note: this chapter includes sexual content!

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
the woman with two faces

"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." —Matthew 4:4

At nineteen, Beatrice Price was the type of girl to tremble at Polly's order to go down to the police station and hand the officers the cash they were due. She had never stepped into a constabulary office—and she certainly did not expect to enter one with the intent of committing a serious offense right under the officers' noses.

"Can you do this?" Polly had asked. "Or should I have Martha take care of things?"

She had been young, and eager to please, so Trixie had swallowed down her reservations and marched into the building with the confidence of someone who owned the place—and she supposed that she did—or they did, at least.

Over the years, Trixie grew to learn that morality was a privilege, and not one she could afford often anymore. Church on Sunday, confession on Saturday, chastity always—but she was quick to realize that righteousness was hardly enough to fill an empty stomach. An empty cupboard meant a late night, and a late night meant delivering a longer list of names to the men who collected debts on the Peaky Blinders' behalf. What happened after, she tried not to think about, but deflection only worked for so long, and eventually, Trixie had to stomach it.

At nineteen, Beatrice Price was the type of girl to stutter over bribes, gin, and brothels.

At twenty-two, she found herself loading bullets into her gun outside a sleeping woman's door, readying herself for the worst that could happen. Are you a killer? She'd never thought of herself as one. Criminal, surely; liar, indubitably; but she had not taken a life before, and the knife she'd armed herself with against Kimber was nothing to the revolver in her hand.

She was playing with fire—no, worse: she was playing God, but it was too late to back out now, with Tommy lifting his leg at the knee and slamming his foot hard enough into Grace's door that the frame splintered open.

Several things happened at once: Trixie raised her gun, as Tommy had instructed her to earlier. Grace scrambled out of bed and drew the cord on the lamp, bathing the three of them in yellow light. She reached for the gun on her nightstand, but Tommy was quick to interject with a dismayed click of his tongue. "No," he ordered simply.

Grace's fingers hovered over the gun, mere inches away from the weapon. "What is this?" she whispered.

"You have two choices," Tommy said. "You can come with us and get in the car outside, or you can reach for your gun and see who shoots first."

The blonde shot Trixie a humiliated glare, before steeling herself and gesturing to her nightdress. "I'm not dressed to go out."

"Get dressed, then," Tommy ordered. "Beatrice, get her a dress."

Trixie maintained the reach of her arm as she pulled the closet open with her other hand, taking the first dress off the hook and tossing it in Grace's direction. Her lips parted in surprise as she caught it, almost as if to protest, but Tommy released the safety on his gun before she could, and soon, Grace was shimmying into the dress, not bothering to discard her nightgown.

The blush spilling into her pale cheeks was almost enough to elicit Trixie's pity, but not quite. This woman ruined Ada's life. This woman wants Tommy dead, Polly dead, you dead. Grace was not an innocent woman asking for mercy and Trixie was not a fool. "Where are we going?" she asked, not moving from her spot beside the bed.

Tommy crossed towards her, grabbing her arm and dragging her forward with such force that she stumbled over her own feet.

"I'll scream," Grace threatened.

"No, you won't," Tommy dismissed gruffly, leading her through the remnants of her door as Trixie followed behind, the barrel of her gun against Grace's back. "You scream, and one of us will shoot, and I'm not the type of man who gets caught."

She pursed her lips, but allowed them to walk her out to the car, where Tommy pushed her into the backseat. Trixie lowered her gun for a moment to bind Grace's hands with the length of rope they'd brought, and then to knot one of Tommy's neckties over her mouth.

When she'd been properly restrained, Grace resorted to glaring, and Tommy started the car, heading towards the warehouses closer to the shipyards. Her silence worried Trixie more than any protesting would've; it meant she wasn't afraid. Dawn was closer now than dusk had been, and they were pressed for time. Trixie's watch read a quarter to four, and if she weren't so furious at Grace, she might drop dead from exhaustion. Still, she held her gun to Grace's head unflinchingly, checking every few moments to see if she was attempting to loosen her restraints.

