CHAPTER 15

LA PETITE MORT

❝ Darling, your looks can kill

so now you're dead  ❞

One could have thought it smelled like death inside La Petite Mort, but truly it smelled of vanilla candles, anise star and the purple mallow petals scattered throughout the rooms of the French brothel. Rose scrunched her nose at the candied scent when she walked in. She didn't like sweet scents; they often hid what was rotten.

The clear morning light seeped through the silk curtains like syrup down a cake, the delicate drapery turning the place into a game of light and shadows, so that the costumers could come in and fall into an ambiance they would not want to come out of with a heavy wallet. So that they could come in and see the ladies in the light while hiding their shame in the shadows.

There was a man climbing the stairs to the rooms; Rose merely saw his back before he disappeared. She turned to Arwen, who was still putting out the lamps from the night before. Arwen was the best person to run the brothel; she could as easily charm the clients as chase them out with a broken bottle might a drunk one decide to mistreat her ladies.

"Anything new?" Rose asked, lighting a cigarette and throwing the match into the bin. Her nostrils welcomed the pungent smell of smoke against the sweetened aroma of the room.

"Some new costumers, but nothing of concern. I'm goin' to grab breakfast real quick, take care of this for me, will ya?"

Rose nodded, soon finding herself alone between the lights and the shadows, unable to decide which one she was more drawn to. She never got to an answer, for the bells above the door jingled, and Thomas Shelby walked in.

A man who didn't give a damn about the light or the shadows or the fragrance of the place, and instead sank his eyes into her, impeccable suit and well-behaved cigarette hanging loose from his fingers.

"You know, most people fuck at night, not at seven in the morning." She talked because she hated the churning in her stomach at the thought he might attend the brothel. But the Thomas in front of her was no longer Charlie's father; it was the crime boss who killed faster than he blinked. Another person wouldn't have talked.

"I just came back from Small Heath." He stopped on the counter next to her, taking the cap out and placing it down next to the case. Raindrops fell from his brows to his lids. "Someone shot me fookin' bartender in cold blood."

Rose's cigarette halted halfway to her lips. "A bar brawl?"

Thomas shook his head, in that slow, languid way that seemed to be moving against time itself. His eyes were hooded, and Rose couldn't take off the veil. "No. If it were a brawl, people would've talked. But no one wants to fookin' talk. Apparently, no one knows what happened, meanin' someone has either bribed them well or scared them well. Or both. And it takes a lot to scare the people of Small Heath."

She glanced at him, though he was looking at the shadows in the wall. A man who hid just as well in them as he did in the light. She found her answer. She was drawn to both. In men like him, they were the same. "You have too many enemies. But I'm not one of them. I don't know anything about that."

"I know. You have enough money y'self, so bribes don't work. And people don't scare ya."

She took a long drag to mask a sigh of relief. "Even if they did, that wouldn't be enough to make me betray you. What do you want me to do?"

"You 'ave contacts all over London. Try and find out what you can. Yeah?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "Any suspicions?"

"Too many." His eyes darted to her, like a moth who had tried too hard to ignore the flame but was ultimately drawn to it. He gestured around, the cigarette leaving a trail of smoke behind. "This place. All kinds of men come here, aye?"

"Yeah. They come here for relief, pleasure, some crumbs of love. I come here for the information the ladies get out of them when they're too astray to think. You wouldn't believe the amount of things a man will tell a woman they want to sleep with."

He rubbed his thumb on the skin between his eyes. "Oh, I know."

"Do you know what it means? La Petite Mort?" Rose motioned towards the name above the door written in floral, silver letters. He shook his head, and she tapped the burnt end of the cigarette before pulling his eyes into hers with the flicker of a smile. "A little death. Us French believe that after the physical and mental exertion that comes with sex the soul transcends to another place. You see, you die a little – to be reborn somewhere else."

Thomas scoffed, the remnant of a cynical smirk lingering on his lips. "Is that what happens 'ere?"

Rose shrugged. "I don't know. But clients keep coming back. I didn't know you were one of them."

"I'm not. But a man has needs. And I fuck whenever I want, love, be it in the dead of the night or at seven in the fookin' morning. How much is it here?"

