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red-riding-wood · 2 years ago

Text

OC: Charlotte Griffin

Fandom: Peaky Blinders

Summary: Charlotte Griffin, on a quest to emerge from her family's dark shadow, becomes a spy in a gang war that puts her loyalties and desires into question as she grows closer to the man who is meant to be her enemy.

WARNINGS for whole story: eventual explicit sexual content and references, explicit violence and gore, mentions of physical abuse, language, ethnic slurs (mainly because of Alfie)

Disclaimer: story may contain dodgy Italian because I am endlessly confused by the language

I could never escape the red.

The single droplet of blood on the white letter that was meant to mark my freedom marked my brutality. It marked the man’s blood I would have to help spill come the end of winter. It marked, perhaps, who I truly was.

I recalled the blade I had held to my father, the welling of blood it had spurred at the white of his throat, the fall of it against the edge of the letter as he scrawled the last of his name. The way he’d reached for the blade, his voice dipping low like honey as he pleaded with me not to do it. The way I had sheltered it behind my back but had hesitated, because I needed to do it but a few threads of my heart still pulled at what could’ve been.

But it was not the red that Thomas Shelby cared about, for I had allotted it to a nosebleed during my travel to Birmingham. It was the ink black of my father’s writing, the weight his signature held. This was what was most important about the letter; it was what would grant me my freedom.

“I’m not quick to trust these days, Miss Griffin, but your family has treated the Shelbys well, and have never done bad business,” Thomas said as he folded the letter in his hands. “And I may have a job for you, indeed.”

He seemed about to carry on, but I spoke quickly, assuredly, “Please, it’s Charlotte.”

Thomas eyed me for a moment, lips still parted, and then nodded in acceptance. “Very well, Charlotte.” He stood, giving his waistcoat a brush before extending a hand to me. “Now,” he said, once I’d shaken his hand. “You said your father had dealings with the Changrettas once, yes?”

I nodded. “That’s correct, Mr. Shelby.”

“Then I have something for you right away.”

Once Thomas had filled me in on my mission, and he gestured to the door for me to depart, I hesitated, shifting in my chair but not leaving it. Bright blue eyes shot up to me from where they had fixated on some paperwork and dark brows quirked.

“May I see it?” I asked. “The Black Hand?”

Thomas stilled for a moment, and then a key jingled from his pocket, and he unlocked one of the drawers behind his desk. I bit my lip as I waited for him to procure the letter.

“Here.” I could tell he didn’t care to be handling this, perhaps due to the recent death of his brother at the hands of the man who had sent it. But he passed it across the desk, opened to ink-scrawled handwriting. It read:

Merry Christmas to you and your family,

From Luca Changretta & family.

On the right of the card was the imprint of the hand, smudged slightly around the edges of the fingers and outlined with a black, bleeding border. I had never seen one in person.

“He sent you a warning yet attacked before barely giving anyone the chance to read it,” I mused, quietly in thought.

“He wanted to incite chaos, panic,” Thomas said, tone gruff and dismissive, and those piercing aquamarine eyes landed on me again. “Will that be all, Miss Griffin?”

He was tired. Past the rugged looks and the coldfire gaze and the lift of his brow was the darkness of fatigue below his bottom lashes, the prick of sweat at the base of his neck, the plea to be released of his duties behind the veil of one piercing eye.

I forced the corners of my mouth into a polite smile. He didn’t want to discuss this, wanted me out of his office, didn’t even want to pay me the respect of referring to me by the name I had requested.

“Yes, Mr. Shelby. Thank you.”

And as I left his office, I realised that the stories about him were either very wrong or very true, about the Devil and his red right hand.

---

I shouldn’t have looked into John’s casket. I hadn’t anticipated him to be the spitting image of the brother I had lost, with his ashen lashes and freckled, rounded cheeks and strong jaw. I wondered if his eyes were as ice blue as Alexander’s, wondered if they had filled with the same compassion when he embraced his siblings.

I shouldn’t have been thinking these things, dwelling on the past. I had a job to do now, one that could very well decide my fate.

