For Tommy was not only hellbent on finding his wife, he'd be heaven-bound, born again into believing anything if it meant you returned unscathed to the safety of her walls and his arms. 

And as I sit here, watching his tyres tear up gravel and grit as he flew back down the drive, functioning on fury and a bottle of John Jameson finest Irish, there's not a shred of doubt in me that your husband wouldn't run headlong right into hell and fight the devil one handed, heart on his sleeve just to get you back.

“ I want men on every street. On every road out of the county, from here to Hadrian's wall” Tommy's voice boomed through the foyer as the Shelby siblings followed a foot behind looking worse for wear after a night of carrying the grief-stricken gangsters orders out. 

It was unfeasible. Impossible. It was bloody madness.

And now, it was his brother's job to follow through, or face his fury. 

“ We've got everyone out there, Tom” Arthur ran a hand down his face as he came to a stop, watching his brother march towards the pile of maps that had driven him into an obsession over every ridge, bridge and overpass. 

“ Our boys have their orders. Been called back from the search for Arney. Everyone's out there looking for her, you hear me? ” Arthur's jaw worked tight against the bone, slowly losing patience with his brother who wouldn't listen to anyone, wouldn't answer to anyone but the rabid worry in his own head.“ Tom?” 

“ Every town, Arthur. No excuses. No exceptions” Tommy remained locked on the map of the River Trent, eyes unable to tear themselves away from every route leading out of the West Midlands. 

“ They're looking, Tommy. Been looking. Every night for three days straight” John attempted to reason with a man rapidly losing all sensibility, a man fueled by every fear that tired head of his had ever conjured. 

“ Then look harder” Tommy's voice took on something dangerous, daring his brothers to talk back, daring them to breathe even a single syllable against his orders.

“ Hadrian's wall. Go” 

He was ready to snap. 

He was gonna bloody snap.

And of all the idiots in Warwickshire, the perfect prat stepped forward and gave Tommy every reason to erupt. 

“ Here to Hadrian's wall? We don't have enough men” Finn, the youngest Shelby scoffed. Yes, scoffed, at a man that was rapidly losing his mind in search of the woman he'd married, warred with, and widowed all in the space of a mere month.

“ What did you just say?” your husband's voice dropped into a low gravel, eyes fixed on the twenty something year old.

Brother be damned. Blood be fucking damned. 

“ Shut the fuck up, Finn” Arthur growled, half way to pulling the posturing pup out of Tommy's warpath before he got bit. 

“ I said, we don't have enough men” Finn's final words of foolishness came with contempt, ignoring every chance he'd been given to get out of dodge before Tommy lunged at him. 

“ It's mental. You're fucking mental” 

The youngest Shelby barely had time to move before Tommy whirled on him, slamming him into the foyer wall with the strength of a dozen men, with an anger that had been simmering to a boil for three days straight. 

“ Then I'll call in every favour…” Tommy's voice dropped to a whisper against Finn's ear, fist curling into his shirt as Arthur and John moved towards him before he murdered their baby brother. 

“...on every bastard that owes me his life” his voice twisted, face turned into something dangerous as Arthur's heavy hand yanked him away. 

“ Starting with you, Finn” Tommy pointed, breathless, every muscle straining against the quiet fury coiling around his spine like a death grip as he was dragged backwards. 

“ Starting with you…” 

Half mad, half gone, Tommy’s exhausted mind had been tricked into conjuring every possible image of you without a flicker of mercy, without even an ounce of sympathy for his slipping sanity. 

Dead body. Beaten body. Body in a ditch. Body degraded. Body missing.  

Every minute that passed was another without you.

Every order unanswered was another attack against his authority.

He'd lost it. 

Arthur knew it. John knew it. And Tommy, God help him, knew it too. 

“ Enough, brother. That's enough” Arthur hauled him aside, straining to snap him out of it, snap him out of grieving a wife he believed he'd already lost to his own way of life. 

Breath coming heavy, chest heaving hard, Tommy scrambled to regain control, to reign in that sharp, calculating composure that had kept him alive for so long. 

“ Do as I say. The lot of you” he pulled free, dragging a hand down his face as he forced the madness behind something manageable. 