Her heart contracted, like a paper he had just crumpled and tossed aside. She looked at the bin; she wouldn't have been surprised to find it there.

"That depends on the time and what you want the lady to do to you."

He took out his wallet, and Rose could see he still had the murder on his eyes, and that the shadows were winning over the light, so she ignored her stomach, drowned down her feelings and accepted the money.

She watched him climb up the stairs, and cursed Arwen for having such a large stomach to fill. She didn't want to be there when the name of the brothel surged through him. She paced back and forth, feeling as if she was on a ship with the deck swaying under her feet. She didn't even remember the feeling anymore – of needing a compass just to get to herself.

Then a woman ambled down the stairs with a wad of cash in her hands.

"So soon?" Rose quirked an eyebrow. It shouldn't have to be this hard to fake a smile. And Thomas wasn't supposed to be holding any of the strings of her heart.

The other woman looked at her, long hair falling to her face as she smiled.

"We didn't do anything, he said he wasn't in the mood. Just gave me these pounds and told me to leave. Had a lot on his mind, it seemed. A woman, I'm sure. Often men come here when they can't have what they truly want."

Rose didn't think when she started climbing the stairs, and she didn't think when she got to the last step and went straight into the room. She found him sitting on the bed, back hunched and hands on his head. He looked like a Greek statue, one of those in which the hero is punished by the Gods and can never know what life is like, condemned to seeing it pass by without being able to grasp it. The price of being a moral man in an immoral world.

"Some of us have died too much already." Her voice was low, and the lights were low, but everything around them seemed heightened, as if she had just walked into a kaleidoscope with unseeable colors. "We can't be reborn anywhere else."

He looked up at her, the dark circles under his eyes looking a hundred years old. "You women always have to tell each other everything, don't ya?"

She leaned against the door, the organs in her stomach turning to burning coal. "I do need to know if my employees are keeping the clients satisfied."

His eyes were simple when he looked at her. Nothing like the torment that went on in his head. They had too many enemies. The first being themselves. That was the thing, with them. They had never stopped being at war with their minds. They had lost everything, that's why they always needed to win.

"Do I look like a man who's satisfied?"

"I don't think there's anything I can do to change that. Even if you had the world, you'd still want the universe."

He shook his head, hands clasping at the edges of the bed. She saw his veins, and her fists clenched against the urge to trace them. "Why is it that the only woman who's not for sale in this fookin' establishment is the only one I want?"

Her lungs forgot how to breathe. She turned away, looked into the hall. The man she had seen before was climbing down the stairs. His back was perfectly straight, and the sound of his shoes on each step was subtle, almost inaudible. He didn't walk like a man who felt shame.

But Rose could only see Thomas then.

"I can't sleep with you, Thomas, because if I do, I'll be the only woman you'll ever want to sleep with, and God forbid Thomas Shelby from not fucking every skirt he comes across with. And I wouldn't want to ruin the rest of your life for you."

She turned around and walked away, leaving him with his shadows and no light bright enough for him to see.

***

He went to Elizabeth Gray first, of course. The matriarch. It hadn't been easy being allowed into a women's prison, but years of experience had taught him where to pull the right strings, and England wasn't any different. People did what money and fear told them to do.

"First a shithole that smells like Satan's arse, now a jyle, which one is going tae be neist, a fuckin' cemetery?" Callan tossed his cigarette to the ground, stomping on the charred end as he glowered at the prison. He looked like a firecracker about to explode, and Tavish held the fuse. "At least ye could have let us go tae th' brothel, got all the fun yerself, aye?"

"Not fun, information. But her women are well trained." Tavish blew on his hands to warm them. England had a different way of being cold. "They won't tell ye anythin' if ye wear a smile. It's a'right. Neist time we'll use force. And then ye can gae."

Callan smiled. His eyes were the same color as Tavish's, only a few degrees colder. Not yet tempered by the larger goal.

"Now ye stay 'ere, aye?" Tavish grasped his neck, pulling Callan from his murderous reveries and back to reality. "We're not some fuckin' Glasgow razor gang, see if ye keep it in your pants this time. Ye shot the bartender against me orders because ye can't keep your fuckin' gun in your pants for more than two seconds. But in London you'll behave. This is not the Highlands. In London they behave, so we'll behave."

