CHAPTER 20
A LOVE THAT KILLS
❝ You loved a man who treated you
like absinthe, half poison and half god ❞
1921, London
"For fuck's sake, how hard can it be to find a good gang name?" Kaya grumbled as they all huddled over a table filled with absinthe export contracts and suitcases full of cash.
"What about the French Horns?" Jules slouched down on the piano's bench, raising his hands in defeat at the shower of growls he received. "Fine, I got it! No horns for us. Even if we're the devil..."
As if summoned, Rose and Steaphan walked right in, arms entangled and eyes locked as always. Rose was still wiping some of the lipstick off Steaphan's face, and he had that look of adoration in his eyes that he only ever had for her.
"Oi, you two lovebirds, stop making eyes at each other and help us out, will ya, we're trying to find a name for the gang!" Arwen waved a wad of pounds in front of them, pulling Rose out of the trance Steaphan always put her in.
"We don't need a name, we act in the shadows," Rose said. "In fact, it's best no one knows us by a name."
Angeline stared at her nails. "But a name incites respect. And fear."
"Yeah, like those Peaky Blinders from Birmingham," Audrey crooned, dreamy sigh rivaling her starry eyes. "Everyone knows them now. And everyone fears them."
"We don't." Nicolas handed a glass of absinthe to Rose and Steaphan, gloomy stare lingering on the arm wrapped around her waist. If it couldn't be his own arm, he was glad it was Steaphan's. It was hard feeling jealous of a man that made her so happy. "They've been expanding their business in London. Word is they're advancing on the Sabinis and the Solomons. The leader, that Shelby... he has a meeting with Alfie next week."
"We're letting him take over Solomons?" Kaya frowned. "We have business with him. What if he double-crosses us?"
"Alfie needs the alliance, actually." Rose took a sip of the greenish, anise laced drink. They had been trying to come up with a good label to sell it, but it was working as well as finding a name for the gang. "He's losing the war with the Sabinis because he refuses to use the police. Thomas Shelby will make him see that."
"Aren't you afraid he'll do the same to us?" Renée asked, always the voice of reason. "That he tries to take over our properties and business?"
"No. He can't come after what he doesn't know exists."
"Thomas Shelby..." Two words and Steaphan was collecting the eyes of everyone in the room. It was always like this with him. He was the sun and everyone else just a sunflower trying to catch his rays. Except Rose. Rose was Icarus; the only one brave enough to try and have him, and the one who would burn most from daring to try. "I have to say he intrigues me. I admire a man who knows what he wants and who will stop at nothing to get it."
Rose turned to him. The wax in her wings had melted long ago and she had been falling ever since. "Don't tell me you'd like to meet him."
"Why not?" Steaphan clashed his eyes against hers, the most vibrant shade of green against the lightest of blues.
"You two in the same room?" Arwen whistled. "Wouldn't that be a sight!"
"We are not making business with him." Her voice was iron and steel, hewn by the firmest of blades. "We don't invite a wolf to our house unless we want him to wreck it."
"Who said anything about making business?" His eyes were on her alone. More than France, more than London, they were her home. She would look at them and think this is where I was born, and this is where I will die. "We should do to him what he's doing to others. Take what he has. He wouldn't stand a chance, Rose. He wouldn't stand a chance against us."
Rose shook her head. "Remember Macbeth? We are not going that far."
He let a finger slide down her jaw. It was sharp and cold, like the razor blades he sewed into the lapels of his jackets or hid inside his ties.
"The world, Rose. The world and beyond."
She put her hand over his. "Aren't we enough?"
He didn't answer. And that's when she knew his sun burned more than warmed.
***
"You want to move to Scotland?" The candles flickered, and the water in the bathtub grew cold. Steaphan was in front of her but he might as well be across the world. The distance was the same.
"Aye. London has run out of steam. We could start over in Glasgow. Build an empire from the ground."
"I already have an empire."
"But this one would be ours." He reached for her chin, but Rose leaned away. He had a stare that froze. The petals around her body turned to thorns. "What's keeping you here?"
