"We live somewhere, between life and death, waiting to move on"

And where exactly does one draw enemy lines once love, resentment and history begin merging into one another?

Where exactly had connections soured into something barely passing as polite civility?

And where exactly was the man whose rigid rules oversaw a hundred and one men?

Where was your Uncle Richard?

There. Right there.

Up in the rafters at twenty seven, Cape Hill, Smethwick, Birmingham. Stood stoic and still, looking down at one man out of a hundred and one.

Arney.

Your father.

Brothers by law only. Your uncle watched the ease Arney carried himself with, watched charm slip effortlessly into conversation around the huddle of men below.

His men. His workers. Workers that should be minding machinery. A brother-in-law that should be minding his own business.

And above them all stood an old soldier dressed in a three-piece suit, a uniform never truly hung up and forgotten, merely stitched into something different. Something socially acceptable.

And he was watching.

Now, I could make a joke here. One that’d earn a giggle, a gasp from the old biddies, set their tongues a’wagging.

Something along the lines of,

A military man, an Englishman and a Scotsman all walk into a bar…

But with Richie stood there looking the fun sponge to every possible gag I could ever make, we should, for the sake of paying attention, follow that unwavering stare of his instead.

Because that, dear reader, is where every question and every answer you wish to know begins.

Dad knew he was watching.

Shit.

Actually, Arney didn’t know he was being watched. He felt it. A pressure, a pull. Perhaps even a fucking promise. One that made your father stop mid-sentence, glance over his shoulder, and find his brother-in-law staring down at him from his watchtower, with a different kind of ease, one that quietly said…

Finish up and follow.

Your uncle turned without a word and disappeared back into his office, fully expecting Arney to comply with the silent command that had just come down the line.

Jaw working, your father's head swung back around, face relaxing into a boneless smile as he felt the weight of being measured for his mettle beneath the hardened eyes of the Scotsmen.

“ Duty calls” Arney slipped back into that effortless ease to mask the irritation, the frustration of being ordered about by a man who held no authority over him beyond a claim through blood.

“ See that it does” the Scotsman murmured lowly, all Govan docks and Glasgow grit as he rolled a tightly coiled cigarette between the calloused pads of his thumb and forefinger.

Hands slipping into the pits of his trouser pockets, your father gave a slow nod, a subtle jerk of his chin, before swivelling on his Sanders Derbys, heading up the stairs. Up into the rafters.

“ Richie” your father announced himself through familiarity as he slinked into your uncle’s office, settling into the leather chair opposite his desk.

But Richard didn’t sit, didn’t respond. Didn’t so much as look Arney’s way.

He stood exactly where he had before, still as stone beside the glass window, eyes sweeping over his business, his brewery, and every bastard under his pay until they settled once more on your father’s new friend below.

“ We leave in five” he finally spoke, all calm control, as Arney's eyes followed his brother-in-law’s silent scanning, the merciless sorting through indispensable to dispensable.

“ Right, right…” your father charmed away your uncle’s rigidness, easing deeper into the curve of the leather chair, legs crossing loose as his hand slipped into his pocket for a cigarette.

“ Richie. I was thinking…the deliveries, east into Warwickshire…”

“ Thomas Shelby's solliciter is overseeing the deeds” your uncle cut clean across your father’s attempted offering of advice, eyes fixed on the Glasgow-born worker hauling a barrel of whiskey onto his shoulder below.

“ Right…” your father murmured through a cloud of smoke, idle fingers finding the hand-stitched tailoring of his trouser pocket, and the King George penny tucked deep within.

“ The route into the east though, I was…”

“ We're leaving” Your uncle finally turned, letting the command settle into silence as he stood there watching your father, watching the man who spoke to his workers like he already had an understanding with them.

For a long beat, the brothers bound only by law stared each other down. Arney’s lower gaze strained beneath the unwavering eyes of your uncle holding him firmly in place, as a very different understanding began to seep through the civility between them.

Richie didn’t trust his workers. History had taught him not to trust your father. And he sure as hell didn’t trust himself to stand down from the watch long enough to finally hang that uniform up for good.

The retired soldier hadn’t known a day’s rest since before the war. And as control and composure became the rhythm of his life, he expected every man to fall in line beneath his command.

“ On your feet, Arney”

“ Move”

Mr Paisley was a fumbling sort of man, whether by personality or practice dealing with demanding gangsters, one could never truly tell.

But as he laid out the deeds to Arrow House before you, that shaky hand of his steadied just enough to pass you his silver-plated pen beneath a set of unwavering blues.

“ On the dotted line, Mrs Shelby” he guided your gaze beside Tommy’s scrawled signature, the very bastard in question looming over you like a storm cloud moments from raining on your parade.

That magnificent, spectacular, petty parade of yours, if I do say so myself. One momentarily stalled to sign your name onto Arrow House.

“ What are the terms again?” You queried, a completely justifiable question that was absolutely, irrefutably not asked solely for the purpose of winding the wanker up for a second time in the space of five minutes.

“ If I keel over first…” Tommy murmured, slipping a cigarette between his lips, cupping the flame, the words practically dragging themselves out through a puff of smoke as he took in another heavy lungful. “You get Arrow House”

“ Ah. Yes. Then I look forward to your demise, husband” you replied cheerfully, back straightening as the pen scratched your name into the deeds while a very nervous-looking Mr Paisley glanced between you both with what should’ve passed as laughter, but came out rather squeaky instead.

“ Thank you, wife” Tommy replied just as merrily, flicking ash onto the pristine floor like some bloody hooligan violating his own house rules. “God knows I could do with five minutes peace”

What a simply splendid, premeditated murdering married couple you two made.

Move over Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The Shelbys were making marital executions a recreational pastime.

“ All seems to be in order, Mr Shelby. I'll have my secretary send copies to your London office for your review on Thursday”

Woah. Hang about. What was that? London, Thursday.

Was the roaming Romeo about to fuck off for yet another bout of fuckery in Fulham?

Yes he was. Yes he absolutely bloody was.

Bastard.

“ London” the capital left your lips too quietly to be a question, too precise to sound like a wife probing for answers.

“ London for business” Tommy clarified...twice “Business”

Once because he wasn't wrong. And a second time, because despite the warring rhythm you’d found with one another, despite the gentle touch you’d once pressed to his pulse to ease him through troubled sleep, he needed the reminder.

Needed you to remember that your union, your marriage, was still a matter of…business.

Your chair instantly scraped back.

“ Leave. Now” Tommy’s voice came out low and absolute, head snapping toward the solicitor as you slowly rose to your feet.

The rest would have to wait. Your uncle’s meticulous eye over the remaining papers now suspended for another day because Tommy needed Mr Paisley out of Arrow House before Mrs Shelby decided poised perfection in front of company was a standard belonging to a past and rapidly pivoting personality.

“ London” you murmured a second time, almost amused. Almost in awe at the audacity of your harloting husband if it wasn’t for the sharpened edge beneath the word as your heels struck marble out in the foyer where an audience awaited.

John and Arthur.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

Tommy needed to contain this before chaos truly ensued. Before you deemed tampered whiskey, Christmas carnage and passive-aggressive agony aunts unworthy of your wrath.

And more importantly, before the two amused idiots he called brothers decided this was one for the Shelby history books.

“ London” the word seemed to climb an octave higher toward one man’s long-awaited oblivion as you spun on your heel, stopped, then marched away. Whiplashing Tommy straight into following you through the foyer and out into the gardens.

“ Arthur. John. Leave” Tommy ordered, though both brothers were already half a step behind him while his eyes stayed fixed firmly on your swaying hips, your rigid spine cutting across the gardens.

“ Nah. Think we'll stay, brother” Arthur’s wolfish grin only worsened matters, forcing Tommy to choose between throttling one of his bastard brothers or chasing after his brazenly beautiful wife currently storming across his pristinely cut lawn in heels.

What an odd little fella. Somebody fetch the lawn mower and give this man a coronary with a two-centimetre-too-short turf.

“Oi. Not another step” Tommy’s voice dropped low, fingers lifting with a cigarette trapped between them like he was barking orders at one of his men instead of his maddening wife whose hand had just curled around a potted marigold.

“ You wanna have it out, eh?” Tommy shifted his weight onto one foot, hand pausing midair as his eyes dropped to the threat of being pelted with a ceramic flowerpot.

“ Come on then, wife. Let's have it out, then” he shoved the cigarette between his lips, muttering through smoke as he shrugged off his jacket, rolling his sleeves like he was about to wrestle you beneath the wisteria.

“ Yeh…I dunno about this, brother. She's looking proper pissed off” John observed from where he’d slouched against the brick wall while Arthur smoothed down his moustache, ready to make a wager on the war currently unfolding in the back garden of a Warwickshire house.

“ Tenner says she's lobs at it him” the eldest Shelby held out his palm, ready to secure both bet and his next brandy down the pub.

“ Done” John shook on it, as both brothers watched your knuckles whiten around the terracotta pot.

“ You bastard, leching little lordling with the emotional depth of a concussed pigeon!” you shouted across the lawn, the colourful and imaginative insult leaving Arthur and John staring on in pure delight.

Well.

You’d finally cracked, dear. Poise and perfection be damned. Might as well commit to it now.

And you did. Rather dramatically, in fact, when the flowerpot went sailing through the air straight at Tommy’s head, he ducked with considerably more finesse than you’d managed upon first launch.

“ You're gonna regret that” Tommy stalked forward, voice dropping low enough to dare you into escalating beyond the petty warfare of the past few weeks.

“ Yeh. Already do…” your voice tightened. Eyes tightened. That wandering bloody hand of yours tightened too around, you guessed it, another fucking flowerpot.

Christ.

“ Because I missed!” you hurled back as the second pot went soaring across the gardens, narrowly missing all three Shelby brothers when they collectively hit the ground.

“We're under fire, men!” Arthur shrilled with barely contained amusement as decades-old training kicked in, years spent fighting in France nothing compared to one furious female with a penchant for launching flowerpots.

“ Take cover, comrades! She's got a swing on her!” John barked through a grin, flipping the garden table onto its side to shield himself and his fellow soldiers from the incoming shrubbery.

“ Enough!” Tommy shot to his feet behind the garden table now repurposed into trench cover, foolish enough to believe his oh-so-scary presence might bring a ceasefire to the chaos.

And what did he get for his troubles?

Yep.

Another flowerpot.

“ Christ woman!” he bellowed around the cigarette, somehow still clinging on for dear life at the corner of his lips as he ducked back down.

“ Her uncle's gonna turn up any minute, and see I can't handle my own fucking wife. I need a plan” Tommy muttered darkly, squinting through the slats of wood to see his beautiful and absolutely bloody mental wife waiting patiently for one of them to surrender her husband for the greater good.

“ Thank fuck. We need reinforcements. The enemy is advancing” Arthur whispered with the excitement of a man having the time of his life while beside him John had entirely abandoned combat readiness in favour of unapologetic laughter.

“I’m gonna write this in me memoirs” John announced between wheezes, his future book bound to bankrupt Tommy when he'd buy every copy to save his bloodline's reputation.

“Battle Amongst The Buttercups. The Great War Of Warwickshire”

“ Terror comes in flying terracotta. The West Midlands War Over One Wanker's Wandering Cock” Arthur immediately supplied with a snort of laughter, as Tommy slowly turned to stare at both brothers like he was genuinely considering which one to sacrifice first in exchange for safe passage across the lawn.

“ Shut up. The pair of you”

“ Darling...love” Tommy attempted affection, only to make an absolute cock-up of it when he followed with…

“ How about you just calm down, eh?”

Idiot. Absolute idiot.

There exists at least one singular, universal phrase known to mankind that should never, under any circumstance, be uttered in the presence of an already furious woman when your odds of castration are looking increasingly favourable.

And that is, calm down.

Where's that butter knife?

“ What did you just say?” Your eyes narrowed on the garden table, focus sharpening into something dangerous, already armed with more ammunition when steady, unhurried boots stepped into the warzone.

Richie.

Uncle Richie.

Too blinded by the blaze of fury aimed at your bastard of a husband, you were spared the full weight of your uncle’s stare, watching you systematically fall short of every lesson he had ever drilled into you, as you lost yourself to emotion in real time.

“ Put it down” Your uncle’s voice carried across the lawn, calm, controlled. Composure over chaos. Always.

Because where Tommy provoked emotion, your uncle condemned it. And as you turned your head to find him standing still and unyielding at the edge of the garden, your father stood in his shadow, the flowerpot suddenly slipped from your fingers.

Everything went silent.

Slowly rising to his feet, Tommy watched his furious, fire-eyed wife settle back into herself, into that poised perfection he had begun to resent.

That wasn't a composure born of you. It was one that had been taught and maintained. A reflection of the man Tommy himself had learned to become as the version that felt too much, hurt too much, could never afford to be seen.

“ Go inside, and gather yourself” your uncle ordered as Tommy’s hand lifted, as if to interrupt, to say something, to tell him to let his wife breathe, let her feel, when he himself had spent years suffocating under the same form of survival.

But he didn’t. Instead, he stood in the wreckage of your retribution and realised Richie had kept you reserved for a reason.

And for the first time, he asked himself the question he hadn’t thought to ask before…

Just what had his wife survived?

Here we are again.

Look, I won't sugarcoat it for you, darling, but your husband was currently mid-fuck.

Back in Soho, with a Soho girl, having a Soho shag.

Six days had passed since war broke out in your Warwickshire garden, when flowerpots became a form of artillery, where composure finally cracked under pressure.

And now Tommy was back in London for business. Just like he said. Just like he warned you.

Only the release he’d come for was turning out to be more of a chore than a relief.

“ Yes, Mr Shelby” she moaned, each thrust met with rehearsed perfection.

“ Quiet” Tommy snapped, voice clipped, irritation cutting through as her performance became increasingly unbearable.

And don’t doubt yourself, dear. Because it wasn’t lost on him. And it won’t be lost on you either.

For your wedding night, a mere month ago, still echoed in his head. Only then, the sound hadn’t annoyed him. It had undone him. Made him feel something beyond what was supposed to be a marriage of means.

“ Enough” he ordered as he looked down at her properly now. Wrong hair. Wrong eyes. Wrong body. Just fucking…wrong.

With a final thrust he finished, feeling as unsatisfied as he did when he began.

How long was he going to keep doing this?

Proving a point? That he didn’t care?

That he wasn’t affected? That the day he met you in his office, and you gave him nothing, was the day he gave you everything.

“ Get out. Get out now”

As the door to his hotel room shut, Tommy sat in silence and let himself think of Arrow House. Of his wife. Of his wedding night. Keeping the memory untouched now that he was alone with it.

But back in Warwickshire, you sat in the darkened hush of the grand estate, staring out across the grounds, knowing your husband was somewhere in London making a mockery of your marriage under the convenient guise of business.

Petty didn't cover it anymore. You felt vengeful. A woman pushed too far, too long, under one house and one man’s rules.

And what came next would be your grand finale.

God help Thomas Shelby.

Well.

No one was going to stop you.

Not even Cupid, perched somewhere up in whatever heathen heaven he presided over, watching romance like it was sport.

This was either masterful. Or complete madness.

And as Polly, Arthur, John and Finn stood in the foyer of Arrow House with more than forty guests and their plus-ones behind them, none of them looked particularly inclined to be the ones to intervene either.

“ Tommy's gonna lose the plot when he walks through that door, Pol” Arthur murmured low over his whiskey tumbler, eyes sweeping across the preparations unfolding around him while MP’s, aristocrats, businessmen and unsuspecting guests mingled beneath the chandeliers.

“ Serves him fucking right” Finn muttered before Polly could answer, earning himself a sharp clip on the back of his skull from his older brother John.

“ Bitter much, Finn? John hissed quietly, firm hand locking around the nape of his younger brother’s neck before he could slip away from the consequences of his own stupid mouth. “ You’ve been encouraging her all bloody day, you little shit”

“ What?” Finn shrugged him off with barely contained resentment, that Tommy had wed and bedded you before he even managed a second date.

“ Fucks off to London every other week. Should have been me to take her home that day”

That landed. And not a single Shelby missed it.

“ Don't let Tommy hear you say that” Arthur warned, voice lowering, all amusement gone as he fixed Finn's envious eye with a steady look.

“ Why because it's true? He don't even like her”

Ah. There it was.

The dangerous thing about youth and younger brothers that thought they knew the way of the world.

Because with age comes understanding. And the mistake boys like Finn made, and would soon come to learn was, silence did not mean absence.

“ That what you think, eh?” Arthur muttered, frustration with his thick-headed brother bleeding through every irritated inch of him.