Thomas had instructed me to make contact with the Italian-Americans. My father had made dealings with the Changrettas in the past, which made me one of the few English contacts they could trust. Which made me one of the few if only viable (and willing) candidates that could give them inside information on the Peaky Blinders.

Thomas wanted to use his brother’s funeral to lure them in, and I was to deliver word to them of its time and whereabouts. I had made contact with a man named Matteo, Luca Changretta’s alleged right-hand man.

The pub was on the other side of town, and didn’t appear to neighbour any hotels or potential residences. They’d been careful with the location. And it was crawling with Italians; on my way onto the second floor, I bumped shoulders with a man in a black coat. His hat was tipped down enough to obscure most of his features save for a sharp jawline, but his New York accent betrayed the faint lilt of Italian. His voice was low but seemed to hiss as he said, “My apologies, signorina.”

“That’s alright, sir,” I replied, but found that he had already whisked his way past me, the ghost of his breath lingering on the side of my neck as he made his way to the bar.

I cast my gaze around me at the crowds that mulled about on the dance floor and among the tables. Gazes seemed to land on me, searing into my flesh, and my skin crawled. I was in the heart of the lion’s den.

Alexander would have been proud of me. I wasn’t dependent on my family anymore; I was writing my own story, and it would not be without its excitement, nor its triumphant end.

I tugged gently at the white bow around my neck, running my finger over the ribbon, as if I could imagine him with me when I did, and then I strode forth, the click of my heels echoing into the throng of voices and the lull of the cellos.

Matteo sat at a table close to the bar; I knew it was him because he nodded to me once his gaze caught mine. I stood out in this place; in a room half-filled with Italian mobsters, I didn’t belong with my locks of pale blonde hair and the white of my lace gloves and the dignified yet almost delicate stride that I had been raised to carry myself with.

I unbuttoned the embroidered black coat from my shoulders as I took my seat, folding it neatly over the back of my chair as Matteo and I exchanged pleasantries. I was seated across from the bar, at which I noticed the back of the man that I had bumped into earlier. He was close enough to listen in. Close enough to kill me if I made a wrong move.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said. “As I said over the telephone, I have some rather urgent news.”

The waiter came by and poured a splash of champagne into my glass. The two of us fell silent.

“I understand, Miss Griffin, that you would like to take the side of the Italians in the coming war?” Matteo said, his fingers clasping before him on the table and the candelight casting the shadow of his moustache across a tightened jaw. He radiated tension and an almost impatience.

“My father trusts your people,” I said, ignoring the tinge of bile that rose to my throat at the mention of him. “And I need work. But more than that, I have ambition. So yes.”

Matteo eyed me dubiously, and said, “What is your news, Miss Griffin?”

“Please, it’s Charlotte,” I said, my cordial smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “I met with Thomas Shelby to pay my respects to John. I won’t be invited to the funeral, but I know when it will be, and where it will be. All of the Shelby family will be there.” I paused, noticing the glimmer in Matteo’s eye, and took a sip from my champagne. “Shall I continue?” I asked.

Matteo nodded and gestured me on.

The glass clicked against the hardwood of the table, and I leaned across it, voice lowering to recite the details of the funeral that Thomas had given me.

“Consider this information a gesture of my good will, but in the future, for my services, I would like pay, including a… more personal favour,” I said.

“Thank you… Charlotte,” Matteo said, as we leaned back in our chairs. “Provided this is good information, I think you will be of use to us. And there is plenty of pay to go around. You’ve come to the right place.” A pause, and then, “And what of this favour?”

I resisted the urge to bring my hand to the ribbon around my neck, but the breath I sucked in might’ve been audible as the image of John’s pallid face flashed in my mind’s eye.

“An investigation, in America,” I spoke around a knot in my throat. “Years ago, my brother was murdered there. They never did find his killer.”

“I heard of your family’s loss. I’m sorry, Charlotte,” Matteo said. “An investigation can easily be arranged in the near future. But first, and with all due respect, I have some more questions for you.”

