Power and Lies

Fourteen

Shots rang out, one after another in quick succession and Freya looked towards John, confusion pulsing through her. John looked relieved, as though something had turned the tides for them. Maybe death would not come today, his eyes spoke to her. Machine gun she realized after a moment. Who had a machine gun? If it were the Irishman they were surely about to die in a harsher way than she originally thought. If it were Tommy, maybe they stood a chance after all.

"What is happening?" She whispered to John, unwilling to drag attention away from anyone else. If it were not Tommy they would all need to keep their sight trained on the doorway.

    "Tommy got the gun," John whispered back. Her stomach flittered at the sound of his name, and she unwillingly smiled. John stared back at her through squinted, suspicious, eyes.

    "That's not all Tommy has, is it?" He asked her, his voice laden with hurt. She turned her attention once more to the others, thankful they had not bothered to try and listen. "Do you love him?"

    When she did not answer John slammed his hand on the turned table, shocking her and turning the eyes of others towards them. "I said do you love him?" She stared at John frantically, trying her best to ask him to let it go, to turn his thoughts back to the gunfire outside and the shattering of glass around them.

    "John-" She tried but he stepped away from her as though she was diseased. The harshness of the action caused pain to ripple through her.

    "Why him, Freya? Why? I wanted to marry you, would've been good to you. I could've walked away from all this, bought a house in the country. You think Tommy can love you like that? Don't be fucking stupid, Freya. You hear that gunfire? That's Tommy. That is who he is. And you will never be anything near as good as that to him." The words stung at her. For a second it was as though time had stood still. The glass stopped spilling into the pub, the bullets stopped in mid-air, and John's eyes never left her own. Her heart fell into tiny fractured pieces. Not only because of what he said, but because of the truth of it all. Tommy would always be soaked in blood, living from one heist to the next, and she would never be enough to tame the beast inside of him.

    "Freya, I'm-" She held her hand up to the Shelby boy, picking up her weapon and placing it back on her shoulder. Her only mission now was to survive. At the end of it, she would go home. There she could cry over the wounds on her soul. Polly glanced at her pensively but made no moves to speak to her.

    Finally after what seemed like hours the gunfire stopped. Arthur was the first to step outside, his hand running through his hair. Stress waved through everyone, their shoulders were rigid. The weight of war bore down on Freya and she kneeled over, resting her back against the table, doing her best to ignore the smell of blood and gunpowder. She held her head in her hands for a moment, her eyes closed, willing away the thought of all the dead men. How many mothers would weep tonight because of her?

    "Is everyone alright?" Tommy's voice rang out. Freya made no attempts to move. She was frozen in time, unable to take her mind off of everything around her. She did not regret it, but each fallen person was another scar on her heart to carry with her. It was heavy. Murmurs rang out through the pub, confirming life and limb. They had lost nobody thanks to her, while others had lost everything.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

    Tommy stood in the doorway, blood dripping over his body. He was thankful in that moment that he had kept the machine gun, but anxiety gripped him. It was clear he had not made it in time to save his family from the attack, and he was unsure when he entered the pub how much carnage he would have to bear witness to. It was Arthur he saw first, stepping out into the street he had littered with bodies. His brother looked aged, his hands running through his hair as if he was trying to wrestle the thoughts and memories from his mind. His brother was a compass twisted in its directions between crime and morality. He knew that every person Arthur laid eyes on stood out in his mind as the gatekeeper between god and being damned. But he was alive, and Tommy was happy to see it.