"Aye. As long as ye let me throw th' punches later."

Tavish nodded. "If ah don't come back in an hour, ye know what tae do."

***

The woman in front of him had eyes as brown as the earth, a fact that pleased him immensely. Blue eyes were overrated. He liked the earth. He liked to step on it and watch how his footprints left it forever changed. But despite the disheveled hair, the bags under her eyes, and the slightly glazed look, Elizabeth Gray had her shoulders straight and her chin held high when she entered the room, like a true queen among commoners.

She sat across from him on the metal table, her rosy cheeks the only stroke of color against the grey, grimy walls of the cell. Water dripped from the ceiling and trickled down the wall; this was far from the throne of a queen.

And yet the woman smiled like she was sitting right on it.

"S for Scotland?" She asked, the ghost of a smirk dancing with the shadows on her face. He looked down, at the ring on his finger with a S carved on it. "Or for scumbag?"

Tavish smirked. This woman was used to seeing the world from above. Good. She'd have a front row seat when he burned it.

"For Scotland. And Sauret. And a few other things." His hand snuck into his pocket in a studied movement; he took out a cigarette case and a blue vial, placing them in front of her. Her eyes jumped to the objects for a second, the lines on her brow creasing just a bit.

"If you're here to buy me, you can leave now. Others have tried and failed."

"Buy ye? No. I'm 'ere to talk." Tavish took one cigarette out, bringing the lighter to it until a flame popped out across his face. "Ye have an interesting nephew. He made ye all rich, and then he threw ye all in jail, keeping the money for himself."

Her smile widened, like a snake that retracts before attacking. "Is that what you think happened?"

"It's what people think happened. And what people think happened, becomes the truth."

He watched as her fingers trembled when she snatched a cigarette from the case. It took her some attempts to lit it, and then she took a long, deliberate drag, as if she was swallowing down any possible fears and expelling the result.

"And what makes you think I would tell you anything about Thomas?"

"He put you in here, no? Certainly, you must resent him."

"If you think that's reason enough for me to spill all my family's secrets and share all the skeletons in our closet, then I'm afraid you didn't do your research well enough, Mr. Sauret." The name rolled of her tongue like it was acid corroding her entrails.

"So his betrayal doesn't make ye betray him. Interesting." Tavish placed his elbows on the table, leaning into her. His cologne mixed with the smoke, two scents that could kill equally well. "Why protectin' him? When he clearly hasn't protected ye?"

Her grip on the cigarette became suddenly firmer, steadier, like an eagles' claw around an injured bird. She looked like the type of person that would greet Death just to spit on her face.

"I don't know why you're interested in Thomas, but you have no idea what you're getting yourself into. Walk away, dear. Walk away. While you still can."

"Ah, yes, he's the devil, or so I've heard. But there are worse things than the devil, Polly Gray, and I am one of them."

The ease with which he jumped from a thick Scottish accent to the clearest English didn't make her raise her eyebrows. The smoke of his cigarette merged with hers; their eyes clashed. She could win this battle. As long as he won the war.

"I don't know what some two-bit Scottish bastard and my nephew have against each other, but—"

"A woman." His voice was razor-sharp, like a tempestuous river cutting through the rocks. Eroding them until it was too late and all there was left of them was dust. "That's what we have against each other. He got himself involved with the wrong woman. Ye see, she has bones in her closet too. Bones that belonged to me."

He felt her grin like a spit on the face.

"Sounds like a woman I'd love to meet." She got up, finger grazing the blue bottle and tipping it over. The white powder spilled on the table, like a sheet over a dead body. "Now you fucking grab your cigarettes and your Tokyo and you get the fuck out of here. I might be in jail, dear, but I am still a Shelby. I can curse you. And even when our hands are chained, we can still strike."

Tavish didn't answer. Because what were hands that struck against lips that killed?

***

"You a friend of Thomas, ya say?" Arthur Shelby sniffed, ginger mustache wrinkling over the cigarette as he opened the bottle of Scotch Tavish had brought him. Some of the drops got stuck in his tousled beard. "That's a first. That fucker doesn't 'av friends."

