Bancroft - Peaky Blinders Reverse Harem x Reader

Chapter 48

Mother comes downstairs the next morning, yawning and fanning herself with a newspaper. I'm sat at the dining room table. I tremble with a silent rage.

If it wasn't for the Shelby's, I don't know what state I would be in. But the thought that I'll be back with them soon and able to make things right, and the insights I realised from my time with Michael, gives me the strength that I need.

I no longer fear my fate. I no longer even need Aberama Gold.

I am not my father. I am capable of loving, and of being loved. And that means I am not an evil thing when I kill a man who points a gun at Michael, or when I face my mother and refuse to cower.

It means I am defending my real family.

"Is Ada still here?" Mother asks, glancing around. She sits at the other end of the table. "Put on a pot of tea, would you, dear?"

I make a small noise of amusement. Her brows draw together as she glances at me questioningly.

"You will never drink tea beneath my roof again," I tell her.

She has the nerve to still look surprised, to still keep up the pretence. But her voice wobbles, just slightly, a she says "...Dear?"

"My time in Small Heath was the first happiness I've ever felt," I tell her. "And I abandoned it for you."

She blinks. "We can always visit, if it means that much to you—"

"I made three phone call the night you arrived," I say, cutting her off. "I called a lawyer. I called Polly Gray. And I called Ada Shelby. Who, by the way, is a fucking communist."

Amazingly, that's the news that breaks her. Her skin turns a shade of grey.

"A communist that delivered me a copy of Father's Will. In which it states, clear as day, that I am to inherit the entirety of Bancroft Enterprises Limited." My voice is ice cold. "You lied to me. You knew how much I stand to gain if I take over the business. How much money's at stake."

"Don't... Don't be foolish," She says, but her voice is barely a whisper.

"Furthermore," I continue, "I had an independent lawyer examine the divorce proceedings between you and father. He checked every shred of evidence, and reconciled it with every set of accounts you held at the time." I lay a hand flat on the table. "Would you care to tell me why father had to send you a cease and desist, not before you left, but seven fucking years later when I was twelve? Would you care to tell me why you'd taken out loans in my fucking name, your own daughter, that father had to pay using all his match winnings? While Arthur Shelby Sr. Covered the mortgage payments for this house. This house," I continue in spite of her flabbergasted stare, my voice rising, "which you talked me out of selling, because there are still three outstanding mortgages owing? After more than a decade of your greed and theft."

"I was owed that money," she snaps. "I told you, I was about to be left penniless."

I shake my head at her. "You bought a fucking castle in Scotland to hide that money. Or maybe you just couldn't help yourself but spend. Which is it?"

She gulps. "How do you know about that?"

"How's my cheque book been treating you?" I ask, ignoring her once more. "Been having issues, haven't you? You thought you'd been forging my signature wrong. All those meetings with the banks, all the fucking lies."

She makes a choking noise.

"I gave you the cheque book for an account I haven't used since I was fifteen. Deep in the drawers of my bedroom. And then I had Polly Gray re-open the account in my name. It pays to know criminals, mother. You'd be amazed what information the banks will give you when they know you carry a gun."

"This is madness," she says, her voice so thin it's barely audible.

"Two hundred pounds in cash. Declined. Three hundred pounds. Declined. So then you hit the jewellery stores. Gold. Diamonds. Assuming they wouldn't be able to find you when the cheques bounced back. Knowing you'd be on a fucking ship back to New York by the time anyone realised you'd frauded your way into over ten thousand fucking pounds. That's more than this house is worth." I laugh humourlessly. "That's the real fucking kick in the teeth. That is more than this whole fucking place is worth. And still, it's mortgaged to the hilt."

She stands to her feet. I stay sat down.

"I still might have taken mercy on you," I say. "Can you believe that? Can you believe that I have been so fucking desperate for your love, for your approval, that even all that might still have not been enough to hate you. But then, I had the fortune of trying to find a man named Aberama Gold. Oh yes," I say, as her eyes widen. "What a stroke of fucking fate that I should be searching for the very man you wrote a false cheque, using my name. A man you remembered from your own past, an old business associate of father's. A hit-man who, just yesterday, you tried hiring to fucking kill me."

"Enough!" She shrieks. Her chest rises and falls with each rapid breath. She points a trembling finger at me. "I am not a killer!"

I smile at her. "Oh? But I am. You want to know what happened to the last people who entered this house and tried to steal from me?" I watch as the fear creeps into her eyes. "They're buried in the fucking garden."

I hear as the front door opens, and the policemen run through the house with their guns aloft.

"How could you do this to me?" She gasps. "I'm your family."

"No," I tell her. "You're not. I'm nothing like you."

Her face twists in a snarl. "You think so? You think those thugs in Small Heath are your family? Hmm. You left them, remember? We're not so different after all." She laughs derisively as a policeman cuffs her hands behind her back, though she doesn't resist. "You have no charges against me," she says. "Not one fucking shred of evidence is legal. Not with your father's criminal stain all over it."

I shrug. "Maybe not. But it turns out coppers are very similar to banks. And it turns out, Bancroft Enterprises own the whole London Division."

"Fuck you," she hisses. "I should have left you here to rot."

"You did," I tell her. "Remember? But unfortunately for you, it didn't fucking work. I hope you enjoy prison."

And then I take my trunk in my hand and leave, not looking back as the policemen wrestle her into the back of their car. Ada's waiting for me on the road, and I don't want to see this house ever again as we head back to Birmingham.