The knot began to unravel in my throat as I forced my brother from my mind, and I nodded graciously. “Please,” I said.

“I would like to know, did Thomas say anything else to you?”

“He offered me work,” I said. “He needs all the allies he can get right now. I think after John, he’s… afraid.”

“Afraid?” Matteo scoffed. “The great Tommy Shelby, afraid?” His scoff turned into a chuckle, one that slowly died as he realized that I wasn’t laughing along. But a wire still lilted the corners of my lips.

“It’s true,” I said. “The Shelbys haven’t faced anything quite like this in years.”

“So what kind of work did he offer?” Matteo asked.

“He wants information, same as you.”

Matteo tensed even more at that, and I chuffed out a laugh.

“Don’t be so skittish. I don’t want the Blinders to win this war. I told him I’d think about it.” I sipped my champagne again, but kept Matteo level with my eyes.

His shoulders sagged if by a slight fraction, his relief barely visible. And he told me, “You’re going to take him up on his offer. And you’re going to report to me. I want to know everything that goes on with the Blinders and the Shelbys. Like I said, you’ve come to the right place. The Changrettas are winning this war, and you would’ve been foolish not to.”

There was a warning in his words. He knew that it was a possibility I was working for Thomas, or would decide to, and he wanted to make that known. But it was laughable, really; how could the Changrettas expect to win a war against the Devil himself?

I’d heard stories of the Peaky Blinders. Tales that would make one shudder and vow to never walk the streets of Small Heath. Even with the Shelby family currently divided, I knew it wouldn’t be long until Thomas gathered his forces and made horror stories out of the Changrettas. Luca had gotten lucky with his ambush on John Shelby; he would not be so lucky again.

And I was going to make sure of that.

“So, if we have a deal, then, when do I get to meet this infamous ‘Luca’?” I asked, a smile still playing at my lips as I sat my champagne down.

Matteo’s gaze dipped to the table, and behind him, the man I had bumped into earlier turned at the bar, long fingers reaching for the felt hat atop his head. Poking from the sleeve of his suit on his wrist, in tattooed ink, was the same hand I had seen on Thomas’ card. His features were revealed to me as he brought the hat from his chest, faintly stirring a few strands of black, slicked-back hair and bringing to the light a scar over his right eye and another slashed vertically across his left cheekbone.

“A pleasure to meet you.” That low voice met my ears once more, spoken around a smirk, and pale green eyes settled on me with a glitter that wasn’t from the chandeliers or the candles. “The name is Luca Changretta.”

Matteo wordlessly rose from the table and disappeared into the crowd, and I was left alone with Luca’s serpentine stare that matched his low hiss of a voice, and his devious smirk that made me wonder if the legends about the Devil were wrong, and his towering stature as he stood to lay claim to Matteo’s seat. He placed his hat on the table, the candlelight glinting off of the onyx gems of his rings – one on his index, one on his pinkie – and folded his coat over the back of Matteo’s chair as I had done with mine. But he didn’t sit.

Instead, still smirking down at me, he extended his ringed hand, and said,

“May we seal the deal in a dance, mia piccola spia?”

NEXT CHAPTER

SERIES MASTERLIST / FULL MASTERLIST

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Taglist:

#luca changretta #luca changretta x oc #peaky blinders #peaky blinders fanfiction #adrien brody #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #my writing #alfie solomons #tommy shelby #polly gray #arthur shelby #I don't know yet what other characters will have prominent roles #oc: charlotte #white ribbon

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red-riding-wood · 2 years ago

Text

OC: Charlotte Griffin

Fandom: Peaky Blinders

WARNINGS for whole story: eventual explicit sexual content and references, explicit violence and gore, mentions of physical abuse, language, ethnic slurs (mainly because of Alfie)

A.N. Muscled through my writing aversion to keep this one going because of your guys' lovely comments! Thank you; this is fueled by the encouraging words!

The smoke filled my bitter cold lungs like some sort of awakening. I could feel my brother’s presence more breathing the smoke of this cigarette than I had Polly’s incense, and I couldn’t help but clench it between two quivering fingers out of the frustration that he haunted me still.