No, no. Tommy had taught her the knot—one he'd learned from all the work with horses, and she'd struggled with it when he'd demonstrated with her own wrists. They'd walked through the plan so many times that Trixie was almost bored on the drive to the shipyard, only jolting back awake when she threw the car door open and a cold gust of wind hit her face.

"Come on," she said, lowering her gun to step outside. Grace took advantage, kicking the weapon out of her hand and sending it skidding somewhere in the dirt. She kicked a second time, and her foot met Trixie's ribs. "Fuck," she hissed, drawing back.

If she retreated, Tommy attacked, and as Trixie rubbed the sore spot in her side and scanned the ground for her pistol, he picked Grace up. "Don't fucking do that," he snapped, dropping her to the ground. "Walk."

She planted her stockinged feet into the ground, stubborn. Grace made no attempt to speak through the gag in her mouth, but if Trixie had to guess, she would come up with some combination of fucks and screaming.

When Trixie found the gun, she checked to see that the bullets remained, and then cocked it against Grace's back again. "He said walk."

With two guns pointed at her, Grace finally acquiesced, trudging miserably through the horseshit and hay to the empty stall at the end. Curly had taken Tommy's midnight call and cleaned it before their arrival, but the stench of manure remained.

"You know a man named Campbell?" Tommy asked, once Trixie had locked the door shut behind them and Grace had been shoved down onto a splintered chair in the middle of the stall.

Grace didn't acknowledge the question, and Trixie kept her gun trained on her as Tommy reached forward to remove his tie from her mouth. "Campbell," Trixie repeated. "You know him, don't you? You work for him."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Grace spat.

"How about this," Tommy interrupted. "You don't lie to us, and you walk out of these stables before dawn. If you insist on being dishonest, you'll be carried out, with a bullet between your eyes."

She gritted her teeth, and turned to Trixie as if expecting mercy, but Trixie had none to offer. "Campbell," she repeated. "Stout man, mustache, prefers a pipe." Grace said nothing, so Trixie stepped forward and fisted a handful of blonde hair, yanking it to the side. "He's the one who arrested Freddie Thorne, before the man could even hold his newborn baby. Is that more familiar?"

Grace hissed as Trixie pulled her forward by her hair, before finally admitting, "I know him."

"You let them get to Freddie Thorne," said Tommy. Trixie released her, taking a step back. "But Freddie doesn't know where the guns are, Grace. Nobody knows except me. So you've sent a good man to prison for the rest of his life and you've left his wife and child with nobody to care for them."

"He's a communist," said Grace. "He's organizing illegal strikes. He's no good man."

"But that's not why you came to Birmingham, is it?" Tommy asked. "No. Daughter of a Galway copper killed by the IRA. You came here to stop me from selling those guns and sending them back to your homeland, didn't you?"

"Innocent people will die," she bit out.

"There are no innocents," Tommy laughed. "You want peace, Grace? Is that what you want? Do you get peace by separating honest men from their babies?"

"The communists want revolution," said Grace. "You did your research, Tommy, but so did I. You were a communist before the war, so I know you aren't clueless enough to think that they're harmless. Communist first, then a soldier, and now you're trying to prove yourself with the other gangs in the country. Is that it?"

Tommy shrugged, half-smiling in a way that was more malicious than humored. "Yeah, that's it. Alright."

"As for you," Grace continued, pivoting to Trixie. "You're nothing but a preacher's daughter."

"Preacher's daughter with a gun," Trixie reminded her. Maybe she should've been bothered by the dismissal, but it was a promising disguise.

"Are you going to use that?" Grace asked, sounding dubious. "You're going to kill me, Trixie?" Something in her grew cold now, a bitterness foreign even after all her time with Tommy. Her arm did not tremble under the weight of the gun cocked against Grace's temple, and she did not flinch. "You're going to kill for him thinking it can make him love you back," the spy said, "but he will never love you, Trixie. He's just hungry. For—for sex, or power, or money."

