Astor // Arthur Shelby x Reader - Peaky Blinders

Chapter 49

Arthur

"Rough night, Arthur?" John grins and shakes his head, amused at the sight of his brother sprawled across the doorstep of their home. "Where's your wife? She left you already?"

Arthur's eyes slowly open. His face is pushed into the pavement. He stirs, aware his face is beaten and bruised as he pushes himself up.

John swears. "Fucking hell, what happened to you?"

"Astor," Arthur mutters, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. "Fuck. They've taken her, John." As the memories come flooding back to him, rage boils through his spine and erupts — resulting in a fist to the nearest window. "They've fucking taken her!"

"Who?" John asks immediately, barely batting an eye at the glass shattered all across the pavement, his brother's bleeding knuckles. "Not fucking Luca?"

"He's fucking got her." Arthur barges into the house, heading for where they keep the big guns. "Got the lawyer first... They must have been waiting for us. They fucking ambushed us." He runs a hand across his jaw, suddenly turning and pacing on the spot. "We've got to find him. Where's Tom?"

"Arthur, we've been trying to find him for months," John says quietly.

"Then it's time we got someone who knows what the fuck they're doing." Arthur shakes out his hands, trying to release even a fraction of the restless agitation he's feeling. "Hire a private investigator. Top one in the country."

"A fucking PI? How much is that going to cost?"

"According to Tommy, between the London pubs and this gin shit, we're only getting richer."

"Arthur, c—"

"Don't tell me to calm down, John." Arthur pours a glass of whiskey and points it at his brother warningly. "Don't you fucking dare."

John steps forward slowly, his voice level once more. "We'll find her, alright?" He says. "And yeah, we'll hire someone if we have to. But first we need to find Tommy, and we need to tell Pol."

"I don't give a fuck about—"

"Arthur, think!" John says, his voice raising. "How do we know we're not next, eh? How do we know they're not watching us right now?"

Before Arthur can respond, footsteps come through from the betting shop. "What's all the noise about?" Polly asks, looking expectantly between them.

"Fuck this." Arthur tips the drink down his throat, the whiskey calming the very frayed edges of his nerves, the sharp burn across his tongue clearing his head. "I'm not hanging around for Tommy."

***

He couldn't sleep for days. Almost weeks, before Tommy intervened after seeing the tell-tale signs just in time, alerting him his brother needed opium before the lack of sleep killed him. The opium dreams were a blessing and a curse for Arthur — he dreamt of Astor. Saw her again. In the dreams, nothing bad had happened.

But then when he woke, the memory would slam back into his gut like a slugger's fist to his jaw. The worst part for him was feeling so hopeless — it didn't matter which of Luca's Birmingham men he held at gunpoint, none of them knew where she could be. And none of them knew how to find Luca. Apparently, not a single man in Birmingham had an address for him.

Tommy intervened on a number of occasions there, too, needing to remind Arthur that if over a dozen men were blinded or killed, even the best coppers on the payroll would be powerless to stop a higher-up investigating. Arthur had no room to think of such things, to rationalise with himself. His brain burnt all around the edges. Every part of him burnt with missing her.