THE FRENCH KISSERS ― Thomas Shelby

21. lamb to the slaughter

"Tavish was at me house."

Her heart dropped from her chest to her stomach. The lamb had been raised among wolves. It had no protection against lions. Their hands met when Rose leaned over the desk and snatched two guns from the drawer.

"Let's go."

***

Frances was at the doorstep, so fragile and thin a stronger gust of wind could have carried her away. She shrank against the door when Thomas stomped towards her.

"Where is he?" His voice boomed in the silence of the Arrow House like a thunder that carried a lightning of its own. "Where the fuck is he?"

"Charlie is upstairs, sir." Frozen in her place, rigid, as if the bolt had fallen straight upon her, Frances relaxed only when she spotted Rose behind him. "The man... the man is gone. I'm so sorry, sir, I had no idea who he was. He held me at gunpoint and—"

Thomas dove into the house and Rose followed suit, stopping only to give Frances' shoulder a soothing squeeze. They stormed up the stairs, leaning away from the sudden light that came from the ceiling; a bullet hole smiled down on them. Her heart beat so heavily against its cage it could have cracked it. It hurt as if Charlie was her son.

Then Thomas opened a door, and Charles looked up from his circle of toys and giggled. He tried getting up but Thomas was faster, crossing the room like a hurricane that turns soft once it has what it needs in its eye. His arms engulfed his son, arms that were a prison to others, a home to him.

Rose stopped by the threshold, fighting with the breath in her throat.

"Rosie!" Charlie stretched out his hands to her. Over his shoulder, her stare met Thomas'. Not even lying in the hospital, wounded and about to be grabbed by death's indifferent hands, had he looked so vulnerable. His feelings for the world were buried deep down; his feelings for his son simmered just beneath the surface, and now, like an erupting volcano, they gushed out from the soil in quiet tears.

"I heard we had a guest coming over, aye?" Thomas asked, covering Charlie's small fist with his, as if he could prevent him from ever getting hands as calloused from work and as bloodied from life as his. "Was he nice to ya?"

"Yeah!" Charlie bounced his head up and down. "He gave me a new toy! Look!"

He pointed to a plush lamb hanging around a fallen horse and leaned over to catch it, but Rose was quicker.

"Rose—"

She picked up the toy, keeping it out of Charlie's reach, clinging to the foolish hope that if there was a bomb inside, her body would raise a wall between it and the family behind her.

"It's not a bomb." With her back turned, she fished the knife from her garter and cut through the stuffing. "Tavish is a hunter. He likes the fucking hunt more than the prize."

When the lamb fell apart in her hands, a second note flew from it, the first raindrop in a storm. Her tongue roamed over her mouth in search of a place that wasn't parched; she found none. She mumbled out the words, her voice a snowflake in the wind Tavish grabbed and crushed.

When the lamb is taken to the slaughter,

a garden of roses will burn in its honor

"Merde." She crumpled the papers and turned around, the urgency in her eyes crawling into Thomas'. "This was a distraction. Charlie isn't the lamb."