“ Or start picking out your funeral suits” The threat had been made. His body already retreating. Boots carrying him to the only place where you still lingered. Where you'd let him hold you like a husband should. Let him be the one you grieved for your uncle against.

Bedroom door swung open, he was met with nothing but silence. No sharp words. No witty woman staging a coup against his whiskey or weary mind. Just a strained silence, and a silk gown laid crumpled across the bed. 

Body finally giving in, Tommy sank heavily onto the mattress, tired eyes red raw as he tried to focus, tried to think through the thick fog clouding his mind.  

If he didn't find Arney, he'd have to live with the guilt until his dying breath. 

And if he didn't find you…

…it would kill him before he ever drew that last lungful. 

Fist clenched around your muddy dressing gown, Tommy released the pressure from his knuckles, thumb turning his signet ring around and around again, twisting every tortured worry into the worn gold until a quiet prayer finally found its way from his lips. 

Not to God. Not to some otherworldly realm beyond his reach. But to you. Just for you. 

“ Come home to me, darling. Come home”

It was bold. It was brazen. Frankly, my dear, it was exactly how your own husband operated. 

Because while Tommy was running himself rabid, thinking big, thinking beyond the county's borders, you had been hauled away and hidden right there. In the belly of the beast. 

See, you weren't just in the West Midlands. Weren't just in Warwickshire. You were a mere four fucking miles away. 

It was wicked. A cruelty you were feeling the full force of as you sat shivering in the groundkeeper's hut in the neighbouring farm’s field, Arrow House lighting up like a beacon in the fading evening light through the weathered slats of wood. 

Three days, going on four, you had sat there in nothing but a cotton slip, cold to the bone as your three captors drank themselves halfway to an early date with the Devil down in ol’hell.

“ Got nothin’ to say today, lass? Nae smart-arse remarks for us, eh?”one of the Glaswegians drawled, digging deep in a battered crate for another bottle of whisky next to a sprawled-out, sleeping Scotsman. 

“ If I did, you wouldn't understand it anyway” you muttered, hauled up in the corner of the hut, looking like some wild thing that had run straight out of England's muddy moors. 

“ Are ye callin’ me thick?” he spluttered, swaying where he stood, all six feet of him looking, well…thick as a bloody brick. 

“ Away with ye, Fraser. Sit yeself down” McConnell, the one who was seemingly in charge barked. The same one who had slowly been drinking himself into oblivion, while he waited for the Billy Boys to find a route into Warwickshire your husband hadn't blocked or barricaded. 

“ Wasn't slow when I gave ye that wee little mark to yer face now, was I?” Fraser's face flashed with a smugness that made you feel sick, the sting to your cheek, where he'd struck you for one remark too many, throbbing hot with hatred. 

You'd been riling them up. Winding them up.

And I would say, hammer them to hell with every witty concoction of words imaginable, darling. 

But I'm worried, you see. Fearful that the fuel feeding your resilience was about to snuff itself out. 

Because that head of yours, that traitorious noggin, had started thinking too much. And thinking too much made for false thoughts. Thoughts I could hear loud and clear...

He'd given up. Given you in. He'd abandoned the wife he'd been burdened with to save his business. 

And as you shrank in on yourself, watching the Scotsman slump in front of your only way out, you didn't think of your husband who was supposed to save you. Your thoughts turned to the man who was supposed to always keep you safe. 

Arney.

Dad.

“ Where is my father?” your voice came quieter now, careful not to rouse the emotions you'd choked down with every spent tear for your uncle. 

“  Dinna fash about that deadbeat dad o’ yours, lass. He's long gone now” McConnell murmured lazily, limbs loosening after the near liter of whisky he'd consumed within the past couple of days. 

“ Life's dealt ye a rotten hand. Da sold ye out. Uncles dead. Husband dinna care” he lifted the bottle in his hand, as Fraser, the fucker with a problem for women who knew their worth glared at you like he wanted to give you another wallop for good measure.

“ The bastard is long gone, lass. They're all gone” 

Gone. Was that it? Was that truly it? 

Every call for justice unheard? Every demand for retribution unanswered? 

For every life story came with a villain. Be it drink. Be it drugs. Be it the mind. Be it yourself. Or the ones that claimed to love you. 