I was tempted to yell out to him in the lonely streets, in the portent dark that stretched over Small Heath like a blanket cradling its long lost master. But despite the assurance that I was under the protection of both the Peaky Blinders and the Sicilian Mafia, it still wasn’t wise to draw attention, much less appear to be mad, screaming to ghosts.

I walked down the half-empty streets of brawling lowlifes and drunkards, cigarette held high above a crooked elbow despite the almost volatile grasp in which I clutched it. Not one person had approached me, though I could feel their stares as if they were sparks in the cold of the night, and I found myself wondering what they knew of me, if word had yet travelled of my “bookmaker” job with the Blinders. I didn’t think I would ever become accustomed to small towns. It felt as if everyone knew me before I knew them.

My stride faltered when a particularly boisterous man stumbled from one of the pubs, its lights spilling onto the pavement and washing the freckles of frost in an ethereal sheen. The man nearly slipped, my heart pounded in my chest as his much taller stature came careening towards me.

Despite catching himself, his weight nearly tripped me in my heels, and alcohol tinged the breath that raked across my near-frosted lashes. I blinked, eyes dry from the cold, and took in his features – the long threads of hair that flopped over winter-blue eyes and a fresh bruise over the thick moustache crowning his lip.

“Arthur?” I said, before clearing my throat and straightening, taking a step back out of respect. “Mr. Shelby,” I corrected myself. “Are you all right?”

“Ah, just fucking call me Arthur,” he slurred, and threw an arm around my shoulder as he turned me the opposite direction and began guiding me along the sidewalk in his drunken state.

“You didn’t answer my question, Arthur,” I pointed out, and angled my body away only slightly so that if he were to vomit up his alcohol I wouldn’t be caught in the trajectory.

“What was your question?” he mumbled, that reek of alcohol twitching my nose. But I remained patient, remembering Thomas’ words about his brother and his good heart.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Do you need a ride home? You don’t look in the state to be driving – or even taking a taxi. Thomas told me not to trust any.”

“No,” he said a little too hurriedly, shaking his head as the weight of his arm left me. “I’m not goin’ home. Not to Linda. If you take me home, Charlotte, I’m gonna… I’ll fuckin’ kill ya.”

It was something, at least, that he remembered my name.

“Don’t worry. I won’t take you home,” I eased him. Though I’d never heard anyone speak of Linda, I assumed that she was a wife or perhaps a lover, and few women approved of their husbands coming home in a drunken stupor. Though I hadn’t figured out what to do with him yet, I wouldn’t take him home to a living situation I knew nothing of.

“Come here,” I said, boldly wrapping my fingers around his arm and gently tugging him to the ingress of the nearest alley. I needed to get him off the street and preferably sitting down somewhere.

Though he nearly lost his footing again, Arthur followed my guidance and immediately sank to the ground, a groan emanating from lips parted to let a bead of drool fall slowly to his chin. His eyelids fluttered shut and he began to mumble something unintelligible to my ears.

I sighed gently and tucked my coat in around me before sinking alongside him to the cold pavement and the bite of the brick against my spine. Procuring a clean handkerchief from my pocket, I wiped the drool from his chin and set it aside.

I took this time to examine him. Despite the marks of violence in the faint scars on his face, I could only see fatigue in the dark bags under his eyes and the loll of his head against the brick wall. He was sort of how I imagined a much scrawnier, sinewy bear would look like if it were slumbering.

“Arthur?” I interrupted his incoherent mutterings.

“Mm? Yes?” His eyelids peeled back, but he didn’t look at me.

“What happened?” I asked him, eyeing the bruise again along his cheekbone. “Did you get in a fight again?”

“You know me,” he slurred out, though I didn’t know him. Not by anything more than the brutality he inflicted, and, of course, Thomas’ words.

“Some right cunt thought he could insult this here,” he said, digging a cross from beneath his shirt and accidentally snapping the beads of the rosary from his neck. “Ah, fuck,” he mumbled, and chuckled heartily. “Guess it doesn’t suit me anyhow, this thing.”

