Chinese Quarters, Birmingham, April 1919
Spring never came to London and it did not come to Birmingham. Any hopes Lupe had had about this new land had been promptly dashed in the months since she'd come here. The constant smoke outside choked in her lungs with the bitter aftertaste of coal fires and melted iron.
Young lords with a taste for Oriental exoticism, politicians with a love of Chinese submission after the Yihetuan Uprising, and merchants seeking the comforts of home all alike poured through their doors in London, with plenty of coins to line the Gang's pockets. They got steelworkers with callused hands here, assembly linemen, stablehands, crafters of delicate chinaware and fine metal pen nibs. Cuifen was forced to expand operations when fleshmongering brought in hardly enough money to break even.
They now had a legal laundry and an illegal gambling hall with coppers well paid to look the other way.
After Tommy visited her that memorable first time, Cuifen and Zhang both warned her to stay clear of the Peaky Blinders. Guadalupe had seen her fair share of clashes with the Sabinis' and Alfie Solomons' crew but those boys never ventured too far into Chinatown. Birmingham left them exposed and vulnerable at the mercy of gangs they didn't know and didn't trust. Of course, the damage had already been done. The day they refused service to the Blinders was the day they would all wake up the next morning in a bed of ashes and kerosene. This patronage would begrudgingly be allowed to continue, to Cuifen's blunt displeasure.
Almost like clockwork, Tommy Shelby saw her nearly every Saturday night since his return home and always asked for her by name. She'd had an inkling of his brothers' existence, an aunt and a little sister in Small Heath as well, but never had the pleasure of making their acquaintance. As if the scrutiny of a rival gang could be called pleasure.
It was this that colored her surprise upon seeing the two younger Shelby brothers both darkening their doorway on a bright Wednesday afternoon when the Quarters smelled like clean laundry and fresh soap suds. Later that evening sex, opium, and alcohol would lace the air instead. She'd been arranging a nearly endless row of grey woolen suits tagged on the sleeve with black ink calligraphy on creamy white rice paper when they came in.
John was hardly striking at all. Definitely not when compared against his brother, with eyes like dirty snow and the face and ears of a particularly experienced boxer. Where Tommy was a statue, ice-cold and razor-sharp, John had the frame of a rugby player with those ruddy cheeks and stubby fists. This man looked more at home with blood on his teeth and mud on his hands than he did now, scrubbed clean in a fresh, if not outdated suit. She had knocked lesser men out for looking at her the way he looked at her, full of naked desire and entitlement that left a grimy feeling on her skin.
"Misters Shelby, how can I be of assistance to you today?" A smile stretched her cheeks, genuine for Tommy and full of teeth for his brother. Beneath the safe cover of the front counter, Lupe's anxious hands worried at the loose threads of her skirt. Tommy met her gaze briefly and wrinkled the corners of his eyes in the barest of smiles.
He set a handful of pounds down on the rich varnished wood. "Just the suits, Lupe-"
John abruptly cut in. "We'll take you as well, won't we Tommy." One didn't make it long in the industry she found herself in without recognizing that wolf edge to his devil-may-care grin and the danger it promised. Lupe dropped her smile as quickly as she could. As she reached up on the tips of her toes to pull the suits down, a loose lock of dark hair slipped out of her messy chignon and brushed against the pale back of her neck.
A sheathe of waxen paper was cut free from the bolt and laid out with paperweights. Just as her hand reached out to fold the first suit into the paper, a sweaty palm with busted open knuckles grabbed her wrist and yanked her nose to nose with John. "I said we'd take you as well. Can you not understand the King's English?" The derision in his tone was as thick as tar. Maybe he was only used to shrieking slags who jumped at the smallest glare, right proper English roses. Maybe he thought because she'd fucked his brother he could cow her into fucking him too. Maybe John thought a little Chinawoman like her could be battered and thrown around like a doll to the tune of his will. Fury crystallized beneath her skin.
She'd make him bleed like a pig if he tried, Peaky Blinders be damned.
Lupe's snarl echoed into the nearly empty hall, as dead and cold as an amputated limb. "I don't give a fuck who your brother is. Touch me again with that hand, Mr. Shelby, and I'll remove it from your wrist with your own blade. Free of charge." The iron grip around her wrist loosened out of shock. She grabbed his arm and yanked him even closer, her fingers held fast by her pointed, blood-red nails buried deep in his pink flesh. His pulse beat as fast as her own did, in the heavy rhythm of a fluttering bird. Whores like her weren't given respect; they had to demand it, snatch it back from a world that would break them otherwise.