Some would be conquered, some overcome. And some…some just simply slipped away. An anomaly in life where everything felt like fate. 

“ Aye, yer a misfit of misfortune, lass. We've all been there” McConnell murmured as he watched you swallow back the bitter realisation that awful Arney, dad, was one of the ones who got to slip away. 

“Sleep. The telegrams been sent out. McCavern is coming for those Liverpool lines” he muttered before the whisky took him and he slumped back against the barn, eyes shut and off guard, leaving you with the woman hating wanker. 

“ He who can't handle his liquor, makes for merrier men” Fraser, Franky, whatever the fuck he was called nabbed McConnell's bottle, guzzling it down his gullet like some show off to his own stupidness. 

“ Well done. You're almost house-trained” you praised the prick, sarcasm slipping through the fatigue of four nights locked in limbo. 

Civilised, darling. I think your best bet was the word civilised. 

Though if your intention was to insult the fool, then house-trained appears to have struck a nerve.

 Because would you look at that? The Six foot tall Scotsman was halfway to murdering you.

 Splendid work, dear. 

“ Ye callin’ me a beast now?” He slurred,  stumbling forward from the door, clearing the way for an escape. 

“ I dinna care for yer words, lass. I weren't a bairn born in a barn” he puffed out his chest, words coming out…wobbly.

Christ. 

Clearly, domestication, barns and being born in one were a touchy subjects for the drunk Scotsman who was now slumped against the wall, glaring at you like he could send your royal Arrow House arse straight to the gallows. 

So be it. 

Two down one to go. 

Drink up you devil. Drink up. 

Lined up. One by one. The staff of Arrow House had been herded into the foyer looking as though they were about to face the firing squad for acts of treason against the Crown. 

Because standing before them was a man who looked every bit the executioner. Down to his waistcoat, shirt sleeves rolled up his forearms, face filled with nothing but fury.

Tommy was a King. A battle weary King without his Queen.

And he was pacing. Prowling. Looking for a fight. Looking to pick on anyone that showed even a flicker of disloyalty. 

“ You” Tommy turned on the groundskeeper, boots marching across the foyer floors towards the fifty year old stood, cap steady in his hand. 

“ A week ago. No…two weeks…” your husband interrogated then corrected, pinching the bridge of his nose as his eyes squeezed shut, trying to fight through the fog of exhaustion that had clouded his memory. 

Christ. He was exhausted. Arthur stood in the shadows, exhausted. John, head lowered, leaning against the door, exhausted. 

Everyone. Every connection. Every debt owed. Every man who had ever promised Thomas Shelby a favour. Exhausted. 

“ You were seen. Walking the grounds with my wife's father” Tommy stood there waiting, like the next words out of the grey-haired man's mouth would be the ones that brought you back to him.

“ Speak” 

“ Aye, sir. A fortnight ago. He was enquiring as to how many acres Arrow House holds” his Black Country accent came out thick, without pause, without so much as a flicker of that disloyalty Tommy had gone full bloodhound in search of sniffing out. 

Before the groundskeeper had even drawn another breath, your husband had already moved on, turning his attention to the maids stood trembling under the tyrant's temper.

But Frances, with ten years of dealing with angry gangsters on her résumé, wasn't about to let Tommy bully the youngest of the household staff into saying what they thought their master wanted to hear simply to ease the pressure. 

“ Yes, sir?” she dutifully stepped forward, unblinded by the fear that had etched its way into every line of his face when came the last voice your husband wanted to hear. One that made far too much sense, far too often.

“ Thomas” 

Polly. Polly Gray. 

With something that sounded close to a growl, Tommy spun on the heel of his boot, outright ignoring his aunt in favour of barking more orders. 

“ Arthur. John. With me” the words had barely left his mouth before he was already in motion, already out the foyer and onto the steps, when a lad, no more than three foot tall came hurtling down the drive with another telegram clutched within his hand. 

McCavern. It had to be Jimmy McCavern. Finally making his demands, finally giving Tommy something he could work with. 

“ Telegram for you, Mister” the young messenger skidded to a stop, the very picture of youthful innocence with muddy knees and dimpled cheeks, blissfully unaware that the Glaswegian group had used him as nothing more than a paper boy, unknowingly putting his own life at risk.