"What's keeping me here? Everything! My family, my friends, the work I'm doing. I'd lose it all if I moved. This is important to me."
"And I'm not?
Her teeth gritted. Lately, every word they shared drove them farther and farther away. They were two sides of a coin that no longer shined. "Why are you making me choose between my dreams and my love for you?"
"It shouldn't be a choice. We belong together, Rose. I can't go without you."
"But you also can't stay."
His jaw clenched, and something inside her withered, like a flower whose petals no longer turn to the sun. "You don't want to risk and take over London. You don't want to go back to Scotland with me. You're going to end up like everyone else. Trapped in a comfortable, terribly boring life you can't escape from. When I met you, you wanted everything."
"And I got it! Putain, I got it. With you. You are... you were..."
"Your everything? Not yet." He got up from the bathtub, leaving her in the cold. His voice was no longer honey; it was poison and bone, with no skin to hide it. "But I will be."
It hurt when he said it. It hurt when he left. It hurt even more when Rose slunk out of the bathtub and picked up his copy of Macbeth, forgotten on the cold floor. It was spent, from all the times they had read it to one another.
Rose opened it; Steaphan's cursive handwriting shone on the first page, like the crimson-blood pomegranate on Persephone's pale hands. It was a quote he had read somewhere and scribbled down in a haste.
My dear, find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.
The word killed was underlined, the word lover encircled in red. Rose didn't understand it then. But she would soon.
***
"Rose, this is a fair! You're supposed to have fun!" Audrey tugged at her arms. Happy laughter and shouting boomed around them, and everyone had a smile on their faces. Everyone but her. Steaphan had left the week before and hadn't come back. "Come on, I'll buy you some cotton candy, there's nothing it can't cure!"
Rose let Audrey drag her to their mother, but not even her warm arms wiped the sorrow from her eyes. Steaphan was her shelter. She had stopped existing outside of their relationship and now that he was gone she had no place to go. No place to call home. Not even her mother's arms, the first home she ever had. Everything felt out of place. As if the world no longer spun. As if Steaphan had unscrewed her heart from her chest and taken it with him.
"Steaphan will come to his senses, gamine." Not even the nickname her mother gave her as a child felt familiar anymore. "He's the cleverest man I know, and you're the cleverest woman. He'll be a fool to let you go."
Rose forced a smile and nodded. "You're right."
She looked around, to Angeline and Jules throwing popcorns at each other, to Renée and Christopher getting out of the Ferris wheel, to the girls hopping on the carrousel. Her home was this. She should have never let it become anything else.
Maybe the more she looked for him in other people, the more he'd disappear.
"A love like yours can stop wars, Rose." Her mother grabbed her hands. Her green eyes were emeralds in the sun. She always saw through her. Her daughters were as transparent as crystal to her. It can also cause them. "It won't go away. It—"
Something crossed the air between them, as quick and lethal as lightning. Rose felt the shift in the air and then a scream pierced the sky; if it was her mother's or hers, she would never know. Their hands were still entwined when her mother staggered backwards, dousing in red from the blood that came out of her chest. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, her knees wavered; Rose and Audrey only had time to cling to her before they fell. Before the world fell with them.
"Maman!" Rose shook her mother, countless times, tears swarming her eyes. Her bare knees scraped against the gravel, and their blood merged in one. "Maman, s'il te plaît!"
But the bullet had hit her straight in the heart, with military precision. It had stopped beating instantly, her mouth still opened in the shape of the words she was going to say. Audrey shouted. Angeline and Jules, Christopher and Renée, they all ran to them. The girls jumped from the carrousels; strong, solid hands wrapped around her shoulders, trying to stop her from injecting life back to her lifeless mother.
Someone was calling her name, but the world came to her muffled, as if her ears were clogged with the shards of her shattered heart.
Rose got up abruptly, shoving Nicolas' hands away. A crowd had gathered around them, all pale skin and horrified eyes, but she still saw him. The sniper on the top of the Ferris wheel. The sniper that was aiming at her now.
