side, one masculine, one feminine, but both equally dangerous.

They turned around the side of a stationary train car carrying coal and faced a man sitting in the back of the hidden area as he was positioned between the coal, a rundown caravan, and the side of the warehouse.

Freya followed Tommy's lead as she always did and noticed how he didn't even look up to meet the man's eye. He sat down quickly on the edge of the caravan and Freya followed, standing across from him with her back to the building.

Freya was sure the priest with the dry face and slicked-back black hair was going to make his voice heard about her showing up but he didn't. He hardly seemed fazed, actually.

Tommy lit a cigarette in desperate need to ease his nerves with tobacco, and continued to stare out at the mud, avoiding Father Hughes's stare entirely.

Freya wanted to turn and see how the man took Tommy's disrespect but she didn't want to seem too eager or suspicious. So, she waited for Tommy or Hughes to make the first move before she did.

And surprisingly, it was Hughes who spoke first.

"You may dress like a boy all you want but you will never be one."

She knew he was directing his words toward her.

She turned.

He was sitting in his seat with a slight slump to his back. His clothes were all black, with the exception of the white collar around his neck, and even his hair was the color of his soul. He had an easy posture, a cigarette at hand, and an accent Freya couldn't quite put her finger on immediately.

She shot him a dull look, proving his words didn't mean much to her, especially when she didn't give a single fuck what people wanted to label her as. She didn't speak, she didn't bat an eyelash, instead, she looked at him.

That's all she did. She looked at him with an unaffected stare, giving him that soul-piercing stare, like a tiger between the blades of grass as it eyed its next meal. However, to pierce someone's soul, they needed to have one, and Freya wasn't sure if this priest did...

He carried a darkness with him, but it wasn't like anything the color black could carry. It was more eery and disturbing. He radiated with a coldness that no temperature could explain. It was all much deeper, much more corrupt.

Freya wanted to blame her preexisting bias on the feeling she got when she looked at the middle-aged man, but she knew better. It was her intuition talking, it was her witch-like instincts telling her not to trust him.

"That's right. Keep staring," he spoke as if her stark and deadly gaze didn't faze him. "I know all about you... the woman who walks like a man. Fray," he concluded. "You're the talk of all the towns you can't afford to be so submissive to your blasphemy."

"Money is not an issue. If I wanted my name out of their mouths, I'd do much more unspeakable things..."

Tommy cleared his mouth, pulling his cigarette back to his mouth but avoiding everyone's stare.

"So," Hughes drew out again, not letting his beady, dark eyes fall from Freya's icy ones. "Will it just be boys in your charitable institution or girls as well?"