Seal torn beneath Tommy's thumb, his eyes raced across the page then widened in complete and utter horror as the second verse to the nursery rhyme sat staring back at him. 

Last night as I lay on my pillow. Last night as I lay in my bed. Last night as I lay on my pillow, I dreamt that my Bonnie was…dead.

The telegram slipped from his fingers, feather-like to the ground where it settled once again, without fuss, without fanfare as your husband stood silent. Still. 

“ Tom…?” Arthur carefully ventured as he stepped forward, eyes searching his brothers face when Tommy suddenly turned, took three unsteady steps towards the stone pillar beside the door, and retched. 

Nothing came.

Four days of whiskey, cigarettes and sleeplessness, had left nothing to give. Nothing to quiet the terror. Nothing to loosen the grief that had gripped him by the throat. 

And as panic rose behind him, the muffled voices of his brother's insisting McCarvern was playing games, playing with Tommy's head, feeding the paranoia already eating him alive, your husband lifted his eyes.

And there, beyond the gates, a lone figure stood stoic amongst the low-lying miss rolling across the fields of Arrow House. 

Greatcoat buttoned high. Service cap pulled low. Hands clasped neatly behind his back. A soldier, taking the watch.  

“ Richie…” Tommy stumbled forward, trembling hands finding the cold stone as it guided each faltering step, boots dragging across the grit of the drive.

“ I've got her. I’m standing watch…” his voice cracked, the promise he'd made beside your uncle's body, to you, no longer sounding like the unwavering pledge of a soldier. But the desperate plea of a broken man. 

“Rich…I've got her” he muttered, eyes red raw and unblinking as Richie turned into the mist, into No Man's land, where promises either died, or were delivered at the break of dawn. 

“ Thomas…” the steady voice of Polly pulled him from the depths of despair, her firm hand guiding him away from the dead man's silent judgement. 

“ Tommy, you're no good to her like this” she followed his gaze to the empty fields of Arrow House, thick with morning mist and frost bitten dew. 

“ You must rest. You must sleep” 

Sleep. 

A foreign word. A word that finally, after four relentless days, made Thomas Shelby snap before his aunt, his siblings, his men and staff who'd never once seen their master so completely undone as he stormed back into the halls of his great home. 

“ I will not sleep until my wife is in bed with me!” 

True to his word, Tommy found no sleep. No slumber came to ease his exhausted mind. 

He'd searched through the night, and when nothing came of it, when no trace of you turned up, he stayed awake on whiskey and willpower, searching through endless rolls of maps until dawn steadily broke over the hills of Arrow House, where he sat slumped on the edge of your bed, head buried in his hands. 

He could feel himself slipping closer to madness with every minute that passed. Roused only from the limbo he'd been living in for five days straight, when he heard your voice. 

It was a whisper at first. Then louder and louder, a torturous taunt from a mind pushed beyond its limits. 

“ Stop…” he mumbled beneath his breath, to himself, to his own thoughts, as the muffled call of his name began to break through the morning mist. 

“ TOMMY!” 

It screamed for him. Screamed for help. 

“TOMMY, PLEASE!” 

There It came again. Louder now. Loud enough to make him lift his head, for his brow to furrow, his spine to straighten as every instinct in him violently snapped awake. 

“ HELP ME!” 

It cried, you cried. Sprinting down Arrow House's long drive barefoot in nothing but a thin slip against the winter morning, hair wild in the wind as you ran like you'd never run before.

Shooting to his feet, Tommy grabbed his gun as he flew from the bedroom bare-chested, barefoot, suspenders hanging low against his trousers. 

“ RUN TO ME!” his voice tore from his throat as he raced out the front doors, down the drive to your frantic figure running through the morning mist, headlights burning behind you. 

“ DON'T STOP!”

“Tommy…” your cry broke, as your head whipped over your shoulder to see your captors gaining on you, windows rolling down as Arthur and John tore out the house behind their brother, guns already raised. 

“ No…” your husband's eyes widened in horror, as the barrel of a gun appeared from the car window. "NO!”

“ GET DOWN!” Tommy's roar ripped across the grounds, face twisting in fear as shots fired from both sides, tearing through the crisp air as you raced towards each other. 