A single tense minute passed, then two as she refused to be cowed by the fire that simmered under his heavy set brow and in the mouth flattened into a straight line. Just as his eyes turned murderous and John's hand twitched for his peaked cap-
The solid mass of Tommy's chest and the faint scent of his cologne moved between them. "John, enough. Outside." She figured her survival instincts ran off a few minutes ago only to return with a vengeance right that instant, solely to bead anxious sweat down her spine. Ah, here was the face of a predator the moment it locked its jaws around prey. "For somethin' like what you jus' did, love, I've beat men twice your size bloody." He was testing her. The unspoken words were clear; tread carefully, or his Shelby temper would blow like a landmine. There was something more in the peering way he regarded her, more than a warning. How interesting was it that two spots of color migrated high on those marble cheeks and his heart seemed to beat out of his chest. His lips parted unconsciously. Predators always regarded their prey with the deep hunger that seemed to emanate from his stance… was it possible she'd impressed him? Fascinating.
Oh, these fucking blokes hadn't a clue of what she was capable of, what she noticed, the chinks in their armor she could claw at. Tommy might be a landmine, but she only did collateral damage. "I'm not exactly a man, am I? And you won't do that." The abandoned task of wrapping up their suits was resumed. Cuifen would have told her it was smarter to back down, to kowtow, and let him walk over her. Lupe was paid to do that, after all. He, however, had a talent of getting under her skin and heating her blood.
It seemed she had impressed him after all. "Why's that?" His voice deepened more in the manner of a lover's than someone who'd gut her throat to belly. The two were often the same.
"You love things that are wild and dangerous, Mr. Shelby. You play with fire, broken glass, live ammunition. And that's why you'll let me be, if only for the thrill of knowing that the day you beat me bloody is the day I'll take your trachea out with me." Her mouth stretched thin as the blade of a knife in a facsimile of a smirk. He looked like he might kiss her then thought better of it. That smart man thought rightfully so. She herself wasn't sure if she'd let him or savage his lip between her teeth until it bled. Live wire pricked her nerves. Lupe accused him of playing with fire and here she was, playing with lightning. From where she'd daintily dug the tips of her nails into his carotid artery during her little speech, she could feel the blood flowing faster under her fingertips, could see him shift his stance like there was something uncomfortable in his… lower extremities.
Tommy stood there for a moment in stunned silence before pulling away as if she'd branded him. A deep breath to fortify him and an elegant sweep of the paper-wrapped package into his broad arms later, he tipped his razor-lined cap without ever breaking eye contact. "Ms. Zhang, we'll see about that. Good day." With that, he took his leave, a gift of one last smoldering gaze following behind him.
"Good day." Lupe hardly moved at all. She just watched him go, the nauseating anxiety of exactly what she'd just done keeping her at a standstill.
Five minutes later Xiaoyu wandered in from their room, chattering on and on about the latest gossip from Limehouse. When she didn't react, just stared at the door he'd disappeared out of like Lupe hadn't even heard Xiaoyu's chirping, she reached over and checked what her brothel-sister had been doing previously, neatly spotting the receipt on the counter next to the pounds and the tags that previously belonged to the suits.
No one could have missed Xiaoyu's high-pitched shriek. It pierced the eardrums of everyone within the building. "Sister, what the fuck did you do?" The sound was enough to jolt Lupe from her determined thousand-yard stare. Cuifen ran in from the dining hall as if summoned by the racket, bringing Shulan with her.
She'd been all bite earlier but faced down by her sisters she was only bark. "Why do you always think I did something?" It took ounces of restraint to keep her from stomping off to their room and shutting the door as tight as she could. Christ, they could always figure out how to embarrass her. Lupe moved hastily away from them, a neat tuck of her chin allowing her to avoid their mocking smirks.
"Because you were just-" From the corner of her eye she could see Cuifen open her mouth, about to cut in, certainly with the intent to rake her over the proverbial coals. Xiaoyu kept on with her rant, punctuated by the occasional giggle, her hands emphatically waving around that damned tag with the Shelby name in Liangliang's lazy calligraphy.
The combined pressure was enough to make her snap at them. "Of course I didn't do anything! Stop looking at me like that!" Their collective laughter finally chased Guadalupe out of the room and off to quiet, unoccupied safety.