Rose was sure he was going to fire. Then he paused and diverted the rifle to Renée. Which meant Rose would die twice. The bullet flew, and Rose jumped in front of her, but Christopher was faster and took the shot instead. He dropped to the ground with a whimper, Renée's scream ripping her heart out. More shouts ensued; Nicolas and Kaya snatched their guns and glanced around.
Jules stumbled over to Rose, his face paler than the moon on its worst days.
"Rose... Steaphan... he came to me last night. He was not acting like himself. He asked me... he asked for my rifle. I didn't know for what, but I gave it to him anyway. I was drunk and didn't give it much thought. I gave it to him, Rose. I gave it to him and now..."
Rose tripped forward several times, her vision too blurry for her to see the ground. Her hands were sweaty, heart hammering in her ears. She pushed the crowd aside. Even at that distance, she knew him. She would recognize his walk anywhere in the world, in the dark, and in the light. Like a king among peasants. Or like death among the living.
***
She went through the funeral numb and detached, the blood in her veins replaced by brooks of absinthe and opium. Steaphan was there, in the most elegant suit Rose had ever seen him in. Nicolas and Jules were beside him; Nicolas had one hand on his brother's shoulder. Rose had forbidden Jules from killing him, and Nicolas would make sure he complied.
So when the gravediggers lowered her mother into the grave, she walked away. She walked away into the shadows, knowing he would follow her. He did. He looked as handsome and as in control as ever. He looked like the Steaphan she had fallen in love with. Only this time, she knew he had been sculpted by demons. By the worst of them.
When they reached a deserted part of the cemetery, she collapsed into his chest and let him embrace her. She wanted to scream, ask him why. But she knew why. He was stripping her away of everything that tied her to London so she would follow him into Glasgow. So she would have no home but him. So he would be her only dream. She had been so blinded by his light she had failed to see his darkness. Or maybe she had walked right into it and had been blind ever since.
"What can I do, Rose?" His voice was back to honey, back to silk, back to good. But it had never been good. All the love they had made would never be enough to erase the pain. "What can I do?"
"Kiss me," she begged in a listless whisper. She felt as alive as her mother. Her heart had withered and died once and it was withering and dying again. The world would never spin again. And the sun would never rise. "Kiss me and don't let go."
He did. He grasped her face and kissed her with everything he had, and so Rose did like he had told and took everything he was. Their tongues laced in a mortal dance; hers pushed the cyanide pill into his mouth, and then her hands clutched his jaw so his teeth would smash the capsule. So the poison would kick in and kill his honey.
Steaphan opened his mouth, but only foam came out. A strangled noise left his swollen lips as he choked; his eyes opened, forever stuck on Rose.
"Rose...?" His fingers held onto the tattoo on her shoulder blade, as if to remind her of the promises they had made. A tempestuous river fell from her eyes, not made of love but of tears. Tears she would never stop crying. Tears that would never dry.
"Ya'aburnee," she whispered as his knees bent and he slipped from her fingers. He crashed on the ground, taking her life with him. "You bury me."
Beneath her the earth faltered; her legs gave up on her and she collapsed next to the man who had given her and taken her everything. She brought her knees to her chest, back pressing against the wall as if it could swallow her. Sobs erupted up her throat, her body shuddering in spasms. Steaphan still had his eyes open, a trickle of foam escaping his mouth.
She was sure she was dead. It was lonely and cold there, and surely that's how death felt. But then her sisters came. They came and ran to her and engulfed her in their arms like a flower bud, because for the first time her thorns were not turned outwards but inwards, cutting her from within and tearing her soul apart, and all her petals were falling, from her eyes, from her heart, from her very soul. That day was not just her mother's funeral, but Steaphan's and hers as well.
Far away from her, someone was grasping her arms, their touch the only sort of life she could still feel.
She fell onto her sisters. All the knells in the world started ringing. And all the violins went silent. And they never played again.
Not until, years later, Thomas Shelby came and made them play again.
All of them.
***
The next day, Rose summoned the gang. All traces of tears were gone. There was just this mask of stone no one would be able to carve a smile back into.