“ He just added her name to the deed of this house, you prat”

“ Arthurs not wrong” Polly cut in over her wine glass of Bordeaux red. “ Keep that to yourself. Last thing we need is a battle between brothers over a woman” 

“Where is the bloody woman?” John muttered, brow furrowing as his eyes swept the foyer searching for his serpentine sister-in-law who'd slipped away without warning.

“ Standing with the best view in the house” Polly smirked, as her eyes lifted. Then Arthur’s. Then John’s. And lastly Finn’s.

All of them looking up to find not some simpering little wife beaten down by a bastard determined to call marriage business, but a Queen.

And she was about to teach the King a very valuable lesson.

Happy wife.

Happy life.

Wheels crunched on gravel. The lights dimmed.

A car door slammed. Voices quietened.

Boots marched up the stone steps. Bodies vanished.

The front door swung open and Tommy demanded…

“Frances? My wife?”

And the room erupted.

“SUPRISE!”

The band instantly kicked in. Streamers flew. Confetti rained down over him as guests surged forward offering handshakes, congratulations and cheerful wishes of…

Happy birthday.

Yep. That’s right.

Thomas Shelby, gangster, wartime relic, Member of Parliament, had just walked into his very own surprise birthday party.

Two months too early.

This was, quite possibly, Tommy's very definition of hell. A living nightmare where he now found himself trapped into politeness, forced to mingle well into the early hours without hunting down and throttling his fucking wife.

And just where was his dear wife?

Tommy’s gaze swept sharply across the sea of bodies as he suffered through half-hearted handshakes from every bastard in Birmingham who’d arrived for the free…

Was that Fabergé caviar?

The low growl barely escaped him before his eyes snapped upward toward the second-floor landing.

Found you. 

And there you stood. A Queen presiding over her court looking utterly devastating, with a wicked smirk ghosting the corner of your lips as you slowly raised your glass of Dom Pérignon toward Don Dickhead himself.

You little fucking…

“ Easy, birthday boy” Arthur moved in quickly before Tommy took it upon himself to empty the house of everyone and everything except him and his wife.

“ I’m going to murder her, Arthur” Tommy muttered, eyes locked on the upper floor as his brother shoved a glass of whiskey into his hands before they found your throat. 

“ Yeh, well, it's gonna have to wait. Birthday cakes coming” 

And just like that, one enormous frosted monstrosity appeared as the guests gasped in awe at the lavish rosettes and iced ruffles. 

Someone had clearly ransacked her husband's bank account. 

Well done, darling. Hit him where it hurts. 

“ Speech! Speech!” Some overfed toff called out across the room, urging Tommy to address his guests, as your husband's focus stayed entirely on you and your descent down the stairs.   

“ Speech…” Tommy muttered absently, sharp eyes sweeping, losing your circling prowl somewhere in the hoard of bodies. 

“ My wife? Someone find my wife” the order came down, demanding you be found. For if he couldn’t pull you out of your game, then he'd drag you into his.

The crowd’s heads turned, bobbing as they searched for the missing member of their celebration, when, like something out of a gunslinging western, you emerged through the shifting bodies of party goers. 

“ Ah. There she is. My wife” Tommy's voice dropped low and gravelled, eyes narrowing in on your slow approach as his hand stretched out for you. 

“Come here darling. Come stand beside your, husband” 

Barely within an inch of him, his hand come around your back, clamping over your waist as he anchored you into his side. 

“ Thank you all for coming to my surprise birthday party” Tommy addressed the room, calm, controlled composure firmly in place, and a subtle death grip around your waist.

You weren't going anywhere. Not tonight. 

He was going to make sure you endured this the same way you’d forced him to endure the whole fucking thing.

“ Of course, I'd like to express my gratitude to my family for helping facilitate this celebration” Tommy continued, gaze cutting across the room one by one to Arthur, John, Polly and Finn. Each of them now considered complicit in the ambush.

“ And finally…i’d like to thank my wife” his eyes dropped to you, held captive by a clamp to your waist as you sipped calmly on a glass of champers. “ Who went out of her way to make this day special for me”

“ You shouldn't have. Really” he gazed down at you, with marital bliss in his eyes…

No. Forgive me. I meant… 

“... with murder in his eyes” 

“ Make a wish! A wish!” 

A chorus of birthday hecklers rang out as the colossal sized cake was wheeled into view. 

Hauling you in with him, Tommy held you tight, bending over to blow out his candles, as you murmured quietly through the last tendrils of smoke…

“ What did you wish for, darling? Another woman to warm your bed?” 

“ No. For you to behave” 

“ Mmm” you hummed fondly, as you locked eyes in a lovers gaze to every else but Tommy's family, who watched in silence as the last flicker of flame died down, all of them aware they were standing on the edge of something none of them could stop.

Your grand finale.

More mingling. More monotoned conversations about money and motorcars. Tommy endured every last bit of drivel these dandies considered interesting, all while his eyes tracked your every movement through the room.

 “ Enjoying yourself, wife?” The voice came low behind you, hand sweeping around your stomach as he pressed into your back, anchoring you in place at the grand foyer window overlooking Arrow House’ grounds. 

Waiting. Patiently waiting. 

“ Having the time of my life, husband” you murmured, laced thick with enough sarcasm to poison the rest of his year into January. 

“ Now, listen…” Tommy's voice dropped an octave, grip tightening at your hip as he leaned in, chin settling on your shoulder, breath warm against your ear.

“ When everyone leaves. You and I are going to have a civilised conversation about…” 

The words were cut short. Not because of you. Not because of some of eager toff. But because out in the garden came a whizz. Then a crack. Then one mighty fucking bang. 

Fireworks. You'd brought fireworks. 

Good god, girl. 

The room surged forward to the windows in a wave of gasps and cheers as the brightly coloured display lit up Arrow House in all its glory, while the gangster behind you froze into something very unfestive.

 “ How much?” Tommy muttered, one breath away from a growl as he watched his money go up in flames.

“ Oh I forget. Lost count after the third nought” you lightly mused, tilting your head in thoughtful reflection. Or what passed as it, that was. 

“ Look, darling! There goes another hundred” you gasped in delight as another rocket tore into the sky. 

“ Right. That's enough” Tommy turned you sharply in his grip, reaching to put an end to the spectacle when you stopped him mid-pivot. 

“ Wait. Wait…the grand finale” 

And there it was, in all its horror.

Yours and Tommy’s names, lit up in an obscene heart-shaped catastrophe of sparklers and smoke, an arrow punched straight through the centre like Cupid himself had taken poor aim in a drunken fit of enthusiasm.

Well done, dear. You'd made the chubby little cherub very proud.  

“ Look…” you cooed over the sparkling spectacle of pinwheels and jumping jacks currently making a mess of his pristine lawn.“ We're so in love” 

“ When everyone leaves. You'll have nowhere to hide from the conversation we're going to have about the rules of this house and your role as my wife” Tommy drawled low against your neck, spinning you with him to face the room. 

“ Thank you for coming, everyone” he addressed the guests smoothly, charm slipping back over him like his freshly tailored suit from Savile Row. 

“But it's been a long evening. And we're newlyweds” The statement was suggestive enough to earn a few chuckles from politicians, businessmen and the country bumpkins too dazzled by fireworks and free whiskey as they collected their coats and gloves.  

“ Arthur, see everyone safely out. Now” 

“ Tommy, don't do anything stupid” the eldest Shelby muttered quietly, sensing the streak of madness in his brother after an evening of his wife's warfare. 

As the last guest filtered out and the front door of Arrow House slammed shut behind them, only you and Tommy remained amongst the wreckage of your Warwickshire home.

“ I’m going to bed” 

“ You stay right there, Mrs Shelby” Tommy turned toward you, shoulders rigid, stance immovable beneath the weight of a conversation long overdue.

“ You knew the terms. You walked down that aisle knowing every one of them. And yet, I've spent the last week being punished for something you already understood” Tommy stalked closer, eyes hardening into those of a husband depleted of patience. 

“ This…” his hand cut between you both, to the wreckage of his mansion, his marriage, the entire month of warfare waged beneath his roof.

“ Is a temper tantrum over a business arrangement, you agreed to” 

“ No” your voice cracked despite your scrambling attempts to keep your composure. 

“My hand was forced to keep your business running. To stop scandal stripping you of everything you’ve worked for while I drew the short straw”

“And now I’m supposed to smile sweetly while my husband disappears to London every other week to warm someone else’s bed while I sit here like a footnote in your fucking ledger?” your chest heaved, heart thundered behind your ribs as you stared him down across the marble foyer floors. 

“ Short straw?” Tommy scoffed a laugh, mocking in every way that made your back  straighten like steel. 

“ You have everything you could ever wish for. And still, it's not enough for Mrs Thomas Shelby, is it?” 

“ I didn't wish for a husband that beds women on a bi-weekly fucking rota!” you hurled across the room, wild-eyed and without restraint as fury licked up your spine. 

“ Well that's what you fucking got! That's what I am!” Tommy roared, marching toward you hard enough steps to shake the four walls of your home. 

“ I’m the man that pays for everything. The houses, whores…

wives!” 

The last word hit harder than the rest. Not because he meant to say it. But because somewhere in the midst of his anger, Tommy Shelby had stopped sounding like a businessman trying to defend an arrangement, and started sounding like a husband furious his wife was hurt by him at all.

Wives. One among three.

The last in line on a list of women Tommy had paid parts of himself to in various ways.

But in what way had he paid for you? 

How do you tally up and slap a prize tag on a moment? A split-second decision to save someone from a snowstorm. From scandal. From ruin.

How much of a man’s life should that cost him?

“That's what I am to you? You stepped forward, eyes searching for something, anything, that would tell you otherwise. 

“Something you paid for? 

Another step. 

“One out of three?”  

“ This is a business arrangement” 

His finger came up with a warning.  

“ Third prize?”  

“ You agreed to this” 

His jaw tightened.

“ Third in line, Tommy?” 

A final breach into his space, and your husband snapped. 

“ You're not third anything!” his thundering voice ripped through the room, eyes wild, body heaving as his hands held you in place.

“ You're my fucking wife!” 

And there it was. A claim as clear as bloody day. Not business, not an arrangement, not the terms and rules he repeated to himself so he could sleep at night. But…

His wife.  

*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🖤*

[Next Part] coming soon!

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And where exactly does one draw enemy lines once love, resentment and history begin merging into one another?

Where exactly had connections soured into something barely passing as polite civility?

And where exactly was the man whose rigid rules oversaw a hundred and one men?

Where was your Uncle Richard?

There. Right there.

Up in the rafters at twenty seven, Cape Hill, Smethwick, Birmingham. Stood stoic and still, looking down at one man out of a hundred and one.

Arney.

Your father.

Brothers by law only. Your uncle watched the ease Arney carried himself with, watched charm slip effortlessly into conversation around the huddle of men below.

His men. His workers. Workers that should be minding machinery. A brother-in-law that should be minding his own business.

And above them all stood an old soldier dressed in a three-piece suit, a uniform never truly hung up and forgotten, merely stitched into something different. Something socially acceptable.

And he was watching.

Now, I could make a joke here. One that’d earn a giggle, a gasp from the old biddies, set their tongues a’wagging.

Something along the lines of,

A military man, an Englishman and a Scotsman all walk into a bar…

But with Richie stood there looking the fun sponge to every possible gag I could ever make, we should, for the sake of paying attention, follow that unwavering stare of his instead.

Because that, dear reader, is where every question and every answer you wish to know begins.

Dad knew he was watching.

Shit.

Actually, Arney didn’t know he was being watched. He felt it. A pressure, a pull. Perhaps even a fucking promise. One that made your father stop mid-sentence, glance over his shoulder, and find his brother-in-law staring down at him from his watchtower, with a different kind of ease, one that quietly said…

Finish up and follow.

Your uncle turned without a word and disappeared back into his office, fully expecting Arney to comply with the silent command that had just come down the line.

Jaw working, your father's head swung back around, face relaxing into a boneless smile as he felt the weight of being measured for his mettle beneath the hardened eyes of the Scotsmen.

“ Duty calls” Arney slipped back into that effortless ease to mask the irritation, the frustration of being ordered about by a man who held no authority over him beyond a claim through blood.

“ See that it does” the Scotsman murmured lowly, all Govan docks and Glasgow grit as he rolled a tightly coiled cigarette between the calloused pads of his thumb and forefinger.

Hands slipping into the pits of his trouser pockets, your father gave a slow nod, a subtle jerk of his chin, before swivelling on his Sanders Derbys, heading up the stairs. Up into the rafters.

“ Richie” your father announced himself through familiarity as he slinked into your uncle’s office, settling into the leather chair opposite his desk.

But Richard didn’t sit, didn’t respond. Didn’t so much as look Arney’s way.

He stood exactly where he had before, still as stone beside the glass window, eyes sweeping over his business, his brewery, and every bastard under his pay until they settled once more on your father’s new friend below.

“ We leave in five” he finally spoke, all calm control, as Arney's eyes followed his brother-in-law’s silent scanning, the merciless sorting through indispensable to dispensable.

“ Right, right…” your father charmed away your uncle’s rigidness, easing deeper into the curve of the leather chair, legs crossing loose as his hand slipped into his pocket for a cigarette.

“ Richie. I was thinking…the deliveries, east into Warwickshire…”

“ Thomas Shelby's solliciter is overseeing the deeds” your uncle cut clean across your father’s attempted offering of advice, eyes fixed on the Glasgow-born worker hauling a barrel of whiskey onto his shoulder below.

“ Right…” your father murmured through a cloud of smoke, idle fingers finding the hand-stitched tailoring of his trouser pocket, and the King George penny tucked deep within.

“ The route into the east though, I was…”

“ We're leaving” Your uncle finally turned, letting the command settle into silence as he stood there watching your father, watching the man who spoke to his workers like he already had an understanding with them.

For a long beat, the brothers bound only by law stared each other down. Arney’s lower gaze strained beneath the unwavering eyes of your uncle holding him firmly in place, as a very different understanding began to seep through the civility between them.

Richie didn’t trust his workers. History had taught him not to trust your father. And he sure as hell didn’t trust himself to stand down from the watch long enough to finally hang that uniform up for good.

The retired soldier hadn’t known a day’s rest since before the war. And as control and composure became the rhythm of his life, he expected every man to fall in line beneath his command.

“ On your feet, Arney”

“ Move”

Mr Paisley was a fumbling sort of man, whether by personality or practice dealing with demanding gangsters, one could never truly tell.

But as he laid out the deeds to Arrow House before you, that shaky hand of his steadied just enough to pass you his silver-plated pen beneath a set of unwavering blues.

“ On the dotted line, Mrs Shelby” he guided your gaze beside Tommy’s scrawled signature, the very bastard in question looming over you like a storm cloud moments from raining on your parade.

That magnificent, spectacular, petty parade of yours, if I do say so myself. One momentarily stalled to sign your name onto Arrow House.

“ What are the terms again?” You queried, a completely justifiable question that was absolutely, irrefutably not asked solely for the purpose of winding the wanker up for a second time in the space of five minutes.

“ If I keel over first…” Tommy murmured, slipping a cigarette between his lips, cupping the flame, the words practically dragging themselves out through a puff of smoke as he took in another heavy lungful. “You get Arrow House”

“ Ah. Yes. Then I look forward to your demise, husband” you replied cheerfully, back straightening as the pen scratched your name into the deeds while a very nervous-looking Mr Paisley glanced between you both with what should’ve passed as laughter, but came out rather squeaky instead.

“ Thank you, wife” Tommy replied just as merrily, flicking ash onto the pristine floor like some bloody hooligan violating his own house rules. “God knows I could do with five minutes peace”

What a simply splendid, premeditated murdering married couple you two made.

Move over Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The Shelbys were making marital executions a recreational pastime.

“ All seems to be in order, Mr Shelby. I'll have my secretary send copies to your London office for your review on Thursday”

Woah. Hang about. What was that? London, Thursday.

Was the roaming Romeo about to fuck off for yet another bout of fuckery in Fulham?

Yes he was. Yes he absolutely bloody was.

Bastard.

“ London” the capital left your lips too quietly to be a question, too precise to sound like a wife probing for answers.

“ London for business” Tommy clarified...twice “Business”

Once because he wasn't wrong. And a second time, because despite the warring rhythm you’d found with one another, despite the gentle touch you’d once pressed to his pulse to ease him through troubled sleep, he needed the reminder.

Needed you to remember that your union, your marriage, was still a matter of…business.

Your chair instantly scraped back.

“ Leave. Now” Tommy’s voice came out low and absolute, head snapping toward the solicitor as you slowly rose to your feet.

