Forbidden Alliances // Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders

(110) Heated

*edited 03/20/23*

"My sincerest apologies, your Highness." Freya forced her attention to the grand duchess across from her. "Please excuse me."

She calmly walked to the man and waited to be out of sight before breaking out into a faster pace. She still kept her eyes peeled and managed to walk down that long corridor she had her eye on when she first arrived. There were more doors and fewer men around so she let her nervous eyes wander until she reached the telephone at the center of the house.

She pulled the phone to her ear and said "This had better be good."

"Freya," the Scottish lad called out. "There is a very large man here startin' fights with your security sayin' we have no right keepin' his kads tucked away from him. I'm worried someone's gonna die, Lassie..." he informed her quickly.,

Grunts and clanging could be heard very faintly in the background and it took Freya a second to comprehend all that he was saying when she was so worried about her family finding out about her pub.

"And what do you want me to do about that, Callum? I'm two hours out," she whispered, looking around and noticing how the man who escorted her was now standing off to the side of the open, foyer-like landing to make sure she didn't wander or steal anything.

"I don't fuckin' know!" he defended. "Bloke stands like six foot five and he's breaking all my shit."

"Call the police if you have to. You're on the border of Birmingham so you'll be protected from the-" she sighed, looking over to the man in the polygonal-shaped interior and rolled her eyes at the inconvenience. "Ask for an Inspector Moss and tell him I sent for him. Whatever you do, if the kids don't want to go with him, don't let him take them."

Then a string of guards appeared from one of the several doors around her, coming out leisurely from the upper level of the house and headed out into the back garden without even acknowledging Freya stood at the center with a phone to her ear.

It might not have seemed like much, but they told Freya an awful lot about the inner workings of the ridiculously expensive house she found herself at the heart of.

The four men came out wearing dark green uniforms which were a startling contrast to what the British provided them for protection. They couldn't have been sent by the King, they would have looked more like the man standing off to the side of the room if they were. If they had soliders inside, Freya would have recognized her own country's uniform. They were foriegners.

They were also entirely disinterested in Freya, letting her know that their leave from that room was a normal occurrence, one that would be uninterrupted by her presence.

And judging by how many came from that one room, they must have all been working the same shift to come out as a group like that.

They were guarding something important.

Now, what would need four or more guards in one room at a time?

Jewels, perhaps?

The front and back doors were reflected across the house. Adjacent to those, two white doors occupied the walls around her at an angle that matched the angle the two staircases led up to the upper level of the house.

From the point at which she stood, everything was symmetrical. As she had her back facing the front door, she could look out past the glass-paned door and into the garden. Then there were two doors on either side of the room she was encapsulated in. And if she turned around, she would face two sets of stairs that connected at the top.

It wouldn't have made sense to place jewels above the ground floor, but perhaps that was exactly why it was a perfect hiding place. No one would suspect it.