I eyed the cross that he let fall to the pavement, feeling for my own that I still wore – I had wanted to cleanse myself of the séance that Polly and I had undergone earlier that evening. And I found myself curious – curious, because Arthur Shelby was the last person I expected to answer to God, and curious, because I could tell he tried to handle the rosary so delicately despite his brutish touch.

I plucked the cross and its broken string of beads from the pavement, and pressed them into a clammy hand, curling his fingers back over it to ensure they didn’t fall back to the ground. I took note of the wedding ring on his ring finger.

“A cross doesn’t need to suit you, Arthur,” I told him. “Any man can seek God’s light.”

“You sound like Linda,” he grumbled, and stuffed the remnants of the rosary haphazardly into the pocket of his waistcoat. “Don’t start pulling that on me, now, Charlotte. ‘Cause I know there’s no god that’s ever gonna accept me. Not Arthur Shelby. Not the man who bleeds everything he touches like stuck pigs.”

I pondered this in silence, for a moment or two, my gaze drawing now to the bricks of the walls, imagining the blood of every life he’d taken oozing from the cracks. I couldn’t imagine how much it would be, only knew that we would be drowning if it did spill based off of the stories I’d heard of the eldest Shelby brother.

“Who’s Linda?” I finally asked, deciding now was a good time to ask about her, now that he had somewhat settled down. I could hear his breaths coming slower.

“Linda’s me wife.”

I nodded, despite his gaze also elsewhere. And I asked,

“Did she give you that cross?”

“You think I got it from me weekly sermons?” he quipped dryly, and I chuffed out a laugh.

“She must care about you,” I said, delving deeper into the waters of what was okay to ask before he really did kill me. I turned my head to him, his winter gaze meeting mine. Clouded over in a dopey, inebriated sheen, it was difficult to read. But his hesitation in answering me with words told me he must not have fully agreed with my statement.

“Yeah, she must,” he said, his voice eerily hollow.

“Why don’t you want to go home to her?”

His gaze darted down, and he shook his head, clenching his jaw. “You ask a lot of questions for fresh meat.”

My lip quirked into a smile, and I said, “I’m a spy, Arthur. It’s sort of in my job description. Guess it’s a… tough habit to break.” I paused briefly, my mind making a snap decision of what to pry at next. “You ever think of quitting alcohol, Arthur?”

“I’m ‘sposed to be clean,” he mumbled. “Linda made me go straight but here I am, ain’t I. Showing up at her door every night barely able to fucking stand.”

A couple of my brothers had turned to alcohol to help ease the memories of what my father did. Ivan had no doubt taken it the worst, always drinking himself into a stupor not unlike Arthur and always suffering double lashings because of it. Perhaps that was why, when I now looked at Arthur, I found difficulty seeing the ruthless man I had met that night when tested by the Blinders. Perhaps, in his tired eyes and his pathetic slouch, I saw someone who desperately needed an escape from the cruel realities of the world. From the bloodshed and the pain and the suffering. In his case, perhaps, the guilt of it.

“And the fighting?” I asked.

Arthur’s laugh boomed into the quiet of the night, echoing through the alley and sending a shiver through the marrow of my bones.

“Fightin's in me blood, Charlotte,” he told me. “It’s spelled out in me goddamn heart.”

I tilted my head at him curiously, remembering Thomas’ words again, and I said, “Yet you have a good heart.”

“Do I?” He snorted. “Who in the hell told ya that, now, eh?”

“Your brother. Thomas,” I said. “And he also mentioned you’re a fighter. I got the impression you clean up his messes a lot.”

“That why you’re askin’ me these questions? You got someone for me to fight? I’ll fuckin’ show ‘em the hardest swing they’ve seen, just point me to ‘em.”

I parted my lips to decline his offer, when something wicked curved at their corner, and Polly’s words ghosted back to me,

“And you show him that you’re the only one who holds the power in that room.”

