"Oh, and boys? Give those to your wives. I don't trust men enough to remember anything."
Tommy's heart might have stopped beating.
Or maybe it was his lungs that halted its respiration process. Or maybe fucking both.
But the leader of the Peaky Blinders was sure the heiress suffocated him to death for nearly thirty seconds. A pin drop can be heard after the notorious heiress characteristically exclaimed, "Rejoice, for you have been blessed with my presence."
He wanted to laugh; he really did. He had missed that sense of comical confidence Irene Grosvenor brings with her. That unapologetic snobbish temperament he so hated but has learned to tolerate. Yet only an eye roll crept its way to Tommy's guarded composure. Why can't he bring himself to smile?
Even when he's so happy she's here; he could burst into flames.
Ten silent seconds later, Irene flung herself into Michael's embrace. Hugging him tightly, arms snaking their way around his neck. Polly's son returned the hug, laughing in the process. Tommy and his brothers shared a look of disbelief and horror as they observed the scene. None of them had ever thought they would see the Grosvenor heiress cross the pub threshold again.
His eyes lingered at the hands wrapped around his cousin's neck. Somehow the grip on his whiskey glass became tighter. The soft parts of his fingers turned white.
"Michael! Where have you been? I was in America last year, you know. I could've visited you. It's a very short flight from New York to Detroit. " Irene punched Michael's arm playfully.
The honey-brown eyes Tommy had missed so very much shifted their way to the new member of the family, never losing her regal composure. Not necessarily extending a hand, Irene introduced herself, "Hello, Lady Irene Grosvenor. Pleased to meet you."
The boys snickered, shaking their heads at the young duchess. Thomas smirked over the rim of his crystal. She scowled playfully at his brothers, those lips forming the ear to ear grin he had ached to behold once more.
He wanted to take a picture of her just like that, making a shrine just out of her. The lingering beam drooped once she met his eyes, turning into a thin-lipped smile.
Polly strode fast to hug her, not caring about her new daughter-in-law's response. The collide brought out a whimper from Irene, "Polly!"
Tommy's aunt caressed the socialite's hair tenderly as the latter hid her face in the crook of her neck. Irene didn't realize how much she missed the matriarch's lingering scent. A mother's touch was indeed what she needed. Pols choked on her words, fingers cupping Irene's cheeks, "Look at you!"
Look at her was what he did, eyes roving from top to bottom. And back. Irene was different, and not just appearance-wise. No matter how many photos his informant supplied him with, it cannot begin to grasp the radiance emanating from her. Forming some fucking halo enveloping his woman, making her look like one of the saints Polly worships in church.
Irene was tanner, he realized. It must be from all the time she spent in the sun. And when she did a teasing turn, fuck, Thomas might lose it right then and there. Pulling her into his arms to be close to this magnetic being.
"Arthur! How are you, babe?" Another hug with another term of endearment. This time for his older brother. Babe, Thomas repeated inside his head. Rolling the word inside his mouth tasted bitter. He didn't bother to listen to Arthur's reply as he glared at his shoes.
John embraced her with a laugh, swiping Irene off her feet in the process. She giggled, her grasp firm around him as she steadies herself. "John, darling! You're a busy man, aren't you? Every time I visit, you're never home."
John glanced at his older brother, who stared back with a cold glare. He cleared his throat as he nodded toward his older brothers, "Yeah, well. Someone ought to keep these dung heads out of trouble, eh?"
There it was again. That addictive laugh that Tommy wants to put on record and repeat it every fucking day as his prayer.
When Irene nodded her head toward him, clearly treating Thomas differently than the rest of his family, he fought the urge to chuck his whiskey-filled crystal to the wall behind her. His jaw clenched, he suddenly felt the weight of his gun. How maybe she would hold him if he threatened her with it. To relieve him of this confusing pot of feelings, "Thomas."
His voice was like rusted steel, "Your Grace."
He hadn't addressed her that way in such a long time that by the time he finished, the heiress inhaled sharply. Something about Tommy Shelby calling her with that same mocking term of endearment has her fuzzy all over. Irene contemplated punching him in the face and then maybe kissing him in front of his family. She shook her head violently, reminding herself what he did to her, how the humiliation lingered so long after the event caused her trauma to commit into anything serious for the last four years. How she cried herself to and back from sleep, realizing that comparing herself to Grace Burgess was a fickle dream.
The landlady of Thomas Shelby's heart and mind. She hated him for making her feel this way.
So insecure all the fucking time for no reason. Jealous of a dead woman.
Michael's attention went back and forth between the two before settling on his wife. Trying to cut the tension block in the room in half. "Well, I'm fucking going."
