Bancroft - Peaky Blinders Reverse Harem x Reader

Chapter 7

It's with a slight pang of guilt that I shimmy the — previously locked — office door open.

Tommy dropped me back here at the house while he left for a meeting. We didn't say a word the whole drive back, both of us terrified of what will happen next if we broke our silence. More fighting? Unexpected honesty? Or... something different entirely?

And rather than drive myself crazy pacing this house, my new home along with its residents, I decided to do what I've always done. Throw myself into work.

Surely that justifies the lock-picking, I think, as I enter Tommy's office. I'm not here for anything nefarious. Not snooping.

I just want to see their horses.

I rifle through desk drawers and filing cabinets. He keeps things ordered, organised, even if his paperwork piles aren't perfectly straight or there's a light layer of dust across the desk ornaments. I find all sorts of reports, documents, and contracts in his desk. It's only when I get to the filing cabinet I track down his thoroughbred portfolio.

Finally. I lean back slowly into his high-backed leather chair, reading the inch-thick document. There's a whiskey decanter and glasses on a square table beside me, but I'm too polite to touch his drink. There's got to be a boundary somewhere, and I'm already feeling the beginning tendrils of guilt unfurling in my stomach. Tommy doesn't strike me as the type of man to take invasions of privacy lightly.

But, as I continue to read, I can't help but feel he needs my help desperately. His portfolio's unbalanced, leaning towards intermediates, with no diversification at all into the longest or shortest race lengths. Given the apparent breadth of their racing empire, and other illicit activities I've now come to suspect, they should be having far more success than they are. And there's no easier way to fix a race than to enter a horse entirely trained for a different one.

I'm lost in thought, charts and breeders and negotiations already flashing through my mind, when a noise at the door makes me jump.

"Back already?"

But Arthur's eyes widen when he sees me, clearly as surprised as I am. I stand from the chair, suddenly sheepish.

"Tommy asked for my opinion on your racers," I say. It's not technically a lie.

Arthur blows a puff of air from his mouth. "Tommy rarely asks anyone's opinion," he says, running a hand through his hair. "On anything."

I place the paperwork neatly on the desk. "Perhaps he was being sardonic."

"You approve of what you saw at the stables today then, yeah?" Arthur says.

"I only buy and sell horses," I smile apologetically. "I'm not in any position to comment on your business."

He gives a throaty laugh. "I give you one week and two glasses of drink," he says, shaking his head and grinning. "Commenting on the business seems to be all the rest of us fucking do round here."

"John and Michael not home?" I ask, following him from the office. I'm aware I haven't had a chance to meet Michael yet.

"We're all often coming and going round here," he says. "Why it made more sense to get this place together, in the end. Gives us a chance to catch up without sacrificing those four precious hours of sleep we're lucky to manage."

There's something comforting in knowing I'm in a house of other insomniacs too. The worst part of being unable to sleep for me has always been the loneliness. Nothing but ink black skies beyond the window, silence in the air. And the cold, back home I had always been so cold, in the house that was more like a showroom. My father on the opposite end, with one woman or another, so far away we might as well have been on different properties.