She considered the idea for a moment, glancing sideways at the man whose love she was allegedly trying to earn. "I'm hungry, too," Trixie said finally. "I don't need to be loved, but everyone—even a woman—needs to eat."

Grace leaned away from the gun but Trixie chased her. "I've been onto you from the fucking start, you know. You're not stupid, hard as you try to seem it."

"Oh, please," Trixie scoffed. "We've been onto you since you stepped foot into the Garrison, and your only job is to lie. I'm not a spy, Grace, I'm just an accountant—but this is supposed to be your skillset, hm?"

"I'm the first woman the SIS employed after the peace treaties were signed," Grace said.

"Yes, yes, we know," Tommy replied. He looked around for something—somewhere to sit, maybe—and settled on a bucket in the corner. He flipped it over and settled down on it, closer to Grace than Trixie would've chosen. "Your father taught you, eh?" Before Grace could answer, Tommy continued. "My father only taught me to gamble and fight. I learned the rest myself. But I digress."

"If you knew, why did you let me stay when Arthur took the Garrison over?"

"Well," said Tommy, crossing his ankle over his knee and setting his gun down to draw out a cigarette. "Needed to make sure you were good for more than passing gossip along."

She looked between the two of them, and Trixie cleared her throat. "We want to offer you a job, Grace. We need someone under the radar on our payroll."

Grace snorted. "You will never get me to work for you."

"Is that so?" Tommy asked.

"Yeah," Grace spat. "That's so."

"What if it's in exchange for the guns?" Tommy asked. "Hm? Save all those lives, and all you need to do is run a few errands for us."

She clenched her jaw and huffed, clearly considering it. Trixie wasn't surprised—getting her to work for them was supposed to be the easy part; what followed would take much more planning. "What kind of errands?" Grace asked.

"Nothing implicating," Trixie replied. "Women's work. Secretary work. Moving things around."

She arched an eyebrow. "And that's all? You wouldn't give up the guns that easily."

Tommy shrugged. "I have no alliances, Grace. I am on the side of profit, and while I know surely that there are a hundred different men willing to lay their bids on those guns, I also know that when the rounds start firing, it'll all come back to me, and I can't make much money with a noose around my neck."

"So you'll allow us to confiscate the guns," Grace surmised, "if I run errands for you?"

"Yeah," said Tommy, patting her on the shoulder. "It's that easy."

"And if I say no?"

Tommy laughed. "You remember those men I had a meeting with, Grace? Came out of the back room singing and laughing. Did you recognize their accents?" He leaned in closed. "They were IRA men, not too pleased about the situation back home. As it turns out, they can offer me a very good price on the guns. I've made arrangements in case harm falls on either of us—" He gestured between himself and Trixie. "—or anyone in my family. My men will have those machine guns on a boat to Ireland before the body's cold. That's a promise, and I am a man of my word."

Grace rolled her head back, eyes cast upwards as if in prayer. All that hung above them, though, were the slats in the stable's wooden roof, and a sky too polluted to see stars. "You're clever, Tommy," Grace admitted. "But I still don't get why you're letting him drag you into it." She pivoted to Trixie.

Trixie raised an eyebrow. "Dragging me into it..."

"What could you be getting out of this? You're pregnant, this cannot be good for the baby, and if he's asking you to do this, he obviously doesn't care about you or the child. You should get out."

Pregnant! Trixie had forgotten she was supposed to be pregnant, and she put a hand over her stomach to try and cover the mistake. "You kicked me in the stomach, knowing I was pregnant," she said, incredulous. "That's cruel."

"You kidnapped me with a gun to my head and tied me to a chair," Grace retorted.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Trixie dismissed. She may not have been pregnant, but she was certainly tired, and with dawn fast approaching she was aching to catch a few hours of sleep before she was due at work. "Do you want the deal, or do you want me to shoot you?"