And, in turn, I thought of the throne Luca had reminded me of. The power that I so desperately wanted to wield but felt was so far from grasp whenever I found myself in the shadow of Luca’s dark and looming presence.

And, within a few more moments, a plan had formed. One that involved an address I had written upon waiting at the counter of the innkeeper, one that flashed images of a throne that was up for the taking.

“Actually,” I said, my lip pulling into a full-fledged smile. “I know of someone who could use a good scare.”

---

When the key turned in the lock and I glimpsed the felt hat in the doorway, I was sitting cross-legged on the chair of Luca’s study, my elbow resting with a regality on the arm of it and my fingers playing with the toothpick I twirled in my mouth. As his hat tipped up and those pale greens landed on me, I grinned around it, despite my heart hammering like a drum against my ribs.

“Charlotte.” It was the first time I’d ever heard the hint of wariness in his hiss of a tone, though his demeanor gave nothing else away; he hung his coat and his hat on the rack near the door as he spoke, “What are you doing in my chair?”

I smirked, my jaw working against the wooden pick. Though his drawers were all locked, I had pulled it from a box on his desk and wanted to mimic the way he seemed almost subservient to it, as if nothing else in the room mattered. Before I answered, I plucked it from my lip and studied it, my hand cocked to the side as I did so.

And, suppressing the fear that coursed through my veins like acid under his serpent stare, I flicked it to the hardwood floor, and slowly dragged my gaze back to the man who still stood just inside the doorway.

“I thought it would make a good throne,” I told him, still smirking, and watched the gold glitter in the green of his eyes with something unreadable yet thrilling.

Shockingly, he still did not advance. I construed this to be wariness; I had broken into his hotel room, had laid claim to his desk. He had no idea if I was hiding a weapon on my lap or if I had completely lost my mind.

Maybe I had, to dare to dance with someone like Luca Changretta.

I’d told Arthur that someone in this hotel had wronged me, and that I wanted petty revenge by gaining a key to their room. With very little inhibitions and a raging temper that he was eager to point at absolutely anything with a beating heart, him and I had paid a visit to the innkeeper’s home, and I bore the key in the pocket of the coat that I had slung over the back of Luca’s chair.

Call it theatrics, but a part of me could not help but feel an almost wicked satisfaction at the shift it had made in the room. The shift, I hoped, of power.

“Wednesday is no longer a suitable date for the Blinders,” I told Luca, pretending to examine his schedule in front of me – a calendar that had nothing but a few loose notes about meeting with the Sabinis, a rather deplorable Italian gang who soiled the streets of London arguably more than my father.

“But I may be able to set something else up,” I said, and looked up from the calendar with an upturn of my brows and a rather light and flippant tone as I added, “Are you free on the seventh?”

Luca’s brow knitted slightly at that, and he shifted his jaw. “Why did they back out?” he asked, ignoring my remark.

I shrugged. “Could be many things, really. Relatives visiting perhaps, a new show on the tele….” I leaned forward then, lace-clad arms extending across the table and my fingers clasping together as I lowered my tone in volume but not playfulness. “But I think it’s more likely that someone tipped them off.”

My satisfaction only increased as a flicker of dismay darted across green irises and dark brows twitched.

“And why would you do that, piccola spia?” he asked, seeming to be equal parts fascinated by me and simmering with rage – I could tell this by the way he tipped his head forward and kept his brows quirked, but rubbed the knuckles of his clenched fist.

“I’m the reason they would trust sending men after this setup. Therefore, I don’t have to tell them that you will be at any false whereabouts on the seventh. Instead, I could tell them the address of this hotel.

“Unless, of course, you hold up your end of our bargain. And you ensure that the best cops in New York are looking for my brother’s killer.”

As a silence stretched between us, I took note of how a tense smile pulled at his lip, and he clasped his hands in front of him.

“Blackmail.” He pursed his lips for a moment as he seemed to ruminate on this word, eyes narrowing and his mouth twitching back into the slightest of smiles as if it were amusing. “Y’know, I can’t think of a single person who’s had the guts to make demands like yours and walk away with them intact.”