You didn't listen, didn't stop, couldn't stop. Not when you were running towards the place your heart had finally found its home. Not when you were running towards your husband, now meters away. And not when you finally collided into his arms, a strangled sob breaking against his chest. 

“ I've got you” his voice broke against your hair, eyes squeezing shut as his arms wrapped tightly around you with relief. “I've got you, darling”

The men still shouted. The sound of tyres still screeched. The sharp whistle of bullets  passed through the air, still, after everything you'd survived. Every mile of distance, every wounding word, every quiet goodbye. 

Surely, surely now the world owed you a moment's peace? 

And to anyone else it may have seemed impossible, but somehow, in and amongst the chaos, it was only him. Only you. 

Only the two of you sharing one breath after believing there wouldn’t be another. 

Every tender touch slowed beneath the steady beat of his heart as he cradled your face in his hands, pressing a soft kiss against your lips until your heavy breaths settled into rhythm with his. 

And there, in the arms of his wife, forehead pressed against hers, as chaos raged around them, Tommy understood something he'd spent a month running from. 

If he was ever granted another dawn. Another chance to leave words behind on paper. 

It would not bear his initials. Not be signed with the coldness of a man who kept the world at arms length.

It would carry the only words he had left. The only ones that mattered. 

Love, Tommy.

The End. 

* A huge thank you to every one who stuck with me throughout this whirlwind series. Every read, reblog and show of support kept me going through all twelve chapters. I'm very sad to say goodbye to this story, but I hope you'll stick around for my next Tommy series. I'll be posting its trailer and masterlist very soon! Thank you once again for all your love and support 🖤.*

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Oh darling, I'm so sorry, your father killed your dear uncle. But I'm here now.

Is that up to scratch?

No?

Perhaps…

Sweetheart, your uncle Richie was found dead this morning. We believe your father is responsible. We're doing all we can.

Still not enough?

Let me rephrase it then. Let me give you the harrowing, unfiltered reality…

Your diabolical father had murdered your uncle in cold blood yesterday. Shot him in the chest at point-blank range, then left him to bleed out alone in the dirt. The rotten, soulless bastard has vanished. Slipped away. Gone missing.

Missing.

That's right. Your father had either charmed his way out of Birmingham or made a deal with the devil himself at some deserted crossroads between counties.

Awful Arney was gone. Like dust in the wind. Like a wave breaking over the perfect pipe dream before dragging it back to the sea.

And there was not a single, goddamn, bloody thing Tommy could say nor do to stop your heart from racing itself raw within your chest.

You were not just sat in that bay window again, tears tracking down your flushed cheeks as you waited for one of your husband's men to return with news that would relieve your heart. You had outright, outrun, and outmanuvered every single one of Tommy's attempts to comfort you. When frankly, darling, you needed more than even he knew how to give right now.

“ How's she holding up?” Arthur murmured quietly beside Tommy, as they stood behind the threshold of your resolve, threading thinner with each passing minute.

“ She's not” Tommy answered carefully, quietly, not to spook you from the solitude you had sought. The distance you'd put between you and everyone else as disbelief had you asking how your own father could do something so fundamentally, unforgivablly fucked up.

“ She's drowning, Arthur. Gone somewhere In that head of hers i can't reach” Tommy watched as you sat perfectly poised, just like uncle Richie had taught you. Just like you had been raised to conduct yourself.

It was beautiful. Believable. It was a desperate lie, unmasking itself bit by bit as your fingers fought each other under the guise of stillness. Pulling and twisting. Searching for something to hold onto, to anchor your aching heart that had gone adrift.

“ Arthur” Tommy turned, voice dropping low, stripped clean of the calm he'd worn for your sake. “ Find him. Find the bastard and bring him to me”

“ Tom, we've got men looking as far as Huddersfield” Arthur kept his words just as hushed, as your solemn figure sat looking out at the winding roads of Warwickshire. “Ain't a single fucking trace of him anywhere, brother”

“ Then go north” Tommy's order came clipped, every pretense of control leaving him as anger coiled up his spine. “ Burn down every county line from here to Glasgow if you have to”

“ He's been talking. Making connections” he leaned in with a low whisper, keeping how truly depraved your father was, safely from your knowledge.