Grace gritted her teeth. "Fine," she agreed bitterly. "When do I start?"

"Today," said Tommy. "We'll drop you back home and I'll come get you at noon. Wear something pretty."

"Is this how he talks to you?" Grace asked, glaring at Trixie as Tommy hauled her up.

Trixie cocked her head to the side, a smile playing on the corners of her lips. "Sometimes," she said. "He's a romantic, after all."

When Grace was tucked back into bed, Tommy turned to Beatrice in the car and asked, "Do you think she'll betray us?"

She snorted out a laugh. "Absolutely. That woman wants the guns, but she still thinks she's smarter than us. It doesn't matter that she's probably on the phone with Campbell right now, though. It's just a red herring, after all."

He supposed that she was right, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel before clearing his throat. "You didn't betray us."

Her eyes were wide with surprise when she turned to him. "Why would I have betrayed you? There was nobody else."

"Everyone has a price," he mumbled, steering the car back home. Ada would probably give him a beating if she saw him, but Tommy would safely bet that she was fast asleep after the strain of giving birth. Even if she wanted a fight, it was his house. He would not be forced out.

"True," Beatrice agreed. "Everyone has a price, but mine isn't just money." She leaned her head against the car door.

"You can't tell Poll about this, alright?" Tommy rumbled. He worried that too much urgency would make her jumpy, but Polly would have them both hung up herself if she discovered that the two of them had spent the night torturing and blackmailing one of Campbell's men. Women, he supposed.

"I know," Beatrice said. "It's not my first day on the job, you know."

Tommy thought of the first job she'd done for him—him. Not Polly, not John. He'd sought her out after watching how careful she was with the numbers, and asked her to check on whether or not any of the runners at the shop were skimming off the top of the bets after pounds kept going missing. Within a day, she'd delivered him a name and the amount Vernon owed the Peaky Blinders, and by the end of the day they'd taken control of his parents' bakery down the street. Arthur took all their bread to settle some of the debt, and Tommy had noticed from his office how carefully she tore off the heel of the sourdough loaf, clearly starved, and nonetheless biding her time.

"Can I stay at my apartment, tonight?" she asked. "I've missed it, and since Ada's back—"

"Fine," Tommy interrupted. He hated to think that there was another reason for her to try and get away from him. Fear of what had just happened, maybe, or perhaps she was still irritated by their rendezvous at the wedding. With Beatrice, it was hard to tell. "Have you always lived there?" he asked, trying to imagine a younger version of her walking the streets of Ladywood, but Tommy could only see the woman earlier, gun in hand, eyes burning, like she might go off at any second. It frightened him. He almost liked it.

With great effort, Beatrice smothered a yawn. "No, no." Her voice had gone soft from sleepiness. "I used to live in the parsonage with my father. But after Luca proposed I took out the lease on a tenement. It wasn't quite proper, I guess, but we never intended to have a long engagement."

"Hm," said Tommy, souring at the mention of Luca's name. It always had Tommy wondering how much happier she would be if he had taken the man's place in the cemetery so Luca could come back home. Perhaps she'd have a family.

Neither spoke for the drive back to the tenement, until Beatrice was reaching for the door handle and saying, "Well—thanks—"

"I'll walk with you," he interrupted hurriedly, remembering James. If Campbell knew, it wasn't unlikely James did too, and he might try to get to Beatrice while she was alone.

Her hand stilled over the door. "Alright…" she said, narrowing her eyes at him like she didn't quite understand why on earth he might want to do that.

Tommy didn't care to explain. The sky was starting to light up from the rising sun, and for the first time in years, he felt so exhausted he might actually fall asleep without the pipe. Instead, he let himself out of the carriage and crossed to let Beatrice out, taking her hand in his as she stepped down onto the road.

"Thanks," she said, sounding very much like she did not mean it. As they ascended the stairs, she asked, "Are you going back?"

Was she asking him to stay? Tommy nodded, wishing he'd brought his cigarettes from the car. "I have a business to run."

