Bancroft - Peaky Blinders Reverse Harem x Reader

Chapter 20

"Are you alright?" Michael asks, taking me by the shoulders.

I stare at the lifeless body on the ground. I wait for it to happen — for the shock to kick in. The nausea, the rolling tears, the shaking. That's how it had been after the break-in.

But now I feel nothing. Only a grim satisfaction.

"Did he hit you?" I ask Michael, scanning him quickly for signs of blood or bullet.

"No. You took care of that." Michael glances around us, where managers and track riders are beginning to poke their heads out and investigate the cause of all the commotion. "Come on," he says to me. "We need to get hold of Tommy to sort this out."

"I can do it," I say.

Michael raises an eyebrow, glancing at me cautiously. "You can drag a two-hundred-and-fifty pound man out of here, load him into a car, dig his grave, destroy evidence, and pay off everyone here to keep their traps shut, not to mention any coppers who come sniffing?"

I blink. "Well. When you put it like that."

Though it would almost be worth the challenge just to avoid Tommy.

But Michael doesn't see it that way, and I'm left with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders as the stable manager makes cups of tea, and Michael phones his cousin.

***

"It wasn't your fault."

They're the first words Tommy's said to me since arriving. I'm sat on the faded yellow sofa in the manager's office still, knees tucked to my chest and drinking my third cup of tea. I watched through the tall windows as Michael and Tommy assessed the scene, and now no less than three Peaky Blinder men have dragged the body away and are currently hosing down the grass.

"I should be helping clean it up," I say.

Tommy pulls a cigarette free from his pack. "Never clean up your own kills, Bancroft. Not unless you absolutely must. You need fresh sets of eyes to make sure you don't miss anything."

"I didn't want to kill him." I need him to understand this, to know I had no intention of causing any extra work or grief.

"That why you stole a gun?" He asks, lighting the cigarette.

I glare at him. "Would you rather I hadn't?"

"Of course not. You've done yourself proud today." He pauses. "You've done us all proud."

"If only I'd known it would be that easy," I sigh. Tommy glances at me questioningly as he draws and then exhales. "To gain your approval," I say. I shouldn't be bitter, but I can't help it. "To finally hear a word of encouragement, rather than telling me off."

"You think I tell you off?" He asks, amused.

"What would you call it?" I ask.

"I must have spent the whole war telling off the others, then," he says. "Funny, that. As we wouldn't have made it out alive otherwise." Before I have time to ponder what he means, he's pulling the cigarette from his lips and speaking again. "That wasn't your first kill, was it?" He asks.

"How do you know?"

"Killing a man's like losing your virginity," he says. "Everyone thinks the first time's important. But your first is awkward. Clumsy. You don't know what to do with your hands, and you're rattled afterwards. But once you've got a couple under your belt, it all changes. The pressure's gone and you can shoot a man in the fucking heart and not feel a thing. You can kill a hundred men, fuck a hundred people, and they all fade into one eventually. Whether you're creating life or ending it, you become no more than a vassal for God. Takes the weight off your shoulders once you work that out."

"So you don't mind being a murderer?" I ask quietly.

"Do you know, Michael's never killed anyone?" Tommy says. "Talks a big game, course he does, but his hands are squeaky clean. How would you feel if he'd broken his record today?"

"Awful," I whisper.

"And you'd have looked every one of us in the eyes, including his own mother, and known you were the reason he'd crossed that line. Or, you shoot the irish fucker in the chest yourself. Which one would you choose?"

"I'd do it again, of course," I say, not needing to even think it through. "Every time."

Tommy nods. "So no, I don't mind being a murderer. There's your answer."

I slowly realise this is about more than just killing.

"That's why you are the way you are," I say. "So no one else has to do the things you do. See the things you see."

"Someone has to." His voice is curt, but I can hear the difference in him. It's taken a lot for him to speak with me like this.

"All this time, I thought you just didn't care about anyone."

He slips his hands into the pockets of his coat, stares out the window at the men still working. "I'm sorry if I upset you last night."

I say nothing.

"You may think I don't care, but if anything happens to you..." He shakes his head and lights a new cigarette. "You're harder to keep alive than I thought. Better you hate me alive than admire me dead."

A silence follows. The midday sun catches Tommy's eyes, brings them out in a colour like sea foam.

I want to thank him for opening up to me. I want to tell him that I can see how much it took for him to do so, that I know how rare it is for him to speak so openly. But I also know Tommy, and I know such declarations would make him uncomfortable.

"You need to hire a bookkeeper for the stables," I say instead.

He raises his eyebrows.

"Michael complained about the state the manager leaves them in," I continue. "Takes him forever to worn it all out. Be cheaper to hire someone new and chuck a few pennies his way once a week."

"Would you look at that," he murmurs. "You're learning."

"It's common sense."

"If you say so." He stubs the cigarette out. "Come on. Michael's already taken the car. We'll grab a horse and ride home."