The Red King and the Witch

Backseat Freestyle

I wasn't dead, or at least I didn't feel dead.

My heart was still beating, the speedy thrum in my chest racing away as if I'd just run three miles.

I'd already pinched the inside of my wrist multiple times just to make sure I still felt pain.

I could feel the warmth of the sleeping boy in my lap, his little puffs of breath ghosting my neck. I kept his solid weight against my chest, using his sleeping form as a shield to conceal the mounting anxiety attack I was barely able to keep at bay.

The Peaky Blinders, the men Polly had introduced me to, were members of the Peaky Blinders. I had saved the child of a Peaky Blinder. I was physically sitting at a dinner table surrounded by real life fucking members of the Peaky Blinders.

I had guessed from my eavesdropping upstairs that Tommy and his family ran something that might have been less than legal, but I had never expected them to be the Peaky fucking Blinders, members and leaders of England's most notorious razor gang.

My brain went threw an entire reboot the moment I realized I was sitting at the dinner table with a group of people who'd one day be making international business deals with Al fucking Capone, and what was even worse, was how I'd been completely fucking steamrolled by all of them.

One minute Shelby brothers we're kicking off about me being an uninvited woman to their little secret family meeting and the next they were fucking pledging there undying loyalty.

Even after physically assaulting the tallest one, Arthur, he'd taken up a chair next to me during dinner, and just started laughing and cracking jokes as if the incident never happened.

It became apparent to me quite quickly that the Shelby family didn't take no for an answer.

No matter how many times I insisted to Tommy's brother, John, that he owed me nothing in return for saving his son's life, he just wouldn't listen. Every time I tried to bring the conversation back up he would only grin and change the subject.

I foolishly thought that telling Tommy's family the truth of how I'd arrived would have at least gotten me kicked out of the house, instead I had been honored and embraced as a new member of the Shelby clan.

Unfortunately for me, my new membership status didn't seem to get anyone to listen to a word I had to say on the matter, and it was starting to work my nerves.

Polly approached me after a majority of the table had finished eating, her hand sweetly caressing the dark brown hair of the boy asleep in my arms.

"Never seen the boy so quiet, he's good for you alone it seems" she murmured as I nodded silently in response as I didn't know the toddler well enough to disagree.

"They're not used to women refusing them," Polly quietly continued, coming to sit on my left while watching her other younger nieces and nephews listen in rapture to a story John was telling them.

"Polly I really hope you mean they don't take no for an answer in just in friendship and not when a woman actually tells them no, because if that's the case, I may be breaking more than a few fingers in the future if for some Godforsaken reason I'm still here and I haven't gone home" I reply prickly, re-adjusting the sleeping boy in my lap.

The thought of Tommy, Arthur, John, or any of the men I'd met today refusing to take no for an answer from a woman set my teeth on edge and made me want to punch something.

"I raised those boys, Amanda, not their rapist. I'd chop their balls off meself if I'd heard any news like that walk through those doors. What I'd meant is they're not used to women refusing their help, it's usually the other way around." Polly clarified, striking a match and inhaling a puff of her cigarette, giving me a small hesitant smile.