Kimber's Daughter - Tommy Shelby x Reader Fan Fic

Chapter 39

Tommy's POV

Another punch. Another blow. Thomas Shelby wiped the blood from his lip, and he smiled in the dim light of the pub. It had been worth the trip to the other side of town for this.

"That all you got?" He asked, black-eyed and bruised.

Arthur's hand clamped down on the attacking man's arm before he could deliver the finishing blow. "Fuck off out of here," the older brother said, "or you'll be bringing a fist to a gunfight."

Thomas was disappointed as the man heeded his brother's words. He was running out of men in Small Heath he didn't mind pissing off, didn't need a friendly relationship with for one reason or another. A man to pick a fight with.

His jaw throbbed, and his split lip continued to trickle blood. He accepted Arthur's handkerchief and wiped.

"I was handling that," he said, reaching for another shot of whisky.

"Like fuck you were." Arthur frowned. "You can't keep doing this, Tom. You'll end up dead."

"No one would dare kill one of us," he replied flatly. "Perk of the job."

"What did you say to this one, to get him so worked up?"

"Insulted his wife." Thomas's jaw clenched on the last word.

Arthur ordered and sipped his own drink before answering. "Don't think I don't know what this is about. We all do."

Tommy sighed. "I've barely recovered from Pol's hours-long tirade. I don't need another."

"Tom..."

"I did what was best for the business. For us." He looked directly at his brother. "I have to make shit decisions sometimes. Don't be daft, Arthur, you know that. You could never do it, so I stepped up. Don't go having regrets now."

"There's more to it than that, Tom, and you know it," Arthur said quietly. "Some things just aren't adding up."

Thomas raised his eyebrows. "Like?"

"If you wanted Billy Kimber to come to Small Heath, you could have drawn him here months ago. Instead you had him and his boys up in Scotland, planting continuous lies that you were both there. Before that, you were deliberately spotted in Dorset. Anything to keep him away from here. To stop Grace and the Inspector from finding him."

"What's your point, Arthur?"

"John and I aren't stupid, Tom. You didn't do this for the business. You did the exact opposite. You put our business at risk, all for her. And then you got caught out."

Tommy slammed his glass down on the bar. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Arthur sighed. "It's a shame. I liked Kimber. We all did."

"She's no angel, Arthur."

Tommy's hands threatened to shake. Anger, hate, love, fear, they were all the same — all emotions that would end in death. Because if he lost control, if he wasn't a robot in a man's body making calculated decisions, people around him died. His mother. Other men in the war, in France. If Tommy allowed any emotion to creep into his mind, those tunnels would have collapsed. They'd all be dead.

Resist, or watch other men that felt like brothers die, and know it was all his fault.

So he sent the surge of emotion to that locked box at the base of his mind, one he would never open. He'd been so dangerously close to losing control with Kimber. He'd dared to pretend he could feel human again, to letting his emotions control him. He'd fucked up. It couldn't happen again. He couldn't put her at risk. Not when he....

No. He wouldn't think it. He didn't love her, he couldn't love her. If he loved anyone he became weak, and if he was weak he was a dead man already. He locked the thought away. Ignored the burning hole in his chest. What was pain, when there was so much of it already? Another man, another punch, more pain. One day there'd be enough of it to forget her completely. Or so he hoped. Until then, he had opium, at least before sleeping — more than he'd ever needed before, even after the war. The visions of that tunnel morphed into Kimber and back again, an endless montage all night long.

"She used me. Plain and simple," he said, finally under control. "She was playing the game just like I was."

"Dorset didn't look like a game," Arthur said quietly. "Or anything that followed."

"All displays," Tommy said flatly. "Nothing behind closed doors."

He had to lie to his brothers. To everyone. If the truth left his lips, he wouldn't be able to lie to himself any longer. The only way to recover from this was to simply pretend it didn't exist. That he didn't feel anything. His choices were that, or to have grovelled before her in the street, tell her words he couldn't say. He'd tried, and they'd refused to leave his lips. And each time he remembered how she'd looked, like an angel in a wedding dress, angry and hurt and confused, he wanted to take a gun to his own head.

If only she hadn't called her father to Small Heath. Why, fucking why, had she done so? He'd already planned it all. After the wedding, when Billy Kimber couldn't hurt his daughter without Peaky Blinder retaliation, or hurt the Shelby's now they were his kin, he'd been planning they'd go to see him together. She could say anything she needed to say. Tommy would warn him about Grace and the Inspector, and Billy Kimber would have his boys kill them. The Blinders would have plausible deniability in the deaths, and the whole fucking nonsense would be dropped. A final favour for Billy Kimber, repaid in kind. Interests aligned. They'd negotiate business. Kimber would still be with him, her father no longer out for their blood. They'd all live happily ever fucking after.

Now that was out of the question.

"What now then?" Arthur asked. "Pol gonna let Michael go undercover for us?"

Tommy thought for a moment about his cousin. They'd only just found him. And already, Tommy was sending him on Peaky Blinder business — to go undercover at Kimber's.

"Polly will soon learn that I'm more frightening than Kimber."

"If Kimber finds out who Michael is, hiding right under her nose, she won't just kill him, Tom. She'll kill us all."

"You overestimate her."

Tommy acted calm, but his insides were churning. If he was being completely honest with himself, he wanted Kimber to come and press a gun to him once again. It would mean she was here, after all. Death in her arms might be less painful than life without her.

He caught the thought as soon as it came, locked it up, squashed it down. But without the thoughts of her, his mind felt suddenly empty. Too empty. He needed another drink, another man to hit, more bruising and bleeding to distract him.

Arthur read him like a book. "That's what you're wanting, isn't it? You want her to find out. To come back."

"Don't be stupid, Arthur. Polly would have my head."

Arthur shook his head. "You're playing with fire, Tom. And we'll all get burnt."

Tommy looked his brother directly in the eye. His own was swelling shut, pink now, though it would turn purple later. Where was Kimber to patch him up when he needed her?

If only she hadn't fucked up his plan. If only things had been different.

"If we didn't play with fire, we'd never have invented guns," Tommy answered. "And I don't know about you, Arthur, but I'm bloody grateful for mine."