Calloway // Michael Gray x Reader - Peaky Blinders Fanfic

Chapter 21

Calloway

Sir Edmund Sinclair's face pales when I hold out the photos.

"Put those away," he orders, glancing around the quiet pub and tipping back his drink.

"Why is he blackmailing you?" I ask.

The pub's dark, with deep mahogany panelled walls and only a few lamps for lighting. The barman wipes glasses behind the counter, and there's only a handful other people in here. It's shabby, and unclean, and the last place on earth I can imagine bumping into Mosley or his friends, which is entirely the point.

"Because he bloody can," Edmund snaps.

He looks about ready to leave. I gulp. I don't want to be as bad as Mosley. But there is a way to make this man talk.

"I have the photos now," I point out to him. "I can put them in a new envelope, and drop them into any newspaper's office in Smethwick. You'll be disgraced. Or, you can tell me your business with Mosley, and I'll never raise the matter again."

He considers me for a moment, a glint of hatred in his eye. "Donations," he finally says. "Sir Oswald donates to my campaign, takes the tax benefit, and then I funnel the funds back to him."

I blink in surprise. "Why you?"

"Because I'm the only politician close to him with so much to lose." He stands to his feet. "Are we done here?"

"So these documents..." I say, rifling through the paperwork that came in the envelope.

"Yes, yes, all bloody proof." He nods, eyes still darting around the pub. "Goodbye."

I sit for a moment longer, staring into the depths of my whiskey glass. Thinking, formulating. Tomorrow's the last day of the conference. I can only hope Mosley will attend the function — and if not, I'll hammer down the door of his hotel room until I can speak with him.

***

I slip into the room that night, expecting thick darkness I'll have to clamber my way through. But Michael's left the lamp on.

He's in bed, sleeping, breathing softly. Arms bent at a crooked angle as though he'd been waiting up for me, but unwillingly succumbed to slumber.

I undress, pulling a satin robe over my lingerie and tying it at the waist. Before I can turn off the lamp, however, I pause. I cannot help but look at Michael, as I'd looked at him that morning — it feels safer, somehow. Knowing he's asleep. Knowing he can't see me, can't learn how deeply I have grown to care for him.

His bare chest rises and falls in the lamplight, the bedsheets crumpled just below his waist. Heat floods my cheeks and I quickly turn away, flicking the lamp off and returning to my own side of the bed, clambering in beside him.

I lie there in the dark for all of three seconds before his arms find me, pull me to him, exhaling softly in his sleep. I cannot help but smile as I find my place against him.

"You made it back," he murmurs.

"I did."

He murmurs something else I cannot make out, and then falls back asleep once more. Surrounded by his warmth, by how good he smells, it takes only moments before I join him.

***

When I stir awake a couple hours later, the bed beside me is empty. Cold.

I reach for the lamp and check my watch — Michael's watch, I remind myself — and see it's two in the morning. I wait for a flush of the toilet, a running of the taps, but there's only silence. Michael's not here.