She snorted. "As long as you don't bother me until noon, that's fine. Though you may be short-staffed with John and Polly both out of commission."

Tommy shrugged. Work needed to be done, and he would get it done if he had three men at his disposal or thirty. "Oh, Beatrice," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "No rest for the wicked."

Pushing the door to the apartment open, she cast him a look of annoyance. "That doesn't mean what you think it means."

"Preacher's daughter," he said. "Easy to forget, after all you've done tonight."

The half-smile faltered, and she wrung her wrists. "You could stay, if you're trying to avoid Ada."

Tommy inspected her. He'd already ruined her dress with the mud in the stables, and smeared her lipstick until she had to scrub it off her mouth with the back of her hand. Haven't you done enough? "It's my house," he said, though he winced when he remembered that John would probably be consummating his marriage—loudly—in his house. "And I'm sure Ada will be gone as soon as she can be."

Beatrice nodded. "Alright," she said. "Well. I'll be at work on Monday."

Monday was a long way away, but Tommy very deliberately took any sort of feeling attached to that sentiment and buried it deep in the back of his mind. If she wanted to see him any sooner than that, she would. "Monday, then." He swallowed, and—for some inexplicable reason—blurted out, "I'm glad it was me and not Arthur."

She took a second longer to process it than he'd expected, and blamed it on the night they'd had. "Me too," she mumbled. "I don't get along with Arthur, Grace would've been onto us during her first shift."

The corner of Tommy's mouth quirked up, and Beatrice took a step towards him. "Lover's quarrel may have gone smoother."

"Well. It's not like we had to pretend, either."

Tommy recalled his hand on her neck, the way she'd smiled without even realizing it, the way her chest fell heavily with every frantic breath. He had liked being close to her then, and he liked being close to her now, but his intentions had softened in the months between then and now. "You were safe."

She chewed her lip and looked up at him with much more earnestness than he deserved. "I know."

Fuck. He let his eyes close for a moment and reached out for her face. Beatrice leaned into the cup of his palm, covering his knuckles with her own hand. When had he started going around and caressing women's faces? Opening the car door for them? Worrying for their safety? Tommy swallowed down the words that threatened to follow—I will keep you safe. It was a promise he wasn't sure he could keep.

Tommy didn't know how they'd ended up like this—in her living room, panting over what was really nothing more than holding hands. When they'd first started working together, he'd wanted to fuck her. It was the old Tommy talking—convinced that she might be less stubborn, less contradictory, if he could take her apart in bed.

When he opened his eyes, she was watching him curiously. "You should go home and rest."

He nodded, forcing himself not to look down at her lips. "I'll see you Monday.."

She nodded. "Goodbye, Tommy."

It was definitive as anything. Tommy pushed out the door, where the sun was already beginning to climb in the sky and cast the shadow he'd lived in his entire life.

He'd wanted to fuck Beatrice when they met, which had been bad enough, but this—the pathetic kind of misery he felt because he would have to go two days without her—was worse. He'd had her, and if anything, the whole affair had brought him to her mercy. Not the other way around. If he hadn't made plans to pick Grace up at noon, he might throw himself back up the stairs and ask if she would let him spend a few hours asleep at her side, but there was no time, and he had to retain whatever self-respect he'd managed to hang onto. So, adjusting his cap, Tommy climbed into the car and departed for Watery Lane, trying not to take the diamond-shaped gap in the clouds as anything more than a blue pocket of sky, or a hole in well-worn fabric.

Trixie wondered if Tommy had noticed her in the window when he turned back to her door at the bottom of the steps. Probably not, she guessed, or he would've sealed his expression with something other than a sort of sleepy bewilderment.

I'm glad it was me and not Arthur. Her exhaustion was to blame, certainly, for the way the words rolled around her head. She kicked her shoes off at the corner of her bed, trying to shake away the memory of Tommy's eyes, heavy on her as she used the rest of her energy to flop forward onto the mattress and fumble blindly for the blankets.

