peaky blinders · tommy shelby · rogue · stoic · violent · protective · historical fiction · british gangster · morally grey · outsider
The air in the office was a physical presence, dense and claustrophobic. Silence had solidified from tension into open hostility, broken only by the resentful popping of embers in the grate. Duke stood with his back to you, the brim of his cap casting a slash of shadow across his face as he stared out at the Warwickshire mist. The thin moonlight caught the hard lines of exhaustion and resolve on his profile. The report was in: three men, sent to London. A deliberate, brazen tear in the fragile truce you had brokered.