IN BAD FAITH | peaky blinders | T.S

FOUR

MARTHA

"Get your hands off her," Martha spat.

The man holding Josephine by her arms grinned, his sweaty face wrinkling. He was perhaps the ugliest man she'd ever seen — a thick, purple scar ran across the left side of his face and over his eyeball, so that he had to blink often to stop it from drying out. Instead of teeth there sat a pocket of blackness, and his tongue jutted out from his thin lips to swipe the side of his mouth like a nervous tic. Two other men had entered the room just moments before, each restraining one of the sisters. A large man with a tattooed face had made a beeline for Martha, wrapping his arm across her chest to completely restrict her.

"You should watch who you're talking to," he whispered into her ear, his breath hot like acid across her face.

The man with his arms around Bessie was noticeably young — perhaps even younger than Martha herself. He looked deathly pale and chewed on the inside of his cheek nervously. He peered down at the little girl every time she let out a sob, his face startled as if he was scared of hurting her. Martha absorbed every detail scattered across his face, intent on remembering it.

"What do you want?"

Josephine widened her eyes at her older sister, urging her not to argue, not to speak.

"You know what we want," the scarred man grinned.

Just then a new voice entered the room.

"What we want? What do you mean, what we want?"

Martha watched Josephine's recognition of the man; her throat bobbed as she swallowed and she squared her shoulders, somehow appearing more frightened.

"What you want, Monty, is ten shillings in your back pocket and a glass of that hideous fucking rum in the pub down the road built to serve commoner scum like yourself. You're here because I fucking told you so. Because I am the boss."

"S-Sabini," he stammered, panicked under the Italian's harsh glare.

"I am the boss and I run this fucking town. This isn't what you want, it's what I  want. And I always get what I want. Now, which one of you is Josephine," he spat, as if the name wasn't worth being spoken from his mouth. He cast his attention to the girls, who remained silent.

Sabini waited a few moments before chuckling under his breath.

"Is it you?" He barked, pointing at Martha. He approached her, his dark eyes running over her body. She remained silent, staring back at him defiantly.

"I wouldn't usually put myself out in a filthy rat-hole like this," he said, walking back to the middle of the room and looking around their squat bedroom in disgust. "But I have business to attend to, and that business involves a girl by the name of Josephine Smith. I won't ask again. Which one of you is it?"

For an instinctual second Martha wanted to scream that it was her, that she was the girl Sabini was looking for. Maybe they would believe it and she could fix her sisters mess. But before she could even move her tongue to speak, Sabini laughed.

"Bring him in."

Martha heard Josephine's scream before she recognised what was happening. Two men heaved something into the room and dumped it onto the floor, and suddenly Martha realised that it was not a thing, but in fact a person. A boy.

Josephine wrenched herself from the grip of the scarred man and fell to her knees, cupping the boys bloodied face. His cheeks were stained red and bruised, and so swollen that his eyes had been reduced to slits in his skin. His body was weak and lifeless, and if it wasn't for the tears slipping down his face or the soft whimpering of his voice, she may have believed he was dead.

"It wasn't me, Jo," he muttered, blood spilling from his mouth. Sabini growled and kicked him so violently that Bessie screamed and covered her eyes.

"I know, Louis, I know. Shhh." Josephine whispered. To see her sister like this was strange, Martha thought. Josephine had never been one for affection — she had never been interested in the boys who pulled her pigtails as children, nor the men who winked at her when she crossed the street. The girl crumpled beside this boy on the floor was not the quiet, stoic, stubborn Josephine that Martha knew, and in fact, she had never seen anything quite like it. The way Josephine's fingertips danced delicately over his body, knowing where to touch, careful not to hurt him. Her eyes swelled with tears and something in them fizzed, something hidden so deep in her pupils that you probably wouldn't notice it unless you were staring the way that Martha was. Josephine loved him more than she had loved anything else on this Earth. And her eyes gave it all away.

"If I didn't need you alive I'd have you dumped in your mother's front garden like this." Sabini spat, ripping Martha from her trance.

"What do you want?" she shouted, and the air in the room disappeared as Sabini sauntered past the bleeding boy to stand in front of her. She studied his face, every single detail, the freckles under his left eye and the faint cigarette burn hidden under his moustache.

"Don't look at me like that," he spat, pinching her face in his coarse hands. "I'll tell you what I want, shall I? I'm going to take your sister and her stupid fucking boyfriend to Birmingham and deliver them to the cause."

He took a step back and looked at Josephine.

"Did you hear that? I'm going to take you to the man that caused all of this and once I've shot him in the back of the head, I'll kill you both too. You can decide on the drive there which of you wants to go first, but by the looks of things loverboy won't make it three days."

Louis spat at Sabini's feet. The room filled with apprehension, so thick it was almost tangible.  The Italian smirked before lunging toward Bessie and striking her across the face. Martha snarled and fought against the man who held her, desperate to get to Sabini, and in her struggle she was too busy to notice the way Josephine acted almost identically, her wild eyes boring into Sabini as she fought to inflict any sort of pain on him.

"When you hurt me, you hurt them, which means you hurt her," he growled at the boy, standing over him with a grimace. Then, a wicked smile flashed across his face as he looked at the older girls. "Interesting to see how much you love your sister. One wrong move from either of you and I'll send you her head in a box."

"I'll kill you," Martha breathed.

"What was that?" Sabini spat, coming face-to-face with her.

Martha couldn't process any emotion: all she saw in her mind was Sabini's face, and behind it swam the primal instinct to hurt him. It coursed through her blood and made her heart lurch. She had never been so certain of anything in her entire life.

"I'm going to find every single one of you and I'm going to kill you."

Before he could retaliate the sound of a car engine revved outside and a voice shouted at the men to leave. Sabini grabbed Martha's face again, pinching it so hard that she thought his fingers would pierce through her cheeks. Without another word he stalked from the room leaving his men to drag Josephine and Louis out of the house.

Martha stumbled to the floor so she could speak to her sister. She cupped Josephine's tear-stained cheek with her hand.

"I'm going to find you. I promise."

Josephine touched Martha's hand and sobbed.

"I'm so sorry Marth. I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologise," Martha panted. You sound like mum, she thought.

The man with the thick pink scar pulled Josephine up by the collar of her dress, leaving Martha on the floor.

"I'm going to find you," she screamed, tears now brimming in her eyes.

Josephine stared at her helplessly. "Don't find me, Martha. Find Thomas Shelby."

These were the last words Martha heard her sister speak before she was ripped from their home and taken into the cold January night.

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a/n: sorry just a few mistakes edited / a few bits added bc im extra af and also half blind

as always hope u enjoy :))) x