“ Scotsmen from the Smethwick brewery. Glaswegian groups that answer to no one but their own. Billy Boys, Arthur. He's been talking with the Billy Boys”

“ Christ” Arthur exhaled a raspy breath deep from within his lungs, as he dragged a hand over his hardening face.

“ Go. Before he sells his own daughter out. Before he trades my wife for another pretty penny” the words came with complete and utter disgust, leaving a bitter taste of bile at the back of his throat.

“ Right. Leaving” Arthur murmured, turning on the heel of his boot, fingers snapping at the Peaky soldiers stood waiting on their orders as Tommy turned his attention back to you, pained with questions that demanded he be patient.

What would he have to do for you to trust him after he'd given you every reason not to?

To let him close the distance when for a month he'd put miles between you?

To let him hold you. To let him shoulder even a fraction of your heartache?

To let him be your husband?

I could shout. I could curse Cupid sat high in heartbreak heaven for not intervening. For not granting you one moment of relief away from mourning.

Believe me, faithful reader, I'd wish for nothing more.

But even I can't force your feet to move in front of you. For you to seek the only man left in your life and let him take the weight off your heavy heart.

For as you sat separated by nothing but the terms of your arrangement in adjacent rooms, while night drew in once more, blanketing the bereaved. Arrow House mourned another man.

The lilies under her alcoves remained.

Heavy cloth draped over every reflection remained.

But sitting still, alone and aching in grief, was a heavy toll for anyone to pay. Even for you, whose stubborn resolve had finally drawn its last desperate breath.

With one quiet foot after the other, you crossed the room to the wooden door that had remained a line drawn since the day of your wedding, as you tentatively pushed it open into darkness.

And there he was. Sat on the edge of the bed. Jacket gone, shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, elbows to his knees, head bowed heavy under the weight of another impossible day, as a cigarette burned forgotten between his fingers.

Your husband. Your Tommy.

Head lifting slowly between slumped shoulders, he turned.

And there you were.

Stood by the door, hand to the handle, every inch of you looking as uncertain as you did the day you said ‘I do’.

His wife. His girl.

“ Come here, darling” his voice was a soft sanctuary as he held his hand out for you to take, to trust him and let him be what he'd tried to be in his own broken way.

Your husband.

Feet crossing before you had time to think, Tommy met you halfway, fingers curling gently around yours, steadying you before drawing you down onto the bed and into his chest as the dam broke and the tears for an uncle lost, finally freed themselves in the safety of your husband's arms.

“ Tommy…” you wept, his name breaking apart on your lips as grief finally gave way and you pressed your face into his shirt.

“ It's alright” he murmured softly, anchoring you further into him with a gentle hand to the back of your head. “ You're alright”

“ You stay here, eh? You stay right here with me, sweetheart" He hummed quietly into your hair, lips pressing a fierce kiss of tenderness to the crown of your head.

And so you did.

You stayed. He stayed. You let your husband hold you, let him take the weight off your shoulders and give you both a moment where your marriage finally felt like it meant something more than a merger on a contract made a month ago.

And as the night sky slipped into a quiet twilight of twinkling stars over Arrow House, Tommy threaded his fingers through your hair, stroking softly until you settled fully beside him on your marital bed.

“ I’m sorry” the words caught in his chest, raspy, gravelled, a month in the making, and finally coming to surface.

“ I've made a lot of mistakes” he continued quietly, allowed now in the comfort of dark, in his own bed, beside his wife, to be something other than what the world demanded of him.

“ A lot of wrongs I'm trying to make right…” His fingers gently curled a lock of your hair, as the slow pitter-patter of your heart steadied something in him he didn't know was still running rabid.

“ If you let me” he murmured, head tilting down to yours resting in the crook of his neck. “ Will you let me? Darling?”

But no response came. No hitch in your breath at the confession you'd once convinced yourself you'd never hear.

Because you. Yes, bloody you. Were out for count weren't you?

Your husband had done such an expert job at relaxing you, calming the chaos within, that you'd completely missed the monumental moment where Thomas Michael Shelby, notorious hard man, had said ‘sorry’.

Goodness gracious, girl. Of all the times you should be sleeping, now is not one of them.

“ Of course…” a rasp of disbelief, of quiet amusement rattled in his chest as he shifted enough to see you, eyes shut, deep in sleep.