The rest would have to wait. Your uncle’s meticulous eye over the remaining papers now suspended for another day because Tommy needed Mr Paisley out of Arrow House before Mrs Shelby decided poised perfection in front of company was a standard belonging to a past and rapidly pivoting personality.

“ London” you murmured a second time, almost amused. Almost in awe at the audacity of your harloting husband if it wasn’t for the sharpened edge beneath the word as your heels struck marble out in the foyer where an audience awaited.

John and Arthur.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

Tommy needed to contain this before chaos truly ensued. Before you deemed tampered whiskey, Christmas carnage and passive-aggressive agony aunts unworthy of your wrath.

And more importantly, before the two amused idiots he called brothers decided this was one for the Shelby history books.

“ London” the word seemed to climb an octave higher toward one man’s long-awaited oblivion as you spun on your heel, stopped, then marched away. Whiplashing Tommy straight into following you through the foyer and out into the gardens.

“ Arthur. John. Leave” Tommy ordered, though both brothers were already half a step behind him while his eyes stayed fixed firmly on your swaying hips, your rigid spine cutting across the gardens.

“ Nah. Think we'll stay, brother” Arthur’s wolfish grin only worsened matters, forcing Tommy to choose between throttling one of his bastard brothers or chasing after his brazenly beautiful wife currently storming across his pristinely cut lawn in heels.

What an odd little fella. Somebody fetch the lawn mower and give this man a coronary with a two-centimetre-too-short turf.

“Oi. Not another step” Tommy’s voice dropped low, fingers lifting with a cigarette trapped between them like he was barking orders at one of his men instead of his maddening wife whose hand had just curled around a potted marigold.

“ You wanna have it out, eh?” Tommy shifted his weight onto one foot, hand pausing midair as his eyes dropped to the threat of being pelted with a ceramic flowerpot.

“ Come on then, wife. Let's have it out, then” he shoved the cigarette between his lips, muttering through smoke as he shrugged off his jacket, rolling his sleeves like he was about to wrestle you beneath the wisteria.

“ Yeh…I dunno about this, brother. She's looking proper pissed off” John observed from where he’d slouched against the brick wall while Arthur smoothed down his moustache, ready to make a wager on the war currently unfolding in the back garden of a Warwickshire house.

“ Tenner says she's lobs at it him” the eldest Shelby held out his palm, ready to secure both bet and his next brandy down the pub.

“ Done” John shook on it, as both brothers watched your knuckles whiten around the terracotta pot.

“ You bastard, leching little lordling with the emotional depth of a concussed pigeon!” you shouted across the lawn, the colourful and imaginative insult leaving Arthur and John staring on in pure delight.

Well.

You’d finally cracked, dear. Poise and perfection be damned. Might as well commit to it now.

And you did. Rather dramatically, in fact, when the flowerpot went sailing through the air straight at Tommy’s head, he ducked with considerably more finesse than you’d managed upon first launch.

“ You're gonna regret that” Tommy stalked forward, voice dropping low enough to dare you into escalating beyond the petty warfare of the past few weeks.

“ Yeh. Already do…” your voice tightened. Eyes tightened. That wandering bloody hand of yours tightened too around, you guessed it, another fucking flowerpot.

Christ.

“ Because I missed!” you hurled back as the second pot went soaring across the gardens, narrowly missing all three Shelby brothers when they collectively hit the ground.

“We're under fire, men!” Arthur shrilled with barely contained amusement as decades-old training kicked in, years spent fighting in France nothing compared to one furious female with a penchant for launching flowerpots.

“ Take cover, comrades! She's got a swing on her!” John barked through a grin, flipping the garden table onto its side to shield himself and his fellow soldiers from the incoming shrubbery.

“ Enough!” Tommy shot to his feet behind the garden table now repurposed into trench cover, foolish enough to believe his oh-so-scary presence might bring a ceasefire to the chaos.

And what did he get for his troubles?

Yep.

Another flowerpot.

“ Christ woman!” he bellowed around the cigarette, somehow still clinging on for dear life at the corner of his lips as he ducked back down.

“ Her uncle's gonna turn up any minute, and see I can't handle my own fucking wife. I need a plan” Tommy muttered darkly, squinting through the slats of wood to see his beautiful and absolutely bloody mental wife waiting patiently for one of them to surrender her husband for the greater good.

“ Thank fuck. We need reinforcements. The enemy is advancing” Arthur whispered with the excitement of a man having the time of his life while beside him John had entirely abandoned combat readiness in favour of unapologetic laughter.

“I’m gonna write this in me memoirs” John announced between wheezes, his future book bound to bankrupt Tommy when he'd buy every copy to save his bloodline's reputation.

“Battle Amongst The Buttercups. The Great War Of Warwickshire”

“ Terror comes in flying terracotta. The West Midlands War Over One Wanker's Wandering Cock” Arthur immediately supplied with a snort of laughter, as Tommy slowly turned to stare at both brothers like he was genuinely considering which one to sacrifice first in exchange for safe passage across the lawn.

“ Shut up. The pair of you”

“ Darling...love” Tommy attempted affection, only to make an absolute cock-up of it when he followed with…

“ How about you just calm down, eh?”

Idiot. Absolute idiot.

There exists at least one singular, universal phrase known to mankind that should never, under any circumstance, be uttered in the presence of an already furious woman when your odds of castration are looking increasingly favourable.

And that is, calm down.

Where's that butter knife?

“ What did you just say?” Your eyes narrowed on the garden table, focus sharpening into something dangerous, already armed with more ammunition when steady, unhurried boots stepped into the warzone.

Richie.

Uncle Richie.

Too blinded by the blaze of fury aimed at your bastard of a husband, you were spared the full weight of your uncle’s stare, watching you systematically fall short of every lesson he had ever drilled into you, as you lost yourself to emotion in real time.

“ Put it down” Your uncle’s voice carried across the lawn, calm, controlled. Composure over chaos. Always.

Because where Tommy provoked emotion, your uncle condemned it. And as you turned your head to find him standing still and unyielding at the edge of the garden, your father stood in his shadow, the flowerpot suddenly slipped from your fingers.

Everything went silent.

Slowly rising to his feet, Tommy watched his furious, fire-eyed wife settle back into herself, into that poised perfection he had begun to resent.

That wasn't a composure born of you. It was one that had been taught and maintained. A reflection of the man Tommy himself had learned to become as the version that felt too much, hurt too much, could never afford to be seen.

“ Go inside, and gather yourself” your uncle ordered as Tommy’s hand lifted, as if to interrupt, to say something, to tell him to let his wife breathe, let her feel, when he himself had spent years suffocating under the same form of survival.

But he didn’t. Instead, he stood in the wreckage of your retribution and realised Richie had kept you reserved for a reason.

And for the first time, he asked himself the question he hadn’t thought to ask before…

Just what had his wife survived?

Here we are again.

Look, I won't sugarcoat it for you, darling, but your husband was currently mid-fuck.

Back in Soho, with a Soho girl, having a Soho shag.

Six days had passed since war broke out in your Warwickshire garden, when flowerpots became a form of artillery, where composure finally cracked under pressure.

And now Tommy was back in London for business. Just like he said. Just like he warned you.

Only the release he’d come for was turning out to be more of a chore than a relief.

“ Yes, Mr Shelby” she moaned, each thrust met with rehearsed perfection.

“ Quiet” Tommy snapped, voice clipped, irritation cutting through as her performance became increasingly unbearable.

And don’t doubt yourself, dear. Because it wasn’t lost on him. And it won’t be lost on you either.

For your wedding night, a mere month ago, still echoed in his head. Only then, the sound hadn’t annoyed him. It had undone him. Made him feel something beyond what was supposed to be a marriage of means.

“ Enough” he ordered as he looked down at her properly now. Wrong hair. Wrong eyes. Wrong body. Just fucking…wrong.

With a final thrust he finished, feeling as unsatisfied as he did when he began.

How long was he going to keep doing this?

Proving a point? That he didn’t care?

That he wasn’t affected? That the day he met you in his office, and you gave him nothing, was the day he gave you everything.

“ Get out. Get out now”

As the door to his hotel room shut, Tommy sat in silence and let himself think of Arrow House. Of his wife. Of his wedding night. Keeping the memory untouched now that he was alone with it.

But back in Warwickshire, you sat in the darkened hush of the grand estate, staring out across the grounds, knowing your husband was somewhere in London making a mockery of your marriage under the convenient guise of business.

Petty didn't cover it anymore. You felt vengeful. A woman pushed too far, too long, under one house and one man’s rules.

And what came next would be your grand finale.

God help Thomas Shelby.

Well.

No one was going to stop you.

Not even Cupid, perched somewhere up in whatever heathen heaven he presided over, watching romance like it was sport.

This was either masterful. Or complete madness.

And as Polly, Arthur, John and Finn stood in the foyer of Arrow House with more than forty guests and their plus-ones behind them, none of them looked particularly inclined to be the ones to intervene either.

“ Tommy's gonna lose the plot when he walks through that door, Pol” Arthur murmured low over his whiskey tumbler, eyes sweeping across the preparations unfolding around him while MP’s, aristocrats, businessmen and unsuspecting guests mingled beneath the chandeliers.

“ Serves him fucking right” Finn muttered before Polly could answer, earning himself a sharp clip on the back of his skull from his older brother John.

“ Bitter much, Finn? John hissed quietly, firm hand locking around the nape of his younger brother’s neck before he could slip away from the consequences of his own stupid mouth. “ You’ve been encouraging her all bloody day, you little shit”

“ What?” Finn shrugged him off with barely contained resentment, that Tommy had wed and bedded you before he even managed a second date.

“ Fucks off to London every other week. Should have been me to take her home that day”

That landed. And not a single Shelby missed it.

“ Don't let Tommy hear you say that” Arthur warned, voice lowering, all amusement gone as he fixed Finn's envious eye with a steady look.

“ Why because it's true? He don't even like her”

Ah. There it was.

The dangerous thing about youth and younger brothers that thought they knew the way of the world.

Because with age comes understanding. And the mistake boys like Finn made, and would soon come to learn was, silence did not mean absence.

“ That what you think, eh?” Arthur muttered, frustration with his thick-headed brother bleeding through every irritated inch of him.

“ He just added her name to the deed of this house, you prat”

“ Arthurs not wrong” Polly cut in over her wine glass of Bordeaux red. “ Keep that to yourself. Last thing we need is a battle between brothers over a woman” 

“Where is the bloody woman?” John muttered, brow furrowing as his eyes swept the foyer searching for his serpentine sister-in-law who'd slipped away without warning.

“ Standing with the best view in the house” Polly smirked, as her eyes lifted. Then Arthur’s. Then John’s. And lastly Finn’s.

All of them looking up to find not some simpering little wife beaten down by a bastard determined to call marriage business, but a Queen.

And she was about to teach the King a very valuable lesson.

Happy wife.

Happy life.

Wheels crunched on gravel. The lights dimmed.

A car door slammed. Voices quietened.

Boots marched up the stone steps. Bodies vanished.

The front door swung open and Tommy demanded…

“Frances? My wife?”

And the room erupted.

“SUPRISE!”

The band instantly kicked in. Streamers flew. Confetti rained down over him as guests surged forward offering handshakes, congratulations and cheerful wishes of…

Happy birthday.

Yep. That’s right.

Thomas Shelby, gangster, wartime relic, Member of Parliament, had just walked into his very own surprise birthday party.

Two months too early.

This was, quite possibly, Tommy's very definition of hell. A living nightmare where he now found himself trapped into politeness, forced to mingle well into the early hours without hunting down and throttling his fucking wife.

And just where was his dear wife?

Tommy’s gaze swept sharply across the sea of bodies as he suffered through half-hearted handshakes from every bastard in Birmingham who’d arrived for the free…

Was that Fabergé caviar?

The low growl barely escaped him before his eyes snapped upward toward the second-floor landing.

Found you. 

And there you stood. A Queen presiding over her court looking utterly devastating, with a wicked smirk ghosting the corner of your lips as you slowly raised your glass of Dom Pérignon toward Don Dickhead himself.

You little fucking…

“ Easy, birthday boy” Arthur moved in quickly before Tommy took it upon himself to empty the house of everyone and everything except him and his wife.

“ I’m going to murder her, Arthur” Tommy muttered, eyes locked on the upper floor as his brother shoved a glass of whiskey into his hands before they found your throat. 

“ Yeh, well, it's gonna have to wait. Birthday cakes coming” 

And just like that, one enormous frosted monstrosity appeared as the guests gasped in awe at the lavish rosettes and iced ruffles. 

Someone had clearly ransacked her husband's bank account. 

Well done, darling. Hit him where it hurts. 

“ Speech! Speech!” Some overfed toff called out across the room, urging Tommy to address his guests, as your husband's focus stayed entirely on you and your descent down the stairs.   

“ Speech…” Tommy muttered absently, sharp eyes sweeping, losing your circling prowl somewhere in the hoard of bodies. 

“ My wife? Someone find my wife” the order came down, demanding you be found. For if he couldn’t pull you out of your game, then he'd drag you into his.

The crowd’s heads turned, bobbing as they searched for the missing member of their celebration, when, like something out of a gunslinging western, you emerged through the shifting bodies of party goers. 

“ Ah. There she is. My wife” Tommy's voice dropped low and gravelled, eyes narrowing in on your slow approach as his hand stretched out for you. 

“Come here darling. Come stand beside your, husband” 

Barely within an inch of him, his hand come around your back, clamping over your waist as he anchored you into his side. 

“ Thank you all for coming to my surprise birthday party” Tommy addressed the room, calm, controlled composure firmly in place, and a subtle death grip around your waist.

You weren't going anywhere. Not tonight. 

He was going to make sure you endured this the same way you’d forced him to endure the whole fucking thing.

“ Of course, I'd like to express my gratitude to my family for helping facilitate this celebration” Tommy continued, gaze cutting across the room one by one to Arthur, John, Polly and Finn. Each of them now considered complicit in the ambush.

“ And finally…i’d like to thank my wife” his eyes dropped to you, held captive by a clamp to your waist as you sipped calmly on a glass of champers. “ Who went out of her way to make this day special for me”

“ You shouldn't have. Really” he gazed down at you, with marital bliss in his eyes…

No. Forgive me. I meant… 

“... with murder in his eyes” 

“ Make a wish! A wish!” 

A chorus of birthday hecklers rang out as the colossal sized cake was wheeled into view. 

Hauling you in with him, Tommy held you tight, bending over to blow out his candles, as you murmured quietly through the last tendrils of smoke…

“ What did you wish for, darling? Another woman to warm your bed?” 

“ No. For you to behave” 

“ Mmm” you hummed fondly, as you locked eyes in a lovers gaze to every else but Tommy's family, who watched in silence as the last flicker of flame died down, all of them aware they were standing on the edge of something none of them could stop.

Your grand finale.

More mingling. More monotoned conversations about money and motorcars. Tommy endured every last bit of drivel these dandies considered interesting, all while his eyes tracked your every movement through the room.

 “ Enjoying yourself, wife?” The voice came low behind you, hand sweeping around your stomach as he pressed into your back, anchoring you in place at the grand foyer window overlooking Arrow House’ grounds. 

Waiting. Patiently waiting. 

“ Having the time of my life, husband” you murmured, laced thick with enough sarcasm to poison the rest of his year into January. 

“ Now, listen…” Tommy's voice dropped an octave, grip tightening at your hip as he leaned in, chin settling on your shoulder, breath warm against your ear.

“ When everyone leaves. You and I are going to have a civilised conversation about…” 

The words were cut short. Not because of you. Not because of some of eager toff. But because out in the garden came a whizz. Then a crack. Then one mighty fucking bang. 

Fireworks. You'd brought fireworks. 

Good god, girl. 

The room surged forward to the windows in a wave of gasps and cheers as the brightly coloured display lit up Arrow House in all its glory, while the gangster behind you froze into something very unfestive.

 “ How much?” Tommy muttered, one breath away from a growl as he watched his money go up in flames.

“ Oh I forget. Lost count after the third nought” you lightly mused, tilting your head in thoughtful reflection. Or what passed as it, that was. 

“ Look, darling! There goes another hundred” you gasped in delight as another rocket tore into the sky. 

“ Right. That's enough” Tommy turned you sharply in his grip, reaching to put an end to the spectacle when you stopped him mid-pivot. 

“ Wait. Wait…the grand finale” 

And there it was, in all its horror.

Yours and Tommy’s names, lit up in an obscene heart-shaped catastrophe of sparklers and smoke, an arrow punched straight through the centre like Cupid himself had taken poor aim in a drunken fit of enthusiasm.