“Thomas is starting to trust me,” I told him. “And that seems to be a very rare thing. I think you will let me walk, Luca, because you know you need me in this war. And I think that you enjoy the game just as much as I do.” I leaned back in my chair, my smirk tugging again at my lip as I brought my elbow to rest along the arm of the chair, fingertips running over one another. I knew he wouldn’t kill me. I was too amusing to him. I was a pawn in this game that he believed belonged to him and I was slowly changing the rules.

“So…” I said. “… would you like to kill Arthur Shelby or not?”

Luca chuckled, shaking his head at me. “You’re somethin’, you know that?” he said, and something lightened in my chest at his words, threatened to soar up from the bounds of my ribs, but I forced it back and I watched his smile fade.

“If you bring Arthur Shelby to me, I will assign more men to the investigation,” he said.

I chuffed out a weak laugh, and stood, sliding the sleeves of my coat over my arms and fluffing out the collar. My gaze never left his as I did so, slowly, wanting to keep him in the same suspense he often enthralled me in.

“I make this arrangement, and you will assign more men. And then I bring you Arthur Shelby,” I stated, my words firm, sounding louder from my chest than I had anticipated.

“Oh…” I added, having nearly forgotten something. “… and I’ll be taking this letter with me.” A bitterness formed on my tongue as I reached for the letter on his desk that was addressed to Marcus Griffin.

I paused as I reached for the door, and with a triumphant flourish I handed him the innkeeper’s spare. “Your key, Mr. Changretta.”

His fingers brushed mine as he took the keys, his gaze unblinking as it bore into me. But I did not quail beneath it, only shivered lightly in what I could only describe as some devious innervation.

“Read it,” he said, syllables dragging the two words out between us like a spell.

I tore the envelope as viciously as I had torn my gaze, and let the paper fall to the floor as I grasped the letter in my fingertips.

Slowly, crystal by crystal, the ice around my heart began to melt, settling a warmth in my gut and softening the tension which I held myself with. My lips parted, jaw nearly falling slack as I read Luca’s handwriting.

When I looked up at him, I had lost whatever Polly had described in me. In its stead was a dull ache, one that seemed to throb with each pulse of my heart, that split the threads of my soul and extended them to his as if connecting would ease this strange affliction.

And why, despite whatever game Luca thought he was playing, he would turn down ransom money from my father, burn the bridge that had been built on business between on our families, I could not possibly explain.

My tongue, like a blade, had dulled, my words coming softer, quieter.

“You could’ve hired a much better qualified spy with whatever money my father offered you.”

Luca wasn’t smiling anymore. For a moment, I thought he almost looked forlorn, those upturned brows pinching slightly and his eyes seeming to shimmer with veils that refused to let me in to his thoughts.

“I don’t want another spy,” he said, the gentleness of his tone nearly mirroring mine. I found myself both soothed and unnerved by the subtle change.

And if he didn’t break our silence, I was certain that we would’ve stood like that for ages. But he collected a breath of air in his lungs and moved his head, jaw shifting slightly around the absence of his toothpick.

“And I’m not free on the seventh,” he said, the darker notes of his voice returning now. “I’m taking you to dinner.”

My cheeks heated, and I couldn’t hold back the smile that quirked the corner of my lip, nor the way I tilted my head at him as if I had heard him wrong.

I collected myself, pursing my lips to banish my smile and swallowing against the flutter in my throat.

“Very well, Luca,” I said, remembering when he’d told me he liked the way I said his name and wondering why I had ever stopped.

His devilish smirk reappeared, and an arm outstretched so that a long finger could run down my shoulder, sending another shiver through me. And he said,

“We will dine while Arthur Shelby dies.”

NEXT CHAPTER

SERIES MASTERLIST / FULL MASTERLIST

Please let me know if you would like to be added/removed to any of my taglists and notified of new works!

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#luca changretta #luca changretta x oc #peaky blinders #peaky blinders fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #my writing #alfie solomons #thomas shelby #tommy shelby #polly gray #arthur shelby #white ribbon #peaky blinders fanfic

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