Christ.

“ I bleed my bloody heart out…” he murmured, a fondness curling at the corner of his lips as he drew you closer. “ and you've gone and dozed off”

“ You sleep then” he drawled, settling deeper into the duvet, as the weight of the world eased, just for a moment, so he could finally hold his wife.

“ Sleep, sweetheart”

Richie had been a good man. An honest man. A father figure to a woman whose lot in life handed her a deadbeat dad.

A business man. A just man. An Uncle that had spent a lifetime keeping you safe, until the day he placed your hand in your husband's.

And Tommy, for all his flaws and fractured morals, intended to give him the send-off he deserved.

The most honourable of farewells. One final salute before the drums beat slowly. Before they played the fife lowly. Before they sounded the Last Post and lowered him down.

A soldiers burial.

“ The watch is over now, Rich” Tommy murmured beside your uncle's body laid out upon the cold mortuary slab, hat in hand, head bowed.

“ I'll take the next watch” he promised, pledged not to the dead, but the living Richie had left behind. To you.

“ Stand down, soldier” his hand settled firmly on your uncle's shoulder, before he straightened, eyes drifting to the window, west to Warwickshire and the woman that waited there. The woman who had made him a husband.

“ I've got her now”

Hat fixed low, Tommy turned on his heel to the undertaker stood respectfully waiting for each mark your husband would make to your uncle's funeral.

“ That man…” Tommy murmured, slipping on his leather gloves, as the stitching creased under the stretch of his hands. “Is a soldier of the Great War. And will be honoured as one”

“ Church service. Buried beside his brothers in arms. Key Hill Cemetery”

“ Horse-drawn hearse, sir?” The funeral directors pencil poised over paper, each request to be recorded with meticulous care.

“ Horse drawn hearse. Oak coffin. Draped in the Union Jack. Dressed in his uniform. Full military honours” Tommy reached into his coat for his cigarettes, his own medals long gone to the cut and every curse he'd given them.

“ Very good sir” the undertaker listed each request, as Tommy watched word for word, making sure without an ounce of uncertainty that nothing had been overlooked.

“ Find me the best bugler in the West Midlands” he nodded to the notes, cigarette smoothing over his lips before it slipped into the corner of his mouth. “ I want the Last Post played properly”

“ You have my word, sir” the funeral director closed his book, a heavy silence settling over them with the weight of what had been decided.

Satisfied every honour had been accounted for Tommy turned to leave, only to come to a slow stop, hand heavy on the handle of the door.

“ Flowers” the word came quieter, as his eyes drifted past the undertaker to the still form behind him. “ My wife requested flowers”

The only request you had made that morning before he left for Bradley & Sons.

The only flowers a man would ever receive in his lifetime, set to be laid in front of his grave.

“ Roses. After her mother”

Rose.

Now, I may have previously stated that as much as I would've liked to, I couldn't physically force your feet to move when we all watched, hearts breaking as you chose solitude before finally letting your husband hold you.

Well, I've changed my mind.

And even if I did sprinkle a little hop into your step, gave your toes the gentlest of tugs to get you going, I hereby revoke, as of this very moment, your walking privileges.

Because leaving you alone in Arrow House, with nothing but your own thoughts for company and a husband nowhere in sight to anchor them, has you wandering these halls like a woman personally intent on tempting fate with every step she takes.

So, for the love of God, sit down, girl. Before you give this woman in the prime of her life, pebbles in her bloody gallbladder.

But no matter how fast I pen these furious words, you still refused to listen.

You continued your little conquest into the labyrinth of Arrow House, with every member of staff indisposed, leaving no one to witness the lady of the house who, as I write this, had decided a solitary stroll across the lawn was the remedy to her woes.

Dressed in nothing but a silk gown and slip to shield you from the crisp air, you welcomed the winter breeze if only to cool your cheeks from the heat of a hundred unshed tears burning your face.

But as your bare feet grounded themselves in the earth, feeling a brief moment of steadiness, the sound of tyres rumbling along mud and stone cut through the calm.

“ No. You need to go around the front” you muttered, marching across the lawn towards the delivery truck, as three men, burly and broad stepped out.

“ Deliveries are to the front door” you repeated your husband's order, one out of the many rules he'd inundated you with mere hours after your wedding a month ago.