Well done, dear. You'd made the chubby little cherub very proud.  

“ Look…” you cooed over the sparkling spectacle of pinwheels and jumping jacks currently making a mess of his pristine lawn.“ We're so in love” 

“ When everyone leaves. You'll have nowhere to hide from the conversation we're going to have about the rules of this house and your role as my wife” Tommy drawled low against your neck, spinning you with him to face the room. 

“ Thank you for coming, everyone” he addressed the guests smoothly, charm slipping back over him like his freshly tailored suit from Savile Row. 

“But it's been a long evening. And we're newlyweds” The statement was suggestive enough to earn a few chuckles from politicians, businessmen and the country bumpkins too dazzled by fireworks and free whiskey as they collected their coats and gloves.  

“ Arthur, see everyone safely out. Now” 

“ Tommy, don't do anything stupid” the eldest Shelby muttered quietly, sensing the streak of madness in his brother after an evening of his wife's warfare. 

As the last guest filtered out and the front door of Arrow House slammed shut behind them, only you and Tommy remained amongst the wreckage of your Warwickshire home.

“ I’m going to bed” 

“ You stay right there, Mrs Shelby” Tommy turned toward you, shoulders rigid, stance immovable beneath the weight of a conversation long overdue.

“ You knew the terms. You walked down that aisle knowing every one of them. And yet, I've spent the last week being punished for something you already understood” Tommy stalked closer, eyes hardening into those of a husband depleted of patience. 

“ This…” his hand cut between you both, to the wreckage of his mansion, his marriage, the entire month of warfare waged beneath his roof.

“ Is a temper tantrum over a business arrangement, you agreed to” 

“ No” your voice cracked despite your scrambling attempts to keep your composure. 

“My hand was forced to keep your business running. To stop scandal stripping you of everything you’ve worked for while I drew the short straw”

“And now I’m supposed to smile sweetly while my husband disappears to London every other week to warm someone else’s bed while I sit here like a footnote in your fucking ledger?” your chest heaved, heart thundered behind your ribs as you stared him down across the marble foyer floors. 

“ Short straw?” Tommy scoffed a laugh, mocking in every way that made your back  straighten like steel. 

“ You have everything you could ever wish for. And still, it's not enough for Mrs Thomas Shelby, is it?” 

“ I didn't wish for a husband that beds women on a bi-weekly fucking rota!” you hurled across the room, wild-eyed and without restraint as fury licked up your spine. 

“ Well that's what you fucking got! That's what I am!” Tommy roared, marching toward you hard enough steps to shake the four walls of your home. 

“ I’m the man that pays for everything. The houses, whores…

wives!” 

The last word hit harder than the rest. Not because he meant to say it. But because somewhere in the midst of his anger, Tommy Shelby had stopped sounding like a businessman trying to defend an arrangement, and started sounding like a husband furious his wife was hurt by him at all.

Wives. One among three.

The last in line on a list of women Tommy had paid parts of himself to in various ways.

But in what way had he paid for you? 

How do you tally up and slap a prize tag on a moment? A split-second decision to save someone from a snowstorm. From scandal. From ruin.

How much of a man’s life should that cost him?

“That's what I am to you? You stepped forward, eyes searching for something, anything, that would tell you otherwise. 

“Something you paid for? 

Another step. 

“One out of three?”  

“ This is a business arrangement” 

His finger came up with a warning.  

“ Third prize?”  

“ You agreed to this” 

His jaw tightened.

“ Third in line, Tommy?” 

A final breach into his space, and your husband snapped. 

“ You're not third anything!” his thundering voice ripped through the room, eyes wild, body heaving as his hands held you in place.

“ You're my fucking wife!” 

And there it was. A claim as clear as bloody day. Not business, not an arrangement, not the terms and rules he repeated to himself so he could sleep at night. But…

His wife.  

*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🖤*

[Next Part] coming soon!

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Polly knew better than anyone that time passes slower in the flicker of hospital light. First her husband, then her daughter and now her son. And though she once anticipated a life in these corridors as a midwife, she never expected to be the one sitting in the corner watching people fade into nothing.

Michael would eventually make a full recovery, but not before Polly lost her job at the plant, the best one she'd ever had. She couldn't say it had come as a surprise though. She was cursed to see the end in everything new.

The summer before she turned 16, she was running heartbreak red nails down her boyfriend's back. By the time she'd counted the candles on her cake, they caressed a swollen stomach and legs marred by bruises. Polly was too young to know some kinds of love could be bad.

Tired of him, but too tired to leave, she thought of names for the child as her new husband, Bobby Gray, was thinking how he was going to feed them. Life only got harder when her brother abandoned his children at her doorstep. The strain left Bobby buckled on the floor every night, drunk and useless until a terrible accident produced a hefty life insurance check. She was free of him, but when the lights went out, she found herself all alone.

By her 45th birthday, the disappointment was creeping in, a hole so big a handle of vodka couldn't fill it. She made a fool of herself down on Tennessee Street, dancing on the bar and flashing the regulars. It wasn't pretty like the movies, it was ugly like what had been done to her. She'd never done anything to anyone, but trouble was all she ever knew. She was forced to ask, “Am I no good?”

Polly 😩. She's had a hard life.

I love the fact you had one of her aspirations be to become a midwife. It really does fit everything we know about her character. And the way you wove it into this blurb as she thinks back on her teen years was fantastically well done 👌🏼.

She was cursed to see the end in everything new. Oof, such a good line, Lee. That hit.

The summer before she turned 16, she was running heartbreak red nails down her boyfriend's back. Another banger line. I'm gonna need this nail polish asap. There's just something so believable about these little blurbs, you've humanised each character in the most realistic ways. They suddenly feel like your next door neighbour you have a chat with on your doorstep or over the garden fence. Such talent, Lee!

She made a fool of herself down on Tennessee Street, dancing on the bar and flashing the regulars. It wasn't pretty like the movies, it was ugly like what had been done to her. No way! Is this from the scene in the series 😍? This is what I was talking about, you've merged both worlds so authentically, that if I didn't know canon, I wouldn't know which one came first.

helping her quiet the noise inside her head until one day she didn't have to ask if she was good. Average Joe Abe was all she needed ❤️. She just needed stability and a man that kept his word. And look at him in that moodboard 😩.

Linda Miller took the prettiest mugshot in three counties, her ethereal beauty illuminated under the jail's harsh fluorescent lighting. "Miss Holiday Inn," one of the deputies joked when he saw it and the truth wasn't far off. Somewhere a sunbleached Polaroid confirmed Linda's resemblance to the Texas beauty queen who raised her. But that was a long time ago, before the drugs.

Her mama wasn't good at raising children, but she was good at raising hell. Linda had been on her own since she was sixteen, drifting from town to town, using her intellect and angelic face to get away with anything. She was on probation when she moved into Watery Lane trailer park, just down the road from Charlie Strong's garage, and fate took the wheel.

As she walked to the diner where she worked, she noticed a lanky man with faded baby blues staring back at her. He looked like he worked with his hands and smelled of Marlboro Reds. Not the best decision for someone trying to start fresh, but she was inexplicably drawn to him nonetheless.

She had what Arthur would later describe as "fuck me eyes," batting her lashes seductively every time she walked past the open bay where he was working. But if you asked Linda, she was dedicated to a more righteous path, never missing Sunday service, even if she'd been at the clubs the night before.

Now, had you hatched a plan? Absolutely. Well done. Admirably petty. Deeply deserved.

Unfortunately, it was also a terrible, terrible plan. One specifically designed to irritate the most irritable man on this brolly-battered island.

And Thomas Shelby, was already one inconvenience away from committing a felony before he hit the fork in the road out of London.

But for now, Arrow House had been conveniently left in your hands. And as you descended into the mausoleum of one man’s insufferable moods, his absence was swiftly becoming your loyal housekeeper’s inconvenience.

“ Frances, how are we doing on the list I gave you?” you probed, stepping into the grand foyer as a skittish maid hurried past, looking positively terrified you’d hand her yet another amendment to your husband’s rigid routine.

“ Mrs Shelby, I have a few concerns regarding some of the…changes to the running of the household you wish to make” Frances tread carefully, acutely aware you had transformed into an avenging angel with an unstoppable agenda since Tommy’s departure, and rapidly approaching return.

Concerns, she'd said.

Very tactful. Very diplomatic. Wholly Indifferent.

And in plain English?...

Have you lost your bloody mind?

And to her credit, the observation wasn’t entirely inaccurate. Because the pettiness of your mundane modifications did, admittedly, have the faint air of a woman teetering on the edge of something unholy.

“ Alright…I'm listening” you replied steadily, walls of wrath for your bastard husband tightening around you like armour, as another set of ears listened in, shouldering the door to the kitchen.

Arney.

Your father.

“ Mr Shelby's morning paper, Ma'am?” Frances produced the first adjustment you’d made to a household carefully moulded and maintained to Tommy’s tastes and expectations.

“ Minor” you dismissed lightly, while at the edge of the room, your father lingered, watching, entirely too interested in what chaos you were about to unleash.

“ The changes to the weekly menu?”

“ Reasonable”

“ The ten-year-old fir tree?”

“ Necessary”

“ And the…whiskey, Mrs Shelby?”

Ah yes, that one. The one most likely to send Tommy into orbit, then hurtling straight back down like some doomsday delivering frisbee.

“ Justified”

There. You’d laid the evidence out neatly enough as to why each adjustment was not only necessary, but imperative to the wellbeing of Arrow House and your rapidly depleting sanity.

Because while you may have been clinging desperately to your poise and perfection, refusing to let one man, one measly, morally corrupt man, have a crack at your composure, It did not mean you couldn’t make his life deeply inconvenient in the meantime.

“ That'll be all, Frances. Thank you” you politely put an end to all things deemed Mrs Shelby's Petty Plan, as your father plucked a framed wedding photo from the foyer table of you and Tommy, immortalised in murderous adoration.

“ Yes Ma'am” Frances nodded dutifully, stepping back into service as her eyes drifted to your father's increasingly frequent presence at Arrow House.

“ Fancy digs, poppet” Arney remarked, turning the frame over in his hands, all lean charm and easy panache embellished by the silk neckerchief at his throat as his thumb brushed along the polished edge. “Real silver, this”

“ Trinkets” you murmured dismissively, watching him walk over, photo frame abandoned off center, to capture your cheeks in his hands.

“ Look at you” your father mused, sun-worn skin and sharp eyes softening. “ Lady of the house” Amusement curled at the edge of his slinking smile as his gaze drifted beyond you, taking in the sprawling grandeur of Arrow House and all its finery. “And it's a big bloody house”

“ A mausoleum” you commented on your less than comfy accommodation, one that felt more like a three story bachelor pad than any marital home of your dreams.

“ Does Uncle Richard know you're here?” Your attention shifted to the one man guaranteed to have strong opinions regarding a newlywed wife accepting visitors in her husband’s absence without his say so.

“ Away with that, girl. Forget Richie and his rigidness” your father dismissed easily, brushing aside your concerns as he released your cheeks to turn on his heel, eyes lifting to the crown moulding and gold-finished fixtures stretching high above him.

“ Come on then, poppet. Show your old man around” His head tipped toward the long hallway before he wandered off a step ahead, expecting you to follow, the little girl forever eager to accommodate her father.

As you disappeared through the doors of Arrow House, each room now at your disposal, each wall left for you to decorate, each corner yours to delegate, Frances remained standing in the foyer of the home she had managed for over a decade, anticipating something entirely different.

Because in a day’s time, the master of the manor would return to discover his wife had taken liberties with the status flow of his stately home.

And as she reached out to straighten the crooked silver-framed photograph left abandoned on the foyer table, she decided some things would, for now, remain just so.

One day later, one uneventful morning gone without so much as a blip to its blueprint, Arrow House was looking unremarkably quiet.

And as Cupid lounged away in his celestial bureau of emotional sabotage, arrow aimed squarely at a plump songbird, fully prepared to strike the feathered bastard from the heavens should it dare hit another screeching F note…

Tyres crunched across gravel.

Ah. Here he came. Romeo. Lover boy. Lothario…

Don Dickhead.

Now, social etiquette dictates one should never take pleasure in another's misery.

But surely there must be some exceptions to that stuffy old statute.

And a husband that couldn't keep his wandering cock in his bloody pants, no matter the hierarchy he hid behind, was undoubtedly an exception to that outdated outlook.

For it wasn't “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” it was“ Hell has no hiding place from a wife's wrath”

Everybody seated? Lovely. Showtime…

“ Mrs Shelby?” Tommy’s immediate demand to know your whereabouts the moment he crossed the foyer threshold was met dutifully by Frances, already braced for bedlam.

“ Drawing room, sir” she informed him smoothly, not a single crack in her professional composure to prepare your husband for the psychological warfare awaiting him. “ Reading”

“ Right. Good. That's…good” Each word settled slowly across Tommy’s tongue as his sharp blues swept across his stately home.

Everything looked…normal. Suspiciously normal.

And as he stalked through the halls of Arrow House, Tommy found himself taking inventory, head snapping toward each passing room as though expecting to discover another act of your knife-wielding artistry embedded somewhere in the wallpaper.

But then he found you. Sat elegantly in the bay window, book in hand, looking every inch the wife of a great house should look.

Poised. Perfected. Positively beautiful.

Fuck sake.

“ I'm back” he announced unnecessarily, stepping further into the room. And dear God, it took every ounce of restraint within you not to fire back with, "Welcome home, you philandering fuckboy".

Alas, you kept your tongue firmly behind your teeth. There was no sense in spoiling the surprise. Giving him a heads-up.

So, Instead, you merely turned the page of your book with graceful indifference and asked…

“ How was London?”

London. Ah. There It was.

But no, you bastard, there it wasn't.

Because if Tommy was expecting righteous fury and blazing indignation the moment the city left your lips, he was about to be sorely disappointed.

For you simply sat there, waiting patiently for your husband’s carefully worded response like the placated wife he so desperately wanted you to be.

“ Productive” he drawled, shouldering the wall beside you, eyes drifting down to the book in your hands, your calm composure seemingly enough to make the poor fool prematurely believe you’d finally made peace with his whoring escapades beyond the county lines of Warwickshire.

“ Security hired. Contracts signed. Money made” Tommy bundled his London trip into a tidy collection of carefully rationed words as he wandered toward what was, arguably, his most prized possession.

Whiskey.

“ And…one or two, discrete encounters” he added casually over his shoulder, hand hovering above the crystal decanter as he waited. Watched. Wanting a reaction.

The bastard.

But you gave him nothing.

Nada. Niets. One restrained breath away from saying " Auf wiedersehen, arsehole", as Tommy poured himself a generous measure.

And now? Now you were the one waiting. Watching. Wanting a reaction.

With the confidence of a king, Tommy tossed back the liquor, waiting for the familiar burn. For the spice. The oak. The woody warmth. Those expensive dried notes earned through age. Only for one particular fruit to overwhelm his tastebuds instead.

Apple.

…Yep.

Thomas Shelby had just necked one hearty measure of apple juice like an over-sugared thirsty toddler.

You wicked witch, you.

Stood silent, still as a statue, your husband cleared his throat as the crystal tumbler turned slowly between his fingers, finally catching up to why your composure had been so unnervingly calm.

Why his wife, his bloody wife, was currently boring holes into the back of his head with barely contained glee.

You little fucking madame.

“ Interesting blend” Tommy murmured at last, brows furrowing in contemplation like a man conducting a serious evaluation rather than discovering his taste buds had just been assaulted by fruit juice.

“ Subtle notes of…”

“ Apple?” you suggested sweetly from the bay window, basking in your petty triumph as Tommy lowered the glass onto the table with one slow, ominous clink.

“ Mm” he turned to face you with a look in his eyes that strongly suggested he was debating whether murder was an acceptable activity within the first month of marriage. “Very subtle, darling”

“ Frances!” Tommy suddenly barked, already striding toward the drawing room door. “I want every decanter in every room of this house changed to my wife's preferences”

“ Oh, Tommy!” You sprang gracefully to your feet, positively radiant as you intercepted him halfway across the room, playing your role as the perfect wife with alarming commitment.

“ I just knew you'd love it” you were all bright smiles and girlish delight. Everything you were not but would be to drive your husband clean to madness through sheer suffocating sweetness.

“ Didn't I say it, Frances? Didn't I say that…”

“I…” you giggled, a playful tap of your finger to the center of his chest as you punctuated each point playfully home.

“ Know…”

Another tap.

“ My…”

And another.