"Maybe I can change that."

Arthur snorted, lips quivering as he did. Elizabeth Gray had looked like a lioness defending her offspring. This man in front of him, with his hunched shoulders and lunatic stare, reminded Tavish of an abandoned puppy that's better to kick than to shelter.

"And why'd you wanna be his fookin' friend, eh? His woife is dead. He sends his family to fookin' prison. Unless ya want to end up with a noose around your neck, you don't want to be his bloody friend."

"Family is a funny thing, isn't it?" Tavish ran a finger over his collarbone, where an S had been etched into his skin with a branding iron. "Ye all resent him, but ye still respect him. And if I'm correct, ye'd never do a move against him."

Arthur shook his head, sipping from the old whiskey like he hadn't drunk in months. "He's a bloody bastard alright, but he's still me brother."

Tavish got up, more impatiently this time. He'd thought this one would be easy to break. But Arthur was drunk, and miserable, and he still refused to go against Thomas.

Because loyalty beat harder than resentment. And nothing was thicker than blood.

"Keep the bottle." He said before leaving the dusky cell where Arthur would keep tightening his own noose. "You have more sorrows to drown than me."

***

A smirk on his lips, a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. That's how people had described John Shelby to Tavish, but the man standing across from him was nothing but a reduced carcass of the man he had once been. The veins below his blue eyes protruded against his pale skin, his beard a few days old.

Powder fell from his nostrils when he straightened up and looked at Tavish. The only thing he hadn't done was bring in women. He had offered them every other vice, every other temptation. So many had faltered against his sweet talk, and so many more had kneeled upon the tokens he crowned their heads with. But this people didn't kneel. And no vice was enough to make them betray the Peaky leader and ally themselves with a Scottish clan.

"Do me a fookin' favor, will ya?" John asked, with a smile that made Tavish's fingers itch for a knife to carve it out of him. Tavish could kill him. He could kill them all. But he wanted the first blood on his hands to be hers. He had dreamt about it for years. He couldn't risk being stopped before stabbing her with her own thorns. "If ya happen to see that bloody bastard, ya tell him to go fuck himself, alright? And just ya wait. Before ya know you'll be shoved into a cell like this and treated like a fookin' pig because of him. That's what he does to friends. At this rate, better to be an enemy. And bring more of this fookin' whiskey next time you come 'round, aye? What'd ya say your name was again?"

"Tavish." The Scot said simply, before grabbing the hat from the table and sauntering to the door.

Tavish and Thomas, he thought as he left. Six letters, the same meaning.

***

"I heard you have an offer to make me?"

Tavish was in the prison yard, savoring how the wind flogged his back. He turned around when he heard the voice, lips curling at the edges as the name he had in his mind turned real in front of him.

Michael Gray was more like his mother. Composed even amongst misery, worthy even when his shoes walked through the manure of the prison. Hair well-trimmed, beard shaved, eyes quick and alert, like a fox waiting in the bushes.

"Aye." Tavish took out the booze and the snow, but the only thing Michael accepted was a cigarette. He only had one more ace up his sleeve, one he hadn't used with the other Shelbys for it would have been useless; the ropes around their necks were too tied to Thomas for Tavish to cut them. But Michael was merely hanging by a loose thread. All he needed was a little help.

"You're a capable young man. Ye shouldn't be rotting in this shithole because of ye cousin. I could take ye out of 'ere, put ye where ye belong. In the center of the action, takin' the reigns."

Michael shoved his hands into his pockets, doubts creeping from his thoughts and into the wrinkles around the edges of his eyes. "And in return?"

"Ye'd give me what you 'ave on him, information that could frame him. An eye for an eye, they say."

"And you think I'd be willing to share my cousin's dirts with you and help you defeat him?"

"Ye don't own him anything. I know Thomas is in possession of something that can grant ye yer freedom. He just hasn't used it yet, because it comes in handy for him that you're all in 'ere, where he can control ye, like fuckin' dogs on his tiny leash."

Michael frowned, fingers dancing around the blue vial. He was a man of thought, and therefore of slow, well-aimed action.

"My mother, Arthur and John – they'd all say you're bluffing."