The blue-eyed devil and the brown-eyed angel snapped from their trance. She smiled as she bid Tommy's cousin goodbye.
He gets a fucking goodbye.
Irene cleared her throat, "Well, how long am I supposed to stand here?"
≻───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────≺
"Right, Princess. What do you want?" John asked from behind the counter.
Trying to put all her attention toward Ana's husband, and not a confident man who's currently staring at her head, Irene answered much too quickly, "Gin and dubonnet."
The two older brothers in front of the heiress chuckled. With his baritone voice, Thomas boomed, "There's no way you can make that."
"Coming right up, princess!" Came John's voice from behind the counter.
Irene ducked her head, hiding both her chuckle and the creeping warmness she feels under the intense scrutiny of Thomas Shelby. Her fingers played with the sleeves of her blouse, pulling it as far down her wrist as she could. When Irene looked up, the heiress locked eyes with her former boss-friend.
At least that's what she considered him, a dysfunctional friend who hates her guts and shoots people.
Her gaze turned cold against Tommy's usual passive ones, "I've come bearing gifts."
Her fingers fished three identical violet invitations. Placing it gingerly on the table, spreading it out so that each brother can easily pluck one. Mr Shelby's eyes followed her every move. He glanced at the bright coloured invitation placed in front of him for a second before bringing his attention back to the heiress. Damn her and her compulsive antics.
"Thank you, John." She smiled, lifting the red coloured drink to her lips and downing it in one go just as the men in front of her lifted theirs. Arthur raised his eyebrows as John whistled. Only Thomas stayed impassive, licking his lips as his eyes fought with Irene's.
She smirked without ever breaking contact, "Heard you lost your money, Mr OBE."
"And you didn't?" He rasped out, pointing his finger at her chest. A round blue diamond was hanging between her cleavage, one that Thomas was gentleman enough not to stare at. Well, at least he tried to.
He knew Irene was in charge of her father's investment bank full well, only because she's the daughter who owns it. Privileged children get privileged jobs whenever they want them—leaving the fact whether they're good at that field or not.
Yet when his informants looked into the firm she headed, it was thriving. Now more so than ever.
Irene wiped some of Hamish' fur stuck on her lap, "No. My employees listen to me, believe it or not."
Her smile was wide once she saw how annoyed Thomas was. One step at a time, Irene. One step at a time. His jaw ticked not so discreetly before releasing an indifferent chuckle. One that brings fear into his past enemies, but not Irene, no. She's well desensitized of Thomas Shelby and his antics.
"Anyway, my brother and Daphne, they're getting married," She recoiled, clasping her hands together as if the idea of holy matrimony was poison in her dictionary. "And you're all somehow invited."
"Any questions? Wear anything honestly; I couldn't care less – Yes, Arthur?"
The oldest of the Shelbys wiped his nose, "Right. I have one question, and you are obliged to answer this."
"Shoot away." The heiress had said without breaking any contact with Thomas Shelby, dragging the words for a much needed dramatic effect. The latter hollowed his cheeks as he inhaled his cigarette; he, too, was entranced.
"Why'd you go, Irene? What happened? I mean, you know full well what was happening with Ana. We were all becoming family." Arthur slowly asked. He was embarrassed to ask this question, yet he was curious. As everybody was, including her dear brother. It was the million-pound question, What the fuck happened?
Tommy ducked his head, letting out a small breath. The feeling of dread filled his chest. Why the fuck Arthur have to ask that poisonous question? The memory of that night resurfacing with vivid recollection. He doesn't get embarrassed in front of his brothers, especially about something as trivial as a blow job. Yet the disappointment across Irene's face.
The heiress nodded slowly, no traces of emotion on her face. What was she thinking?
"Oh, your brother didn't tell you?"
"The great Thomas Shelby had his cock in my mouth. And what did you moan, sweetheart?" Irene's smile felt bitter like it didn't belong there at all. When Thomas doesn't take her bait and react at the misplaced term of endearment, she rolls her eyes. Rolls her fucking eyes.
"I believe it was the name Grace that fell out of your lips." She finished, leaning forward and brushing the lapel of his suit with perfectly manicured fingers.
The contact was done before Tommy even realized it. Just as he didn't know, he's been holding his breath as hers hits the shell of his ear.
John choked on his whiskey as Arthur dropped his. Irene soaked in the dumbfounded expressions on the three brothers; it was as if they were identical. Her lopsided smirk was inevitable at this point.
She huffed out a laugh when the leader of the Peaky Blinders had his eyes in slits, "Well, I must make my exit. Wedding to plan, things to buy,"
"Oh, and boys? Give those to your wives. I don't trust men enough to remember anything."