“ Husband”

“ You did, Ma'am” Frances confirmed as she stepped fully into the room, where she found Thomas Shelby standing perfectly still, slowly realising that his wife left entirely unsupervised was an exceptionally dangerous thing.

“ And I also took the liberty to change every decanter you own from here to your offices in Birmingham” you revealed, fixing the knot of his tie with wifely devotion.

“ How…thoughtful” Tommy murmured, capturing your hand before it could fall, pressing it against his chest as his thumb dragged across your knuckles.

“ Of course, my love. What kind of wife would that make me if I didn't tend to my husband?” you mused, eyes wide with adoration, hand locked under his no matter how many failed attempts you made to dislodge it.

“ A bad one” his voice dropped low, with an edge that suggested you were no angelic bride, but in fact a fallen one, sent down to torment him ‘till the end of time.

“A. Very. Bad. Wife”

“ Mmm” you hummed.

“ Mmm” he echoed.

And as the pair of you stood there locked in a smiling little war of power, pettiness, and phony politeness, Frances watched on with the dreadful understanding that your campaign to corrupt your husband's daily routine had only just begun.

One week had passed. Seven long, dreary days.

No, no, no. Let’s make it sound suitably dramatic for the brooding bastard currently sat in his study waiting for Arthur to smuggle him whiskey before he lost what remained of his sanity.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours had passed since Plan Petty began.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours of uncertainty. Of compromised security. Of misinformation, surveillance, dietary warfare, and repeated threats against his quality of life.

Arrow House had been breached.

Thomas Michael Shelby was under attack!

Dramatic enough for you, Don Dickhead?

Now. Moving on…

“ Knock, knock” Arthur announced himself with a heavy rasp of his knuckles against Tommy’s office door, contraband hidden between his Henley and waistband like a man smuggling medicine across enemy lines.

But the moment he pushed the door open, the gangly gangster stopped short.

There, hanging proudly from the brass handle by a bright red ribbon, sat a gold bell and the beginning of an amused smirk slithered on Arthur’s lips.

“Christmas threw up in here too then?” he grinned, swaggering inside as his eyes landed on Tommy looking worse for wear, slumped deep in his leather chair. “ Saw the tree out front. Hard not to”

“Whiskey” your husband rasped before Arthur had shut the door behind him. Before explanations, before dignity, before the deeply personal story behind that fucking bell currently hanging from his office handle even left his lips.

“Easy, Tom. It’s not apple juice” Arthur, entirely unable to help himself grinned as Tommy grabbed the bottle, gulping whiskey back like a man recovering from seven days of survival in the desert.

“ That bell…” Tommy muttered, bottle half gone and now pointed accusingly toward the innocent little decoration like it alone was responsible for the collapse of peace within Arrow House.

“I'll tell you all about that fucking bell, Arthur”...

Two days had passed since you sabotaged Tommy’s whiskey with Granny Smith’s finest. And as November bled into December, so too did Christmas bleed into Arrow House.

“Mr Shelby”

“Afternoon, Mr Shelby”

Came a chorus of careful greetings from a handful of workmen as the gangster's boots hit gravel, stepping out his Bentley, cranky, and completely unaware of the chaos you'd inflicted inside.

But as more hired men filed out through the front doors carrying saws, logs, and, was that a bloody axe?, Tommy’s steps slowed.

“Move” The order came clipped, cold enough to compete against a West Midlands winter as he shoved through the foyer doors, stopping dead at the sight of not a reasonably sized Christmas tree. No. But a forty-foot fucking fir.

His fir.

The one he’d planted strategically years ago to block prying neighbours from peering into Shelby business and the occasional unfortunate soul needing discreet burial somewhere in the surrounding woods.

“Husband!” You spun toward him brightly, abandoning the garland in your hands as Tommy stood there looking momentarily drained of all remaining life force.

“Wife” he quietly muttered, eyes fixed on the colossal festive monstrosity now occupying his foyer.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” you beamed as Tommy’s gaze slowly travelled from trunk to star, the top brushing a mere inch beneath the ceiling.

“Wonderful doesn’t quite do it justice, darling” he murmured, eyes dragging down toward the deeply satisfied smirk sitting smug upon your lips. Daring him to react.

But a Christmas tree would not break Thomas Shelby.

He’d survived Verdun. The Somme.

He could survive festive decor.

“You know what, sweetheart…” Tommy drawled slowly, capturing your chin between his fingers, thumb brushing your cheek as his steel blues turned molten with restrained vengeance.

“I love it”

“So much so…” he continued, releasing you as he stepped back toward the hallway.“ That I want every room in Arrow House decorated with a Christmas tree”

“Frances!” he barked. Again.

“Turn this place into a winter wonderland befitting my wife’s festive enthusiasm” he called out, only to stop mid-stride outside his study. Because right there, hanging from the brass door handle, tied carefully with a bright red ribbon, sat a bell.

Eyes closing, slowly, painfully, for the first time in his adult life, Thomas Shelby silently prayed to Saint Nicholas for strength as he pushed the door open, bracing himself for a…

Jingle.

“...Fuck”

For a long moment, only silence occupied Tommy’s study as he finished recounting the story with another swig of whiskey. Until Arthur, of course, and without mercy, broke into helpless laughter.

“ Christ, Tom” he snorted through one final chest-deep chuckle, glancing across at the increasingly aggravated gangster. “ It's just a bloody bell, brother”

“ It's not just a bell” Tommy shot back, slumping deeper into his chair as he slipped a cigarette between his lips, irritation working hard into his jaw.

“ It's a form of surveillance”

“ Surveillance” Arthur echoed, and for one brief, beautiful second, genuinely considered the possibility that Tommy Shelby had finally lost his mind to Christmas.

“It jingles every time I come and go” Tommy gestured toward the doorway like a man presenting evidence in court as Arthur reached for the morning's newspaper, letting his brother rage against bells strung up by red ribbons. “Every. Single. Time”

“She knows where I am every second of the day, Arthur. Can't even take a piss without her being able to time it” Tommy muttered around his cigarette, eyes lifting heavenward in exhausted disbelief.

“ What the fuck, Tom?” Arthur suddenly frowned down at the paper in his hands, flipping the pages back and forth with growing confusion.

“ Oh, you'll enjoy this one, brother..."

Four days had passed since the great whiskey withholding. Two days since the Christmas carnage. And as Tommy strolled down to the dining room, he was on high alert.

“ Wife” he greeted, carefully, ever so carefully, as his eyes scanned for sabotage, hell with your adjustments to Arrow House he was half expecting to spend the morning disarming a bomb hidden in the butter bell.

“ Husband” you replied smoothly, sat poised and perfect as you stirred sugar into your tea while Tommy pulled back his preferred chair.

Everything appeared to be in order. Breakfast edible. Tea uncompromised. Paper precisely where it was supposed to be.

And for one dangerously brief moment, and when I say brief, I mean approximately one syllable into relaxing, Tommy allowed himself to settle into routine. Into ritual. Into the familiar comfort of unfolding his newspaper directly to the financial pages.

Fool.

Skipping past world affairs in favour of stocks, bonds, and percentages known almost entirely by memory, Tommy suddenly went very still. And very fucking quiet.

Eyes drifting slowly to you over the printed pages, he stiffened the paper in his hands as he cleared his throat.

“ Dear Aunt Edna. I'm writing to you in the hopes you could guide me through the peril I currently find myself in, regarding my womanising husband of three years…” Tommy read not the financial times, not the business column, but It's cursed replacement.

Aunt Edna the Agony Aunt of Aberdeen.

And somehow, it got worse. Because several entries had been curiously circled.

In red.

“ Dear Aunt Edna. I recently discovered my husband has a mistress and pet poodle living in Lancashire. The lying bastard spent our entire marriage claiming he was allergic to dogs… Whatever am I supposed to do?”

“ Dreadful” you sighed sympathetically, buttering your toast as though hearing such hardship for the first time.

But Tommy wasn't done…

“ Dear Aunt Edna. My husband of one month is a…” Tommy stopped, eyes sliding slowly to your lips moving silently across the table, mouthing the words ahead of him. “ Philandering fuckboy. I'm half tempted to commit the crime of castration. Would you consider this a reasonable form of retribution? P.S Currently sharpening the butter knife”.

“ Well…” Tommy murmured, folding the newspaper carefully in half as his jaw tightened.“ That was very informative. Can’t imagine where my business section disappeared to”

“ Frances!” he barked. For a third time that week.

“Tell the paperboy that from this day forth, I wish to receive Aunt Edna’s agony column with my breakfast every morning”

“ How wonderful that you’re broadening your reading habits, dear” you cooed brightly, cutting your toast in two with saintly innocence, while almost certain you heard Tommy mutter beneath his breath…

“ Wonderful. Just like my knife-wielding wife”

“ Christ…she's escalating” Arthur breathed, caught somewhere between admiration and the sudden horrifying realisation that Tommy Shelby may have finally met the one person capable of overthrowing him through sheer spite alone.

“...Hear that?” Tommy suddenly straightened in his chair, eyes narrowing toward the ceiling at the faint sound of creaking floorboards overhead.

“ She's plotting”

But Tommy’s paranoia would have to wait, because at that exact moment a fresh act of domestic pettiness arrived balanced upon a silver tray in Frances’ hands.

“ What in God's name is that?” Arthur's eyes widened at the translucent horror containing several suspended cherry tomatoes sat center stage upon Tommy's plate.

“ Jellied consommé, sir” Frances replied professionally, placing the dish down with a sympathetic smile as both Shelbys watched it wobble.

“ My doting wife has recently taken a keen interest in my health, Arthur” Tommy explained flatly around the cigarette hanging idle from the corner of his mouth, eyes fixed on the gelatinous abomination before him, he was certain somewhere, a Frenchman had invented the particular dish solely to personally punish him.

“ Thank you, Frances” the dismissal came calm, controlled, patiently waiting for the jingle of that bloody bell, before cracking the window open, and launching the monstrosity into the Marigolds.

“ She's trying to weaken me, Arthur” Tommy muttered, slumping back into his chair as he reached for the bottle. “Via hazardous French health foods”

“Ah, give over, Tom. She's just having a laugh…” Arthur offered absolutely no comfort whatsoever, glancing toward Tommy’s discarded lunch currently sliding into the flowerbeds below his window. “ At your expense, mind”

“A laugh? In France we would have gone over the wire into enemy territory for less” Tommy huffed a dry humourless sound, as he glanced out the window to see another member of your bloodline taking liberties.

Arney.

Wandering the grounds of Arrow House alongside the workmen, hands deep in his pockets, talking far too comfortably, far too at ease with men he paid to keep his estate secure.

Fuck. He was losing control of his own castle.

“ She's not the enemy, Tommy. She's your wife.

“She is the enemy” your husband's eyes snapped to his brother, irritation and indignation set hard in those icy blues.

“ Could just stop with the other women” Arthur offered with surprising practicality, despite being, well, Arthur. “Save yourself the trouble and take your wife instead”

“Huh. Like she'd even let me” The words came out too fast, too rough, too unguarded, like he remembered exactly how you’d felt beneath him. Exactly how he’d felt buried inside…

“ This is a business arrangement, Arthur” Tommy cut through the memory of you, legs wrapped around him as he crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with unnecessary force. “ Not personal”

“ And yet brother…you're taking it very personally”

Fuck.

You didn’t know how you ended up here.

Didn’t know why your feet had carried you toward Tommy’s room sometime in the middle of the night. Why you now sat perched on the edge of his bed, watching his body struggle beneath sleep, fighting the sound of shovels against the walls.

At least, that’s what you told yourself.

And with a gentle hand to your shoulder, that’s what I’m telling you too, dear. Keeping you steady before you come to your senses and bolt from his room.

Because despite the war waging between you both, you were not, nor would you ever be, the sort of woman who turned her head from suffering.

Not even his.

And Tommy Shelby, for all his brutality, all his arrogance, his cold control over every aspect of your life…

Was suffering.

You didn’t wake him. Didn’t demand to know what haunted him deeply enough to drag him back beneath the earth night after night. Didn’t belittle him into manning up, soldiering on, swallowing it down like so many expected men to do.

You simply reached for his wrist. Gentle fingers pressing lightly against the frantic pulse beating beneath his skin.

And with the patience of someone who had long ago learned what grief could do to a person, your thumb softly circled against him, steadying his heartbeat back down to a gentle thrum until he settled back into sleep.

He didn’t wake. You didn’t stay.

But the next morning, when Tommy surfaced from dreams spent buried underground, lungs full of dirt, ghosts clawing at his throat, mud swallowing every desperate breath, he felt the phantom touch of something else.

A womans touch.

His wife's touch.

And when the time came for him to leave like he'd done so many mornings before, body turning back to brush a lock of hair from your sleeping face, he left you a folded note.

Signed not T. Not T.S.

But simply…

Tommy.

*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🖤*

[Next Part] coming soon!

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And where exactly does one draw enemy lines once love, resentment and history begin merging into one another?

Where exactly had connections soured into something barely passing as polite civility?

And where exactly was the man whose rigid rules oversaw a hundred and one men?

Where was your Uncle Richard?

There. Right there.

Up in the rafters at twenty seven, Cape Hill, Smethwick, Birmingham. Stood stoic and still, looking down at one man out of a hundred and one.

Arney.

Your father.

Brothers by law only. Your uncle watched the ease Arney carried himself with, watched charm slip effortlessly into conversation around the huddle of men below.

His men. His workers. Workers that should be minding machinery. A brother-in-law that should be minding his own business.

And above them all stood an old soldier dressed in a three-piece suit, a uniform never truly hung up and forgotten, merely stitched into something different. Something socially acceptable.

And he was watching.

Now, I could make a joke here. One that’d earn a giggle, a gasp from the old biddies, set their tongues a’wagging.

Something along the lines of,

A military man, an Englishman and a Scotsman all walk into a bar…

But with Richie stood there looking the fun sponge to every possible gag I could ever make, we should, for the sake of paying attention, follow that unwavering stare of his instead.

Because that, dear reader, is where every question and every answer you wish to know begins.

Dad knew he was watching.

Shit.

Actually, Arney didn’t know he was being watched. He felt it. A pressure, a pull. Perhaps even a fucking promise. One that made your father stop mid-sentence, glance over his shoulder, and find his brother-in-law staring down at him from his watchtower, with a different kind of ease, one that quietly said…

Finish up and follow.

Your uncle turned without a word and disappeared back into his office, fully expecting Arney to comply with the silent command that had just come down the line.

Jaw working, your father's head swung back around, face relaxing into a boneless smile as he felt the weight of being measured for his mettle beneath the hardened eyes of the Scotsmen.

“ Duty calls” Arney slipped back into that effortless ease to mask the irritation, the frustration of being ordered about by a man who held no authority over him beyond a claim through blood.

“ See that it does” the Scotsman murmured lowly, all Govan docks and Glasgow grit as he rolled a tightly coiled cigarette between the calloused pads of his thumb and forefinger.

Hands slipping into the pits of his trouser pockets, your father gave a slow nod, a subtle jerk of his chin, before swivelling on his Sanders Derbys, heading up the stairs. Up into the rafters.

“ Richie” your father announced himself through familiarity as he slinked into your uncle’s office, settling into the leather chair opposite his desk.

But Richard didn’t sit, didn’t respond. Didn’t so much as look Arney’s way.

He stood exactly where he had before, still as stone beside the glass window, eyes sweeping over his business, his brewery, and every bastard under his pay until they settled once more on your father’s new friend below.

“ We leave in five” he finally spoke, all calm control, as Arney's eyes followed his brother-in-law’s silent scanning, the merciless sorting through indispensable to dispensable.

“ Right, right…” your father charmed away your uncle’s rigidness, easing deeper into the curve of the leather chair, legs crossing loose as his hand slipped into his pocket for a cigarette.

“ Richie. I was thinking…the deliveries, east into Warwickshire…”

“ Thomas Shelby's solliciter is overseeing the deeds” your uncle cut clean across your father’s attempted offering of advice, eyes fixed on the Glasgow-born worker hauling a barrel of whiskey onto his shoulder below.

“ Right…” your father murmured through a cloud of smoke, idle fingers finding the hand-stitched tailoring of his trouser pocket, and the King George penny tucked deep within.

“ The route into the east though, I was…”

“ We're leaving” Your uncle finally turned, letting the command settle into silence as he stood there watching your father, watching the man who spoke to his workers like he already had an understanding with them.

For a long beat, the brothers bound only by law stared each other down. Arney’s lower gaze strained beneath the unwavering eyes of your uncle holding him firmly in place, as a very different understanding began to seep through the civility between them.