"Exactly why ah didn't tell them. They're too trapped in Thomas' webs to see anything beyond them. But ye're different. Ye think for yerself, not for the blood that runs in your veins."

"Thomas has enemies all around him. Why not ally yourself with them?"

"Because a knife on the back by someone who bleeds the same as you hurts a thousand times more. Besides, the gangsters in this city – jokes. Too volatile to think. That's why your cousin had no problem in claimin' the city for himself. Ye deserve the power and the freedom he has, don't ye think? If he has sharks all 'round him, he will never suspect ye're helping me. Isn't the possibility of freedom more meaningful than a last name?"

Michael paced back and forth under the murky sky. Tavish could see the rope fraying, thread by thread.

"Maybe. But you don't know the Shelbys, and you don't know my mother. I might think Thomas deserves what you're offering, but she doesn't. I just found her – I can't lose her again."

Tavish shook his head, focusing all of his unseen rage in a sneer. He hated gangsters. Especially those who had mothers or wives as weaknesses. "So your answer is no?"

Michael nodded. The rope was still there. "My answer is no."

"I'll enjoy the sun and the fresh air for ye, then. But if ye change yer mind, remember me offer. I'll find ye."

***

A whiff of cold air left Rose's lips as she stepped out of La Vie en Rose and walked home that evening. The sky above her head was but a blanket of dim clouds, like muddy foam against a ship's hull.

Her ship. One she could feel was sinking into a feeling she had promised herself never to return to. He should have left her pieces on the ground, where they belonged. Not try to pick them up and ending up getting cut in the process.

Rose quickened her pace, hoping to get beneath a roof before it started raining. She had felt sick all day, struggling to digest the bitter taste the events of that morning had left in her. The world came to her through a broken lens; her surroundings were blurred, just a fuzzy mist from which she couldn't break free. London was dark and deserted, mirroring the insides of her mind.

She could have gotten lost inside, but something glued her feet to the street. A figure lying flat on the ground, wrapped in the shadows of an alley that threatened her with no return. The nightfall, both above and within her, intensified.

She should turn away. The last time she had run into a dark corner she ended up with a gunshot wound to the arm. But she couldn't run away from the instincts in her.

She walked closer, the hair on the back of her neck bristling, and then she saw him, and the ship that had been rocking dangerously under her feet all day collapsed, broke against itself, leaving her adrift and without enough air to breathe.

Thomas Shelby was lying on the ground. Blood seeped from his mouth and nose, his typically immaculate suit torn and dirty from a fight, his body more cuts than skin, as if he were just the paper to someone else's scissors.

Rose ran to him, almost twisting an ankle as she dropped down beside him and grabbed his wrist. His chest was going up and down at an impossibly slow pace; his eyes twitched when she touched his skin. All her bitter thoughts collapsed under a sea of concern when she saw him open his mouth to speak but only a whimper came out.

It hurt her too much, seeing him like this, like a porcelain doll in the hands of a careless kid. This man hurt too much.

"I'm here, Thomas. I'm here."

He opened his eyes, those haunting eyes now haunted, fragmented, and Rose felt her pieces shatter again, fall on the cobbles next to his. His cold fingers wrapped around hers, a premature touch of Death. "Rose..."

"Shh, it's okay, Thomas, don't speak. I need you to help me out here, alright? I'm going to get you up." She forced a smile and gritted her teeth when she put his arm around her shoulders and stood up. "Seems like you got what you wanted after all. I'm going to take you to my house."

Thomas didn't answer. He was losing his grasp on reality, and Rose had to be quick. There were too many places where he needed to heal, and Rose was afraid she couldn't get to all.

She stepped out of the shadows and into the pale sunset light, without looking back.

If only she had. If only she had looked back or paid attention to the high heels on the cobbled streets, then she would have seen the man in the shadows who had been watching all along was in reality a woman.

author's note.

I hope you liked the chapter and the cameos from the Shelby members! They will appear more of course, but I just thought I'd give you a little taste. This chapter was slightly inspired by 'A Little Death' by The Neighbourhood, I love that song!

Btw I'm curious, are there any particular songs that remind you of tommyrose or this story?

As always, let me know your thoughts and I'll see you next chapter <3