Her hands were freezing. This apartment was freezing, and she pressed her palm to the top of the thigh with the hopes of warming it up. If only she'd asked Tommy to stay—they could keep each other warm. Trixie imagined it. Her pillow fell away, and she pretended she was resting her head on his chest. He would allow it, Trixie thought. He was always so close to her, anyway, always touching her arm or shoulder or neck. If she'd asked him to stay, Tommy would begrudgingly put an arm around her waist until she fell asleep. It was not her hand on her thigh, now, but his—large and rough.

Trixie hummed to herself and fell into a dream where Tommy's hand did not remain at her thigh, but snaked around to the slickness between her legs, fingers slipping inside her. Tommy crooked his fingers, and Trixie squeezed her eyes shut tighter, trying to force reality far, far away. She leaned into his touch, until a single word ripped from her mouth. "More," she moaned, rocking back and forth, her pretty dress rustling against the sheets. "Take off my dress."

She couldn't see him, eyes still determinedly fastened shut, but soon the satisfaction between her legs grew empty, a hand fumbling for her dress strap, bunching it up around her waist. He was between her legs again, one thumb pinching her nipple while the other rubbed at her clit.

"Tommy," she sighed lazily, rocking back and forth. Trixie wanted him inside her—his cock. She'd give him everything, she thought, she'd let him have her. The strokes against her clit quickened until a red-hot ache was tightening around her center. You can have me. You can have me. You can have me.

Trixie imagined him saying it. Anywhere—buried inside her, holding her hand on the sidewalk, throwing back whiskey at the Garrison. It didn't matter how, she just wanted to hear it. You're mine. She wanted him to say it so badly she thought she might die, wanted him to want her just as bad, and then she was coming, coming hard, hips tensing up.

"Yours, yours, yours," she whispered, shivering all over and then turning to jelly. She flopped onto her side, expecting to find the warmth of Tommy's chest, but the cold sheets she was met with had her eyes flying open in surprise.

Sunlight had begun to stream into the apartment. The empty apartment. Trixie shot upwards. Tommy hadn't been fucking her, she—she'd done it to herself.

The dress was still bunched indecently around her waist, and Trixie scrambled to pull the straps back up her shoulders, the fingers on her left hand slick.

An uneasiness radiated from her stomach. Something was wrong. "He's not here," she muttered, an attempt to convince herself of the facts. Then, she realized. "He's not here," Trixie repeated, the words suddenly feeling like a punch to the stomach.

She—oh no.

Oh no.

A/N: hello! i apologize for such a long delay between chapters lol my dad left? and we almost got evicted but then he came back a few weeks later but things were. a mess for a hot minute there and still kind of are but they are getting better. i know that i was like ah when school calms down i can write more but then family made that kind of difficult but anyway i am going to try to write more/quicker because i'm really excited to get into the rest of the fic! we only have 10 chapters left and they're going to be really fun.

thank you to eiman and stephanie for beta-reading this chapter for me and helping me with this slump! they're both fantastic :) and thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapters! going back to read such kind comments has honestly helped me a lot with getting through such a weird time. so thank you to Maddie Rose, Guest, ocfairygodmother, Hoqwaarts, celia, RachelLynnexx, wantertogondor, Minstorai, Idcam, kmhappybunny240, scars from the sun, and Eleanor James!

i'm about halfway done with chapter 24, so fingers crossed i can get it finished and published soon! if you stuck with me through my impromptu hiatus, thank you so much and i hope you continue to enjoy this story.

Chapter 24 / Father, Almighty

"Who the fuck are you?" the man—Tommy's father—asked, regarding Trixie with a combination of disgust and disinterest that made her ball her hands into fists at her sides.

"That's my fucking wife," Tommy answered immediately, stepping forward. It was for the best, Trixie thought. If he hadn't, she would've done it herself. "And you don't fucking talk to her like that."