Richie didn’t trust his workers. History had taught him not to trust your father. And he sure as hell didn’t trust himself to stand down from the watch long enough to finally hang that uniform up for good.

The retired soldier hadn’t known a day’s rest since before the war. And as control and composure became the rhythm of his life, he expected every man to fall in line beneath his command.

“ On your feet, Arney”

“ Move”

Mr Paisley was a fumbling sort of man, whether by personality or practice dealing with demanding gangsters, one could never truly tell.

But as he laid out the deeds to Arrow House before you, that shaky hand of his steadied just enough to pass you his silver-plated pen beneath a set of unwavering blues.

“ On the dotted line, Mrs Shelby” he guided your gaze beside Tommy’s scrawled signature, the very bastard in question looming over you like a storm cloud moments from raining on your parade.

That magnificent, spectacular, petty parade of yours, if I do say so myself. One momentarily stalled to sign your name onto Arrow House.

“ What are the terms again?” You queried, a completely justifiable question that was absolutely, irrefutably not asked solely for the purpose of winding the wanker up for a second time in the space of five minutes.

“ If I keel over first…” Tommy murmured, slipping a cigarette between his lips, cupping the flame, the words practically dragging themselves out through a puff of smoke as he took in another heavy lungful. “You get Arrow House”

“ Ah. Yes. Then I look forward to your demise, husband” you replied cheerfully, back straightening as the pen scratched your name into the deeds while a very nervous-looking Mr Paisley glanced between you both with what should’ve passed as laughter, but came out rather squeaky instead.

“ Thank you, wife” Tommy replied just as merrily, flicking ash onto the pristine floor like some bloody hooligan violating his own house rules. “God knows I could do with five minutes peace”

What a simply splendid, premeditated murdering married couple you two made.

Move over Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The Shelbys were making marital executions a recreational pastime.

“ All seems to be in order, Mr Shelby. I'll have my secretary send copies to your London office for your review on Thursday”

Woah. Hang about. What was that? London, Thursday.

Was the roaming Romeo about to fuck off for yet another bout of fuckery in Fulham?

Yes he was. Yes he absolutely bloody was.

Bastard.

“ London” the capital left your lips too quietly to be a question, too precise to sound like a wife probing for answers.

“ London for business” Tommy clarified...twice “Business”

Once because he wasn't wrong. And a second time, because despite the warring rhythm you’d found with one another, despite the gentle touch you’d once pressed to his pulse to ease him through troubled sleep, he needed the reminder.

Needed you to remember that your union, your marriage, was still a matter of…business.

Your chair instantly scraped back.

“ Leave. Now” Tommy’s voice came out low and absolute, head snapping toward the solicitor as you slowly rose to your feet.

The rest would have to wait. Your uncle’s meticulous eye over the remaining papers now suspended for another day because Tommy needed Mr Paisley out of Arrow House before Mrs Shelby decided poised perfection in front of company was a standard belonging to a past and rapidly pivoting personality.

“ London” you murmured a second time, almost amused. Almost in awe at the audacity of your harloting husband if it wasn’t for the sharpened edge beneath the word as your heels struck marble out in the foyer where an audience awaited.

John and Arthur.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

Tommy needed to contain this before chaos truly ensued. Before you deemed tampered whiskey, Christmas carnage and passive-aggressive agony aunts unworthy of your wrath.

And more importantly, before the two amused idiots he called brothers decided this was one for the Shelby history books.

“ London” the word seemed to climb an octave higher toward one man’s long-awaited oblivion as you spun on your heel, stopped, then marched away. Whiplashing Tommy straight into following you through the foyer and out into the gardens.

“ Arthur. John. Leave” Tommy ordered, though both brothers were already half a step behind him while his eyes stayed fixed firmly on your swaying hips, your rigid spine cutting across the gardens.

“ Nah. Think we'll stay, brother” Arthur’s wolfish grin only worsened matters, forcing Tommy to choose between throttling one of his bastard brothers or chasing after his brazenly beautiful wife currently storming across his pristinely cut lawn in heels.

What an odd little fella. Somebody fetch the lawn mower and give this man a coronary with a two-centimetre-too-short turf.

“Oi. Not another step” Tommy’s voice dropped low, fingers lifting with a cigarette trapped between them like he was barking orders at one of his men instead of his maddening wife whose hand had just curled around a potted marigold.

“ You wanna have it out, eh?” Tommy shifted his weight onto one foot, hand pausing midair as his eyes dropped to the threat of being pelted with a ceramic flowerpot.

“ Come on then, wife. Let's have it out, then” he shoved the cigarette between his lips, muttering through smoke as he shrugged off his jacket, rolling his sleeves like he was about to wrestle you beneath the wisteria.

“ Yeh…I dunno about this, brother. She's looking proper pissed off” John observed from where he’d slouched against the brick wall while Arthur smoothed down his moustache, ready to make a wager on the war currently unfolding in the back garden of a Warwickshire house.

“ Tenner says she's lobs at it him” the eldest Shelby held out his palm, ready to secure both bet and his next brandy down the pub.

“ Done” John shook on it, as both brothers watched your knuckles whiten around the terracotta pot.

“ You bastard, leching little lordling with the emotional depth of a concussed pigeon!” you shouted across the lawn, the colourful and imaginative insult leaving Arthur and John staring on in pure delight.

Well.

You’d finally cracked, dear. Poise and perfection be damned. Might as well commit to it now.

And you did. Rather dramatically, in fact, when the flowerpot went sailing through the air straight at Tommy’s head, he ducked with considerably more finesse than you’d managed upon first launch.

“ You're gonna regret that” Tommy stalked forward, voice dropping low enough to dare you into escalating beyond the petty warfare of the past few weeks.

“ Yeh. Already do…” your voice tightened. Eyes tightened. That wandering bloody hand of yours tightened too around, you guessed it, another fucking flowerpot.

Christ.

“ Because I missed!” you hurled back as the second pot went soaring across the gardens, narrowly missing all three Shelby brothers when they collectively hit the ground.

“We're under fire, men!” Arthur shrilled with barely contained amusement as decades-old training kicked in, years spent fighting in France nothing compared to one furious female with a penchant for launching flowerpots.

“ Take cover, comrades! She's got a swing on her!” John barked through a grin, flipping the garden table onto its side to shield himself and his fellow soldiers from the incoming shrubbery.

“ Enough!” Tommy shot to his feet behind the garden table now repurposed into trench cover, foolish enough to believe his oh-so-scary presence might bring a ceasefire to the chaos.

And what did he get for his troubles?

Yep.

Another flowerpot.

“ Christ woman!” he bellowed around the cigarette, somehow still clinging on for dear life at the corner of his lips as he ducked back down.

“ Her uncle's gonna turn up any minute, and see I can't handle my own fucking wife. I need a plan” Tommy muttered darkly, squinting through the slats of wood to see his beautiful and absolutely bloody mental wife waiting patiently for one of them to surrender her husband for the greater good.

“ Thank fuck. We need reinforcements. The enemy is advancing” Arthur whispered with the excitement of a man having the time of his life while beside him John had entirely abandoned combat readiness in favour of unapologetic laughter.

“I’m gonna write this in me memoirs” John announced between wheezes, his future book bound to bankrupt Tommy when he'd buy every copy to save his bloodline's reputation.

“Battle Amongst The Buttercups. The Great War Of Warwickshire”

“ Terror comes in flying terracotta. The West Midlands War Over One Wanker's Wandering Cock” Arthur immediately supplied with a snort of laughter, as Tommy slowly turned to stare at both brothers like he was genuinely considering which one to sacrifice first in exchange for safe passage across the lawn.

“ Shut up. The pair of you”

“ Darling...love” Tommy attempted affection, only to make an absolute cock-up of it when he followed with…

“ How about you just calm down, eh?”

Idiot. Absolute idiot.

There exists at least one singular, universal phrase known to mankind that should never, under any circumstance, be uttered in the presence of an already furious woman when your odds of castration are looking increasingly favourable.

And that is, calm down.

Where's that butter knife?

“ What did you just say?” Your eyes narrowed on the garden table, focus sharpening into something dangerous, already armed with more ammunition when steady, unhurried boots stepped into the warzone.

Richie.

Uncle Richie.

Too blinded by the blaze of fury aimed at your bastard of a husband, you were spared the full weight of your uncle’s stare, watching you systematically fall short of every lesson he had ever drilled into you, as you lost yourself to emotion in real time.

“ Put it down” Your uncle’s voice carried across the lawn, calm, controlled. Composure over chaos. Always.

Because where Tommy provoked emotion, your uncle condemned it. And as you turned your head to find him standing still and unyielding at the edge of the garden, your father stood in his shadow, the flowerpot suddenly slipped from your fingers.

Everything went silent.

Slowly rising to his feet, Tommy watched his furious, fire-eyed wife settle back into herself, into that poised perfection he had begun to resent.

That wasn't a composure born of you. It was one that had been taught and maintained. A reflection of the man Tommy himself had learned to become as the version that felt too much, hurt too much, could never afford to be seen.

“ Go inside, and gather yourself” your uncle ordered as Tommy’s hand lifted, as if to interrupt, to say something, to tell him to let his wife breathe, let her feel, when he himself had spent years suffocating under the same form of survival.

But he didn’t. Instead, he stood in the wreckage of your retribution and realised Richie had kept you reserved for a reason.

And for the first time, he asked himself the question he hadn’t thought to ask before…

Just what had his wife survived?

Here we are again.

Look, I won't sugarcoat it for you, darling, but your husband was currently mid-fuck.

Back in Soho, with a Soho girl, having a Soho shag.

Six days had passed since war broke out in your Warwickshire garden, when flowerpots became a form of artillery, where composure finally cracked under pressure.

And now Tommy was back in London for business. Just like he said. Just like he warned you.

Only the release he’d come for was turning out to be more of a chore than a relief.

“ Yes, Mr Shelby” she moaned, each thrust met with rehearsed perfection.

“ Quiet” Tommy snapped, voice clipped, irritation cutting through as her performance became increasingly unbearable.

And don’t doubt yourself, dear. Because it wasn’t lost on him. And it won’t be lost on you either.

For your wedding night, a mere month ago, still echoed in his head. Only then, the sound hadn’t annoyed him. It had undone him. Made him feel something beyond what was supposed to be a marriage of means.

“ Enough” he ordered as he looked down at her properly now. Wrong hair. Wrong eyes. Wrong body. Just fucking…wrong.

With a final thrust he finished, feeling as unsatisfied as he did when he began.

How long was he going to keep doing this?

Proving a point? That he didn’t care?

That he wasn’t affected? That the day he met you in his office, and you gave him nothing, was the day he gave you everything.

“ Get out. Get out now”

As the door to his hotel room shut, Tommy sat in silence and let himself think of Arrow House. Of his wife. Of his wedding night. Keeping the memory untouched now that he was alone with it.

But back in Warwickshire, you sat in the darkened hush of the grand estate, staring out across the grounds, knowing your husband was somewhere in London making a mockery of your marriage under the convenient guise of business.

Petty didn't cover it anymore. You felt vengeful. A woman pushed too far, too long, under one house and one man’s rules.

And what came next would be your grand finale.

God help Thomas Shelby.

Well.

No one was going to stop you.

Not even Cupid, perched somewhere up in whatever heathen heaven he presided over, watching romance like it was sport.

This was either masterful. Or complete madness.

And as Polly, Arthur, John and Finn stood in the foyer of Arrow House with more than forty guests and their plus-ones behind them, none of them looked particularly inclined to be the ones to intervene either.

“ Tommy's gonna lose the plot when he walks through that door, Pol” Arthur murmured low over his whiskey tumbler, eyes sweeping across the preparations unfolding around him while MP’s, aristocrats, businessmen and unsuspecting guests mingled beneath the chandeliers.

“ Serves him fucking right” Finn muttered before Polly could answer, earning himself a sharp clip on the back of his skull from his older brother John.

“ Bitter much, Finn? John hissed quietly, firm hand locking around the nape of his younger brother’s neck before he could slip away from the consequences of his own stupid mouth. “ You’ve been encouraging her all bloody day, you little shit”

“ What?” Finn shrugged him off with barely contained resentment, that Tommy had wed and bedded you before he even managed a second date.

“ Fucks off to London every other week. Should have been me to take her home that day”

That landed. And not a single Shelby missed it.

“ Don't let Tommy hear you say that” Arthur warned, voice lowering, all amusement gone as he fixed Finn's envious eye with a steady look.

“ Why because it's true? He don't even like her”

Ah. There it was.

The dangerous thing about youth and younger brothers that thought they knew the way of the world.

Because with age comes understanding. And the mistake boys like Finn made, and would soon come to learn was, silence did not mean absence.

“ That what you think, eh?” Arthur muttered, frustration with his thick-headed brother bleeding through every irritated inch of him.

“ He just added her name to the deed of this house, you prat”

“ Arthurs not wrong” Polly cut in over her wine glass of Bordeaux red. “ Keep that to yourself. Last thing we need is a battle between brothers over a woman” 

“Where is the bloody woman?” John muttered, brow furrowing as his eyes swept the foyer searching for his serpentine sister-in-law who'd slipped away without warning.

“ Standing with the best view in the house” Polly smirked, as her eyes lifted. Then Arthur’s. Then John’s. And lastly Finn’s.

All of them looking up to find not some simpering little wife beaten down by a bastard determined to call marriage business, but a Queen.

And she was about to teach the King a very valuable lesson.

Happy wife.

Happy life.

Wheels crunched on gravel. The lights dimmed.

A car door slammed. Voices quietened.

Boots marched up the stone steps. Bodies vanished.

The front door swung open and Tommy demanded…

“Frances? My wife?”

And the room erupted.

“SUPRISE!”

The band instantly kicked in. Streamers flew. Confetti rained down over him as guests surged forward offering handshakes, congratulations and cheerful wishes of…

Happy birthday.

Yep. That’s right.

Thomas Shelby, gangster, wartime relic, Member of Parliament, had just walked into his very own surprise birthday party.

Two months too early.

This was, quite possibly, Tommy's very definition of hell. A living nightmare where he now found himself trapped into politeness, forced to mingle well into the early hours without hunting down and throttling his fucking wife.

And just where was his dear wife?

Tommy’s gaze swept sharply across the sea of bodies as he suffered through half-hearted handshakes from every bastard in Birmingham who’d arrived for the free…

Was that Fabergé caviar?

The low growl barely escaped him before his eyes snapped upward toward the second-floor landing.

Found you. 

And there you stood. A Queen presiding over her court looking utterly devastating, with a wicked smirk ghosting the corner of your lips as you slowly raised your glass of Dom Pérignon toward Don Dickhead himself.

You little fucking…

“ Easy, birthday boy” Arthur moved in quickly before Tommy took it upon himself to empty the house of everyone and everything except him and his wife.

“ I’m going to murder her, Arthur” Tommy muttered, eyes locked on the upper floor as his brother shoved a glass of whiskey into his hands before they found your throat. 

“ Yeh, well, it's gonna have to wait. Birthday cakes coming” 

And just like that, one enormous frosted monstrosity appeared as the guests gasped in awe at the lavish rosettes and iced ruffles. 

Someone had clearly ransacked her husband's bank account. 

Well done, darling. Hit him where it hurts. 

“ Speech! Speech!” Some overfed toff called out across the room, urging Tommy to address his guests, as your husband's focus stayed entirely on you and your descent down the stairs.   

“ Speech…” Tommy muttered absently, sharp eyes sweeping, losing your circling prowl somewhere in the hoard of bodies. 

“ My wife? Someone find my wife” the order came down, demanding you be found. For if he couldn’t pull you out of your game, then he'd drag you into his.

The crowd’s heads turned, bobbing as they searched for the missing member of their celebration, when, like something out of a gunslinging western, you emerged through the shifting bodies of party goers. 

“ Ah. There she is. My wife” Tommy's voice dropped low and gravelled, eyes narrowing in on your slow approach as his hand stretched out for you. 

“Come here darling. Come stand beside your, husband” 

Barely within an inch of him, his hand come around your back, clamping over your waist as he anchored you into his side. 

“ Thank you all for coming to my surprise birthday party” Tommy addressed the room, calm, controlled composure firmly in place, and a subtle death grip around your waist.

You weren't going anywhere. Not tonight. 

He was going to make sure you endured this the same way you’d forced him to endure the whole fucking thing.

“ Of course, I'd like to express my gratitude to my family for helping facilitate this celebration” Tommy continued, gaze cutting across the room one by one to Arthur, John, Polly and Finn. Each of them now considered complicit in the ambush.