"I finally have a name for the gang. The French Kissers."
Her sisters paled. They shared the same bloodshot eyes, but Renée was angry. At Steaphan. At Rose, for not having listened to her. And afraid for Christopher, who was in the hospital in critical condition.
"Rose, are you... are you sure?" Kaya asked. Rose had to look away from the empathy in her eyes. The only thing she could still bear was pain. She finally had ideas for the absinthe labels.
"Yes. I found out in the worst way that the best way to destroy an enemy is to love him. And that the best way to kill a man is by kissing him. So we're the French Kissers. And from now on, we will make sure everyone knows that's just two letters away from killers."
***
1924, London
"So now you know." Rose tapped on the handle of her teacup. She could feel Thomas' eyes on her but didn't dare look at them, afraid of what she'd find. "Where the name of the gang comes from. Steaphan was the first person I ever kissed to kill. And honestly, I can't remember the last time I kissed someone if not to kill them."
Thomas kept quiet, so quiet he could have turned into a statue. So quiet Rose could hear how fast he made her heart beat.
"He loved me, I suppose," she said after a long time. "And pulling that trigger on me was his way of showing me. To people like us, love, death and war, they're all just different words for the same thing."
"But death and war, they don't scare you, eh?"
"They don't." She bit her lip. He read her like a book. He'd be chasing a happy ending all the way only to end up with a tragedy. "But love fucking does. My mother died because of me. And Steaphan... I killed him. That's what we do to the people we love, Tommy. They either die for us or we kill them. That's our curse."
He got up abruptly, almost tipping the teacups over. He went over to her, firm hands landing on her shoulders like the lightest of feathers.
"Rose? Eh, Rose, look at me." His finger tilted her chin up, and she had no other option but to see how he saw her. He was looking at her just the same. Like this changed nothing. "You're not Grace. And I'm not Steaphan. We're not fookin' cursed. No fookin' sapphires or plays this time. We're different, Rose. I'm different."
She shook her head. Teardrops hang from her lashes. "We're going to hurt each other. I can't give you a heart that's whole, Thomas. It's been broken too many times."
He grasped her face, slowly and tenderly, like those hands hadn't been made to do. His hands were made for murder. Not this. Not this soft thing between them that hurt almost as much as a bullet. His thumb fell on her lips, outlining her cupid's bow.
"Let me kiss you, Rose."
She swallowed. If only she could say yes. If only her heart hadn't closed so forcefully it could never be opened again. Not even by a man who seemed to hold all the keys.
"I can't." She clutched his hand and smiled the most devastating smile he had ever seen. "Not while you say kiss and all I hear is kill."
She leaned away, walking past him and towards the sink. For Rose, the tea leaves left in the cups didn't mean anything, but if Polly had been there, she would have stopped dead in her tracks, for the clouds meant trouble and dismay, the fox backstabbing by a friend, the snake imminent danger and the shark ominous death.
***
Later that night, in the coldest part of the city, two men met in the shadows, for they both thrived better in it.
"Did you bring them?" Nicolas asked, eyeing the car behind the other man.
"Aye. Pipe bombs, anti-personnel mines, explosives, grenades, it's all there," the other man said. "They won't stand a chance."
"Your men." Nicolas stomped on the burnt butt of his cigarette. "Are they ready?"
"All set."
"Good. We'll do it tomorrow."
The other man nodded, handing out his hand. "Tomorrow it is."
Throughout his life, Nicolas had been warned many times about the devil. That to bargain with him one had to sell his own soul. But Nicolas wasn't an artist like Jules or a Christian like Christopher. He was a businessman, and businessmen didn't believe in souls.
So he shook hands with the devil and he walked past him.
author's note.
so Steaphan turned out to be a psycho... Rose deserves so much better :')
also what is Nicolas doing?? seriously, the amount of angst I have planned for the next chapters— GET READY
for now, I leave you with these beautiful graphics made by wardstven ♡
as you can see, Callan is played by Jamie Dornan ;)