“ And finally…i’d like to thank my wife” his eyes dropped to you, held captive by a clamp to your waist as you sipped calmly on a glass of champers. “ Who went out of her way to make this day special for me”

“ You shouldn't have. Really” he gazed down at you, with marital bliss in his eyes…

No. Forgive me. I meant… 

“... with murder in his eyes” 

“ Make a wish! A wish!” 

A chorus of birthday hecklers rang out as the colossal sized cake was wheeled into view. 

Hauling you in with him, Tommy held you tight, bending over to blow out his candles, as you murmured quietly through the last tendrils of smoke…

“ What did you wish for, darling? Another woman to warm your bed?” 

“ No. For you to behave” 

“ Mmm” you hummed fondly, as you locked eyes in a lovers gaze to every else but Tommy's family, who watched in silence as the last flicker of flame died down, all of them aware they were standing on the edge of something none of them could stop.

Your grand finale.

More mingling. More monotoned conversations about money and motorcars. Tommy endured every last bit of drivel these dandies considered interesting, all while his eyes tracked your every movement through the room.

 “ Enjoying yourself, wife?” The voice came low behind you, hand sweeping around your stomach as he pressed into your back, anchoring you in place at the grand foyer window overlooking Arrow House’ grounds. 

Waiting. Patiently waiting. 

“ Having the time of my life, husband” you murmured, laced thick with enough sarcasm to poison the rest of his year into January. 

“ Now, listen…” Tommy's voice dropped an octave, grip tightening at your hip as he leaned in, chin settling on your shoulder, breath warm against your ear.

“ When everyone leaves. You and I are going to have a civilised conversation about…” 

The words were cut short. Not because of you. Not because of some of eager toff. But because out in the garden came a whizz. Then a crack. Then one mighty fucking bang. 

Fireworks. You'd brought fireworks. 

Good god, girl. 

The room surged forward to the windows in a wave of gasps and cheers as the brightly coloured display lit up Arrow House in all its glory, while the gangster behind you froze into something very unfestive.

 “ How much?” Tommy muttered, one breath away from a growl as he watched his money go up in flames.

“ Oh I forget. Lost count after the third nought” you lightly mused, tilting your head in thoughtful reflection. Or what passed as it, that was. 

“ Look, darling! There goes another hundred” you gasped in delight as another rocket tore into the sky. 

“ Right. That's enough” Tommy turned you sharply in his grip, reaching to put an end to the spectacle when you stopped him mid-pivot. 

“ Wait. Wait…the grand finale” 

And there it was, in all its horror.

Yours and Tommy’s names, lit up in an obscene heart-shaped catastrophe of sparklers and smoke, an arrow punched straight through the centre like Cupid himself had taken poor aim in a drunken fit of enthusiasm.

Well done, dear. You'd made the chubby little cherub very proud.  

“ Look…” you cooed over the sparkling spectacle of pinwheels and jumping jacks currently making a mess of his pristine lawn.“ We're so in love” 

“ When everyone leaves. You'll have nowhere to hide from the conversation we're going to have about the rules of this house and your role as my wife” Tommy drawled low against your neck, spinning you with him to face the room. 

“ Thank you for coming, everyone” he addressed the guests smoothly, charm slipping back over him like his freshly tailored suit from Savile Row. 

“But it's been a long evening. And we're newlyweds” The statement was suggestive enough to earn a few chuckles from politicians, businessmen and the country bumpkins too dazzled by fireworks and free whiskey as they collected their coats and gloves.  

“ Arthur, see everyone safely out. Now” 

“ Tommy, don't do anything stupid” the eldest Shelby muttered quietly, sensing the streak of madness in his brother after an evening of his wife's warfare. 

As the last guest filtered out and the front door of Arrow House slammed shut behind them, only you and Tommy remained amongst the wreckage of your Warwickshire home.

“ I’m going to bed” 

“ You stay right there, Mrs Shelby” Tommy turned toward you, shoulders rigid, stance immovable beneath the weight of a conversation long overdue.

“ You knew the terms. You walked down that aisle knowing every one of them. And yet, I've spent the last week being punished for something you already understood” Tommy stalked closer, eyes hardening into those of a husband depleted of patience. 

“ This…” his hand cut between you both, to the wreckage of his mansion, his marriage, the entire month of warfare waged beneath his roof.

“ Is a temper tantrum over a business arrangement, you agreed to” 

“ No” your voice cracked despite your scrambling attempts to keep your composure. 

“My hand was forced to keep your business running. To stop scandal stripping you of everything you’ve worked for while I drew the short straw”

“And now I’m supposed to smile sweetly while my husband disappears to London every other week to warm someone else’s bed while I sit here like a footnote in your fucking ledger?” your chest heaved, heart thundered behind your ribs as you stared him down across the marble foyer floors. 

“ Short straw?” Tommy scoffed a laugh, mocking in every way that made your back  straighten like steel. 

“ You have everything you could ever wish for. And still, it's not enough for Mrs Thomas Shelby, is it?” 

“ I didn't wish for a husband that beds women on a bi-weekly fucking rota!” you hurled across the room, wild-eyed and without restraint as fury licked up your spine. 

“ Well that's what you fucking got! That's what I am!” Tommy roared, marching toward you hard enough steps to shake the four walls of your home. 

“ I’m the man that pays for everything. The houses, whores…

wives!” 

The last word hit harder than the rest. Not because he meant to say it. But because somewhere in the midst of his anger, Tommy Shelby had stopped sounding like a businessman trying to defend an arrangement, and started sounding like a husband furious his wife was hurt by him at all.

Wives. One among three.

The last in line on a list of women Tommy had paid parts of himself to in various ways.

But in what way had he paid for you? 

How do you tally up and slap a prize tag on a moment? A split-second decision to save someone from a snowstorm. From scandal. From ruin.

How much of a man’s life should that cost him?

“That's what I am to you? You stepped forward, eyes searching for something, anything, that would tell you otherwise. 

“Something you paid for? 

Another step. 

“One out of three?”  

“ This is a business arrangement” 

His finger came up with a warning.  

“ Third prize?”  

“ You agreed to this” 

His jaw tightened.

“ Third in line, Tommy?” 

A final breach into his space, and your husband snapped. 

“ You're not third anything!” his thundering voice ripped through the room, eyes wild, body heaving as his hands held you in place.

“ You're my fucking wife!” 

And there it was. A claim as clear as bloody day. Not business, not an arrangement, not the terms and rules he repeated to himself so he could sleep at night. But…

His wife.  

*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🖤*

[Next Part] coming soon!

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And where exactly does one draw enemy lines once love, resentment and history begin merging into one another?

Where exactly had connections soured into something barely passing as polite civility?

And where exactly was the man whose rigid rules oversaw a hundred and one men?

Where was your Uncle Richard?

There. Right there.

Up in the rafters at twenty seven, Cape Hill, Smethwick, Birmingham. Stood stoic and still, looking down at one man out of a hundred and one.

Arney.

Your father.

Brothers by law only. Your uncle watched the ease Arney carried himself with, watched charm slip effortlessly into conversation around the huddle of men below.

His men. His workers. Workers that should be minding machinery. A brother-in-law that should be minding his own business.

And above them all stood an old soldier dressed in a three-piece suit, a uniform never truly hung up and forgotten, merely stitched into something different. Something socially acceptable.

And he was watching.

Now, I could make a joke here. One that’d earn a giggle, a gasp from the old biddies, set their tongues a’wagging.

Something along the lines of,

A military man, an Englishman and a Scotsman all walk into a bar…

But with Richie stood there looking the fun sponge to every possible gag I could ever make, we should, for the sake of paying attention, follow that unwavering stare of his instead.

Because that, dear reader, is where every question and every answer you wish to know begins.

Dad knew he was watching.

Shit.

Actually, Arney didn’t know he was being watched. He felt it. A pressure. A pull. Perhaps even a fucking promise. One that made your father stop mid-sentence, glance over his shoulder, and find his brother-in-law staring down at him from his watchtower, with a different kind of ease, one that quietly said…

Finish up and follow.

Your uncle turned without a word and disappeared back into his office, fully expecting Arney to comply with the silent command that had just come down the line.

Jaw working, your father's head swung back around, face relaxing into a boneless smile as he felt the weight of being measured for his mettle beneath the hardened eyes of the Scotsmen.

“ Duty calls” Arney slipped back into that effortless ease to mask the irritation, the frustration of being ordered about by a man who held no authority over him beyond a claim through blood.

“ See that it does” the Scotsman murmured lowly, all Govan docks and Glasgow grit as he rolled a tightly coiled cigarette between the calloused pads of his thumb and forefinger.

Hands slipping into the pits of his trouser pockets, your father gave a slow nod, a subtle jerk of his chin, before swivelling on his Sanders Derbys, heading up the stairs. Up into the rafters.

“ Richie” your father announced himself through familiarity as he slinked into your uncle’s office, settling into the leather chair opposite his desk.

But Richard didn’t sit. Didn’t respond. Didn’t so much as look Arney’s way.

He stood exactly where he had before, still as stone beside the glass window, eyes sweeping over his business, his brewery, and every bastard under his pay until they settled once more on your father’s new friend below.

“ We leave in five” he finally spoke, all calm control, as Arney's eyes followed his brother-in-law’s silent scanning, the merciless sorting through indispensable to dispensable.

“ Right, right…” your father charmed away your uncle’s rigidness, easing deeper into the curve of the leather chair, legs crossing loose as his hand slipped into his pocket for a cigarette.

“ Richie. I was thinking…the deliveries, east into Warwickshire…”

“ Thomas Shelby's solliciter is overseeing the deeds” your uncle cut clean across your father’s attempted offering of advice, eyes fixed on the Glasgow-born worker hauling a barrel of whiskey onto his shoulder below.

“ Right…” your father murmured through a cloud of smoke, idle fingers finding the hand-stitched tailoring of his trouser pocket, and the King George penny tucked deep within.

“ The route into the east though, I was…”

“ We're leaving” Your uncle finally turned, letting the command settle into silence as he stood there watching your father, watching the man who spoke to his workers like he already had an understanding with them.

For a long beat, the brothers bound only by law stared each other down. Arney’s lower gaze strained beneath the unwavering eyes of your uncle holding him firmly in place, as a very different understanding began to seep through the civility between them.

Richie didn’t trust his workers. History had taught him not to trust your father. And he sure as hell didn’t trust himself to stand down from the watch long enough to finally hang that uniform up for good.

The retired soldier hadn’t known a day’s rest since before the war. And as control and composure became the rhythm of his life, he expected every man to fall in line beneath his command.

“ On your feet, Arney”

“ Move”

Mr Paisley was a fumbling sort of man, whether by personality or practice dealing with demanding gangsters, one could never truly tell.

But as he laid out the deeds to Arrow House before you, that shaky hand of his steadied just enough to pass you his silver-plated pen beneath a set of unwavering blues.

“ On the dotted line, Mrs Shelby” he guided your gaze beside Tommy’s scrawled signature, the very bastard in question looming over you like a storm cloud moments from raining on your parade.

That magnificent, spectacular, petty parade of yours, if I do say so myself. One momentarily stalled to sign your name onto Arrow House.

“ What are the terms again?” You queried, a completely justifiable question that was absolutely, irrefutably not asked solely for the purpose of winding the wanker up for a second time in the space of five minutes.

“ If I keel over first…” Tommy murmured, slipping a cigarette between his lips, cupping the flame, the words practically dragging themselves out through a puff of smoke as he took in another heavy lungful. “You get Arrow House”

“ Ah. Yes. Then I look forward to your demise, husband” you replied cheerfully, back straightening as the pen scratched your name into the deeds while a very nervous-looking Mr Paisley glanced between you both with what should’ve passed as laughter, but came out rather squeaky instead.

“ Thank you, wife” Tommy replied just as merrily, flicking ash onto the pristine floor like some bloody hooligan violating his own house rules. “God knows I could do with five minutes peace”

What a simply splendid, premeditated murdering married couple you two made.

Move over Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The Shelbys were making marital executions a recreational pastime.

“ All seems to be in order, Mr Shelby. I'll have my secretary send copies to your London office for your review on Thursday”

Woah. Hang about. What was that? London, Thursday.

Was the roaming Romeo about to fuck off for yet another bout of fuckery in Fulham?

Yes he was. Yes he absolutely bloody was.

Bastard.

“ London” the capital left your lips too quietly to be a question, too precise to sound like a wife probing for answers.

“ London for business” Tommy clarified...twice “Business”

Once because he wasn't wrong. And a second time, because despite the warring rhythm you’d found with one another, despite the gentle touch you’d once pressed to his pulse to ease him through troubled sleep, he needed the reminder.

Needed you to remember that your union, your marriage, was still a matter of…business.

Your chair instantly scraped back.

“ Leave. Now” Tommy’s voice came out low and absolute, head snapping toward the solicitor as you slowly rose to your feet.

The rest would have to wait. Your uncle’s meticulous eye over the remaining papers now suspended for another day because Tommy needed Mr Paisley out of Arrow House before Mrs Shelby decided poised perfection in front of company was a standard belonging to a past and rapidly pivoting personality.

“ London” you murmured a second time, almost amused. Almost in awe at the audacity of your harloting husband if it wasn’t for the sharpened edge beneath the word as your heels struck marble out in the foyer where an audience awaited.

John and Arthur.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

Tommy needed to contain this before chaos truly ensued. Before you deemed tampered whiskey, Christmas carnage and passive-aggressive agony aunts unworthy of your wrath.

And more importantly, before the two amused idiots he called brothers decided this was one for the Shelby history books.

“ London” the word seemed to climb an octave higher toward one man’s long-awaited oblivion as you spun on your heel, stopped, then marched away. Whiplashing Tommy straight into following you through the foyer and out into the gardens.

“ Arthur. John. Leave” Tommy ordered, though both brothers were already half a step behind him while his eyes stayed fixed firmly on your swaying hips, your rigid spine cutting across the gardens.

“ Nah. Think we'll stay, brother” Arthur’s wolfish grin only worsened matters, forcing Tommy to choose between throttling one of his bastard brothers or chasing after his brazenly beautiful wife currently storming across his pristinely cut lawn in heels.

What an odd little fella. Somebody fetch the lawn mower and give this man a coronary with a two-centimetre-too-short turf.

“Oi. Not another step” Tommy’s voice dropped low, fingers lifting with a cigarette trapped between them like he was barking orders at one of his men instead of his maddening wife whose hand had just curled around a potted marigold.

“ You wanna have it out, eh?” Tommy shifted his weight onto one foot, hand pausing midair as his eyes dropped to the threat of being pelted with a ceramic flowerpot.

“ Come on then, wife. Let's have it out, then” he shoved the cigarette between his lips, muttering through smoke as he shrugged off his jacket, rolling his sleeves like he was about to wrestle you beneath the wisteria.

“ Yeh…I dunno about this, brother. She's looking proper pissed off” John observed from where he’d slouched against the brick wall while Arthur smoothed down his moustache, ready to make a wager on the war currently unfolding in the back garden of a Warwickshire house.

“ Tenner says she's lobs at it him” the eldest Shelby held out his palm, ready to secure both bet and his next brandy down the pub.

“ Done” John shook on it, as both brothers watched your knuckles whiten around the terracotta pot.

“ You bastard, leching little lordling with the emotional depth of a concussed pigeon!” you shouted across the lawn, the colourful and imaginative insult leaving Arthur and John staring on in pure delight.

Well.

You’d finally cracked, dear. Poise and perfection be damned. Might as well commit to it now.

And you did. Rather dramatically, in fact, when the flowerpot went sailing through the air straight at Tommy’s head, he ducked with considerably more finesse than you’d managed upon first launch.

“ You're gonna regret that” Tommy stalked forward, voice dropping low enough to dare you into escalating beyond the petty warfare of the past few weeks.

“ Yeh. Already do…” your voice tightened. Eyes tightened. That wandering bloody hand of yours tightened too around, you guessed it, another fucking flowerpot.

Christ.

“ Because I missed!” you hurled back as the second pot went soaring across the gardens, narrowly missing all three Shelby brothers when they collectively hit the ground.

“We're under fire, men!” Arthur shrilled with barely contained amusement as decades-old training kicked in, years spent fighting in France nothing compared to one furious female with a penchant for launching flowerpots.

“ Take cover, comrades! She's got a swing on her!” John barked through a grin, flipping the garden table onto its side to shield himself and his fellow soldiers from the incoming shrubbery.

“ Enough!” Tommy shot to his feet behind the garden table now repurposed into trench cover, foolish enough to believe his oh-so-scary presence alone might bring about a ceasefire.

And what did he get for his troubles?

Yep.

Another flowerpot.

“ Christ woman!” he bellowed around the cigarette, somehow still clinging on for dear life at the corner of his lips as he ducked back down.

“ Her uncle's gonna turn up any minute, and see I can't handle my own fucking wife. I need a plan” Tommy muttered darkly, squinting through the slats of wood to see his beautiful and absolutely bloody mental wife waiting patiently for one of them to surrender her husband for the greater good.

“ Thank fuck. We need reinforcements. The enemy is advancing” Arthur whispered with the excitement of a man having the time of his life while beside him John had entirely abandoned combat readiness in favour of unapologetic laughter.

“I’m gonna write this in me memoirs” John announced between wheezes, his future book bound to bankrupt Tommy when he'd buy every copy to save his bloodline's reputation.

“Battle Amongst The Buttercups. The Great War Of Warwickshire”

“ Terror comes in flying terracotta.The West Midlands War Over One Wanker's Wandering Cock” Arthur immediately supplied with a snort of laughter, as Tommy slowly turned to stare at both brothers like he was genuinely considering which one to sacrifice first in exchange for safe passage across the lawn.

“ Shut up. The pair of you”

“ Darling...love” Tommy attempted affection, only to make an absolute cock-up of it when he followed with…

“ How about you just calm down, eh?”

Idiot. Absolute idiot.

There exists at least one singular, universal phrase known to mankind that should never, under any circumstance, be uttered in the presence of an already furious woman when your odds of castration are looking increasingly favourable.

And that is, calm down.

Where's that butter knife?

“ What did you just say?” Your eyes narrowed on the garden table, focus sharpening into something dangerous, already armed with more ammunition when steady, unhurried boots stepped into the warzone.

Richie.

Uncle Richie.

Too blinded by the blaze of fury aimed at your bastard of a husband, you were spared the full weight of your uncle’s stare, watching you systematically fall short of every lesson he had ever drilled into you, as you lost yourself to emotion in real time.

“ Put it down” Your uncle’s voice carried across the lawn, calm, controlled. Composure over chaos. Always.

Because where Tommy provoked emotion, your uncle condemned it. And as you turned your head to find him standing still and unyielding at the edge of the garden, your father stood in his shadow, the flowerpot suddenly slipped from your fingers.

Everything went silent.

Slowly rising to his feet, Tommy watched his furious, fire-eyed wife settle back into herself, into that poised perfection he had begun to resent.

That wasn't a composure born of you. It was one that had been taught and maintained. A reflection of the man Tommy himself had learned to become as the version that felt too much, hurt too much, could never afford to be seen.

“ Go inside, and gather yourself” your uncle ordered as Tommy’s hand lifted, as if to interrupt, to say something, to tell him to let his wife breathe, let her feel, when he himself had spent years suffocating under the same form of survival.

But he didn’t. Instead, he stood in the wreckage of your retribution and realised Richie had kept you reserved for a reason.

And for the first time, he asked himself the question he hadn’t thought to ask before…

Just what had his wife survived?

Here we are again.

Look, I won't sugarcoat it for you, darling, but your husband was currently mid-fuck.

Back in Soho, with a Soho girl, having a Soho shag.

Six days had passed since war broke out in your Warwickshire garden, when flowerpots became a form of artillery, where composure finally cracked under pressure.

And now Tommy was back in London for business. Just like he said. Just like he warned you.

Only the release he’d come for was turning out to be more of a chore than a relief.

“ Yes, Mr Shelby” she moaned, each thrust met with rehearsed perfection.

“ Quiet” Tommy snapped, voice clipped, irritation cutting through as her performance became increasingly unbearable.

And don’t doubt yourself, dear. Because it wasn’t lost on him. And it won’t be lost on you either.

For your wedding night, a mere month ago, still echoed in his head. Only then, the sound hadn’t annoyed him. It had undone him. Made him feel something beyond what was supposed to be a marriage of means.

“ Enough” he ordered as he looked down at her properly now. Wrong hair. Wrong eyes. Wrong body. Just fucking…wrong.

With a final thrust he finished, feeling as unsatisfied as he did when he began.

How long was he going to keep doing this?

Proving a point? That he didn’t care?

That he wasn’t affected? That the day he met you in his office, and you gave him nothing, was the day he gave you everything.

“ Get out. Get out now”

As the door to his hotel room shut, Tommy sat in silence and let himself think of Arrow House. Of his wife. Of his wedding night. Keeping the memory untouched now that he was alone with it.

But back in Warwickshire, you sat in the darkened hush of the grand estate, staring out across the grounds, knowing your husband was somewhere in London making a mockery of your marriage under the convenient guise of business.

Petty didn't cover it anymore. You felt vengeful. A woman pushed too far, too long, under one house and one man’s rules.

And what came next would be your grand finale.

God help Thomas Shelby.

Well.

No one was going to stop you.

Not even Cupid, perched somewhere up in whatever heathen heaven he presided over, watching romance like it was sport.

This was either masterful. Or complete madness.

And as Polly, Arthur, John and Finn stood in the foyer of Arrow House with more than forty guests and their plus-ones behind them, none of them looked particularly inclined to be the ones to intervene either.

“ Tommy's gonna lose the plot when he walks through that door, Pol” Arthur murmured low over his whiskey tumbler, eyes sweeping across the preparations unfolding around him while MP’s, aristocrats, businessmen and unsuspecting guests mingled beneath the chandeliers.

“ Serves him fucking right” Finn muttered before Polly could answer, earning himself a sharp clip on the back of his skull from his older brother John.

“ Bitter much, Finn? John hissed quietly, firm hand locking around the nape of his younger brother’s neck before he could slip away from the consequences of his own stupid mouth. “ You’ve been encouraging her all bloody day, you little shit”

“ What?” Finn shrugged him off with barely contained resentment, that Tommy had wed and bedded you before he even managed a second date.

“ Fucks off to London every other week. Should have been me to take her home that day”

That landed. And not a single Shelby missed it.

“ Don't let Tommy hear you say that” Arthur warned, voice lowering, all amusement gone as he fixed Finn's envious eye with a steady look.

“ Why because it's true? He don't even like her”

Ah. There it was.

The dangerous thing about youth and younger brothers that thought they knew the way of the world.

Because with age comes understanding. And the mistake boys like Finn made, and would soon come to learn was, silence did not mean absence.

“ That what you think, eh?” Arthur muttered, frustration with his thick-headed brother bleeding through every irritated inch of him.

“ He just added her name to the deed of this house, you prat”

“ Arthurs not wrong” Polly cut in over her wine glass of Bordeaux red. “ Keep that to yourself. Last thing we need is a battle between brothers over a woman” 

“Where is the bloody woman?” John muttered, brow furrowing as his eyes swept the foyer searching for his serpentine sister-in-law who'd slipped away without warning.

“ Standing with the best view in the house” Polly smirked, as her eyes lifted. Then Arthur’s. Then John’s. And lastly Finn’s.

All of them looking up to find not some simpering little wife beaten down by a bastard determined to call marriage business, but a Queen.

And she was about to teach the King a very valuable lesson.

Happy wife.

Happy life.

Wheels crunched on gravel. The lights dimmed.

A car door slammed. Voices quietened.

Boots marched up the stone steps. Bodies vanished.

The front door swung open and Tommy demanded…

“Frances? My wife?”

And the room erupted.

“SUPRISE!”

The band instantly kicked in. Streamers flew. Confetti rained down over him as guests surged forward offering handshakes, congratulations and cheerful wishes of…

Happy birthday.

Yep. That’s right.

Thomas Shelby, gangster, wartime relic, Member of Parliament, had just walked into his very own surprise birthday party.

Two months too early.

This was, quite possibly, Tommy's very definition of hell. A living nightmare where he now found himself trapped into politeness, forced to mingle well into the early hours without hunting down and throttling his fucking wife.

And just where was his dear wife?

Tommy’s gaze swept sharply across the sea of bodies as he suffered through half-hearted handshakes from every bastard in Birmingham who’d arrived for the free…

Was that Fabergé caviar?

The low growl barely escaped him before his eyes snapped upward toward the second-floor landing.

Found you. 

And there you stood. A Queen presiding over her court looking utterly devastating, with a wicked smirk ghosting the corner of your lips as you slowly raised your glass of Dom Pérignon toward Don Dickhead himself.

You little fucking…

“ Easy, birthday boy” Arthur moved in quickly before Tommy took it upon himself to empty the house of everyone and everything except him and his wife.

“ I’m going to murder her, Arthur” Tommy muttered, eyes locked on the upper floor as his brother shoved a glass of whiskey into his hands before they found your throat. 

“ Yeh, well, it's gonna have to wait. Birthday cakes coming” 

And just like that, one enormous frosted monstrosity appeared as the guests gasped in awe at the lavish rosettes and iced ruffles. 

Someone had clearly ransacked her husband's bank account. 

Well done, darling. Hit him where it hurts. 

“ Speech! Speech!” Some overfed toff called out across the room, urging Tommy to address his guests, as your husband's focus stayed entirely on you and your descent down the stairs.   

“ Speech…” Tommy muttered absently, sharp eyes sweeping, losing your circling prowl somewhere in the hoard of bodies. 

“ My wife? Someone find my wife” the order came down, demanding you be found. For if he couldn’t pull you out of your game, then he'd drag you into his.

The crowd’s heads turned, bobbing as they searched for the missing member of their celebration, when, like something out of a gunslinging western, you emerged through the shifting bodies of party goers. 

“ Ah. There she is. My wife” Tommy's voice dropped low and gravelled, eyes narrowing in on your slow approach as his hand stretched out for you. 

“Come here darling. Come stand beside your, husband” 

Barely within an inch of him, his hand come around your back, clamping over your waist as he anchored you into his side. 

“ Thank you all for coming to my surprise birthday party” Tommy addressed the room, calm, controlled composure firmly in place, and a subtle death grip around your waist.

You weren't going anywhere. Not tonight. 

He was going to make sure you endured this the same way you’d forced him to endure the whole fucking thing.

“ Of course, I'd like to express my gratitude to my family for helping facilitate this celebration” Tommy continued, gaze cutting across the room one by one to Arthur, John, Polly and Finn. Each of them now considered complicit in the ambush.

“ And finally…i’d like to thank my wife” his eyes dropped to you, held captive by a clamp to your waist as you sipped calmly on a glass of champers. “ Who went out of her way to make this day special for me”

“ You shouldn't have. Really” he gazed down at you, with marital bliss in his eyes…

No. Forgive me. I meant… 

“... with murder in his eyes” 

“ Make a wish! A wish!” 

A chorus of birthday hecklers rang out as the colossal sized cake was wheeled into view. 

Hauling you in with him, Tommy held you tight, bending over to blow out his candles, as you murmured quietly through the last tendrils of smoke…

“ What did you wish for, darling? Another woman to warm your bed?” 

“ No. For you to behave” 

“ Mmm” you hummed fondly, as you locked eyes in a lovers gaze to every else but Tommy's family, who watched in silence as the last flicker of flame died down, all of them aware they were standing on the edge of something none of them could stop.

Your grand finale.

More mingling. More monotoned conversations about money and motorcars. Tommy endured every last bit of drivel these dandies considered interesting, all while his eyes tracked your every movement through the room.

 “ Enjoying yourself, wife?” The voice came low behind you, hand sweeping around your stomach as he pressed into your back, anchoring you in place at the grand foyer window overlooking Arrow House’ grounds. 

Waiting. Patiently waiting. 

“ Having the time of my life, husband” you murmured, laced thick with enough sarcasm to poison the rest of his year into January. 

“ Now, listen…” Tommy's voice dropped an octave, grip tightening at your hip as he leaned in, chin settling on your shoulder, breath warm against your ear.

“ When everyone leaves. You and I are going to have a civilised conversation about…” 

The words were cut short. Not because of you. Not because of some of eager toff. But because out in the garden came a whizz. Then a crack. Then one mighty fucking bang. 

Fireworks. You'd brought fireworks. 

Good god, girl. 

The room surged forward to the windows in a wave of gasps and cheers as the brightly coloured display lit up Arrow House in all its glory, while the gangster behind you froze into something very unfestive.

 “ How much?” Tommy muttered, one breath away from a growl as he watched his money go up in flames.

“ Oh I forget. Lost count after the third nought” you lightly mused, tilting your head in thoughtful reflection. Or what passed as it, that was. 

“ Look, darling! There goes another hundred” you gasped in delight as another rocket tore into the sky. 

“ Right. That's enough” Tommy turned you sharply in his grip, reaching to put an end to the spectacle when you stopped him mid-pivot. 

“ Wait. Wait…the grand finale” 

And there it was, in all its horror.

Yours and Tommy’s names, lit up in an obscene heart-shaped catastrophe of sparklers and smoke, an arrow punched straight through the centre like Cupid himself had taken poor aim in a drunken fit of enthusiasm.

Well done, dear. You'd made the chubby little cherub very proud.  

“ Look…” you cooed over the sparkling spectacle of pinwheels and jumping jacks currently making a mess of his pristine lawn.“ We're so in love” 

“ When everyone leaves. You'll have nowhere to hide from the conversation we're going to have about the rules of this house and your role as my wife” Tommy drawled low against your neck, spinning you with him to face the room. 

“ Thank you for coming, everyone” he addressed the guests smoothly, charm slipping back over him like his freshly tailored suit from Savile Row. 

“But it's been a long evening. And we're newlyweds” The statement was suggestive enough to earn a few chuckles from politicians, businessmen and the country bumpkins too dazzled by fireworks and free whiskey as they collected their coats and gloves.  

“ Arthur, see everyone safely out. Now” 

“ Tommy, don't do anything stupid” the eldest Shelby muttered quietly, sensing the streak of madness in his brother after an evening of his wife's warfare. 

As the last guest filtered out and the front door of Arrow House slammed shut behind them, only you and Tommy remained amongst the wreckage of your Warwickshire home.

“ I’m going to bed” 

“ You stay right there, Mrs Shelby” Tommy turned toward you, shoulders rigid, stance immovable beneath the weight of a conversation long overdue.

“ You knew the terms. You walked down that aisle knowing every one of them. And yet, I've spent the last week being punished for something you already understood” Tommy stalked closer, eyes hardening into those of a husband depleted of patience. 

“ This…” his hand cut between you both, to the wreckage of his mansion, his marriage, the entire month of warfare waged beneath his roof.

“ Is a temper tantrum over a business arrangement, you agreed to” 

“ No” your voice cracked despite your scrambling attempts to keep your composure. 

“My hand was forced to keep your business running. To stop scandal stripping you of everything you’ve worked for while I drew the short straw”

“And now I’m supposed to smile sweetly while my husband disappears to London every other week to warm someone else’s bed while I sit here like a footnote in your fucking ledger?” your chest heaved, heart thundered behind your ribs as you stared him down across the marble foyer floors. 

“ Short straw?” Tommy scoffed a laugh, mocking in every way that made your back  straighten like steel. 

“ You have everything you could ever wish for. And still, it's not enough for Mrs Thomas Shelby, is it?” 

“ I didn't wish for a husband that beds women on a bi-weekly fucking rota!” you hurled across the room, wild-eyed and without restraint as fury licked up your spine. 

“ Well that's what you fucking got! That's what I am!” Tommy roared, marching toward you hard enough to shake the four walls of your home. 

“ I’m the man that pays for everything. Houses, whores…

wives!” 

The word hit harder than the rest.

Not because he meant to say it. But because somewhere in the middle of his anger, Tommy Shelby had stopped sounding like a businessman defending an arrangement, and started sounding like a husband furious his wife was hurt by him at all.

Wives. One among three.

The last in line on a list of women Tommy had paid parts of himself to in various ways.

But in what way had he paid for you? 

How do you tally up and slap a prize tag on a moment? A split-second decision to save someone from a snowstorm. From scandal. From ruin.

How much of a man’s life should that cost him?

“That's what I am to you? You stepped forward, eyes searching for something, anything, that would tell you otherwise. 

“Something you paid for? 

Another step. 

“One out of three?”  

“ This is a business arrangement” 

His finger came up with a warning.  

“ Third prize?”  

“ You agreed to this” 

His jaw tightened.

“ Third in line, Tommy?” 

A final breach into his space, and your husband snapped. 

“ You're not third anything!” the roar ripped through the room, eyes wild, body heaving as his hands held you in place.

“ You're my fucking wife!” 

And there it was. A claim as clear as day. Not business, not an arrangement, not the terms he repeated to himself so he could sleep at night. But…

His wife.  

*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🖤*

[Next Part] coming soon!

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