“ Ye’er sure about that, lass? We've orders to pull around the back” the biggest stepped forward, accent thick enough to catch the edge of every sentence.

“ Yes, I'm fucking sure” your response came clipped, irritated that you'd even been questioned.

“ Would ye listen to the lip on this wee one, McConnel” the stockiest smirked, eyes flicking to his friend as he stepped forward, boots sinking into the grass.

“Yer husband ken you talk to strangers like that, lass?” The third man moved closer, crossing the unspoken line of politeness.

“ Aye. Blasphemy’ a sin. And Mr McCavern sees to sins…poppet”

Poppet.

A pet name. A sweet, honeyed British term given to daughters by their mothers…their fathers.

Your father.

Eyes widening, heart picking up faster than your feet could carry you, the realisation that your father had sold you out to the Scots for another penny, left you too slow to flee from the heavy frame that seized you from behind.

“ Get off me, you bastard!” You screamed as you were lifted from the ground, silk gown slipping off your shoulders in the struggle.

“ Dinnae fret, lass. Ye’ll not be harmed” the biggest fought to keep you under control as you kicked, twisted and turned.

Thrown into the back of the truck, your screams for help were quickly silenced by a reeking rag clamped over your mouth until you went limp at the limbs, and the world turned.

Fingers sweeping down to collect your muddied silk from the ground, McConnell thrusted the garment into the chest of the stocky fellow Scotsman, along with a carefully written note and a single worded order.

“ Quick”

Barely an hour had passed, when the sound of Tommy's Bentley pulled up in front of Arrow House. The swing of the front door announced his arrival before he'd even stepped in, and the house answered as it always had.

“ Mr Shelby” Frances appeared, dutiful as ever, greeting him as she gathered his affairs into her arms.

“ My wife?” he immediately asked, eyes scanning the foyer, as they took note of anything that looked even a fraction out of place.

“ Resting, sir” your loyal housekeeper replied without question, without hesitation, knowing no different.

“ Deliveries?” Tommy asked, demanding a rundown of the day already, as a cold draft from the back door drifted through the halls into the foyer.

“ Out back, sir”

“ Out back? Since when?” Tommy's head snapped towards hers, the colour draining from her face, leaving her a ghostly white as the realisation hit her.

Arney. Since Arney had changed Tommy fucking Shelby's orders is when.

He didn't wait for further explanation. Didn't ask. Didn't interrogate. He took two steps at a time to the master bedroom as his chest heaved violently, boots thundered heavily until he reached the wooden door left ajar.

Heart hanging on a thread with a sickening feeling of dread, of a threat he hadn't yet accounted for, Tommy pushed the bedroom door open and found…

Nothing. Nothing but your muddy dressing gown and a note neatly pinned to it.

Fingers closing around the edge of the paper, his eyes flew across each word, trying to make sense of it, when his chest suddenly folded in on itself so violently it stole the very air from his lungs, until there was only one sound left in him.

“My wife…” his voice broke, note slipping from his fingers as he began to turn, began to move into motion.

“They’ve taken my fucking wife!” he roared, tearing out the room with a ragged breath, as the paper settled steadily behind him on the floorboards with no urgency at all but the echo of a nursery rhyme.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean. My Bonnie lies over the sea. My Bonnie lies over the ocean. Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me.

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

[Next Part (final)] coming soon!

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Arrow House's heart had disappeared beneath cards of condolence scattered throughout her halls. Each mirror, each window into another realm, draped in heavy cloth, to spare the living the cruelty of finding their loved one in its reflection, as maids, bereaved and dressed in black, quietly arranged lilies beneath her alcoves.

And as grief gripped each wife in different ways, in different fashions, the two-year ritual society expected you to endure felt like its own quiet death when you could scarcely survive two minutes.

Mourning.

The breaking, the complete shattering of one's heart.

“ I called Father Philips about funeral arrangements” Linda's voice broke through the silence on the fourth day since the disaster as you sat in the bay window of the drawing room, looking west to Ireland. West to where you believed your husband and his brothers had been crushed under five thousand tonnes of steel when the Valkyrie hit her sister ship.

“ My John won't have a fucking thing until I see him laid out on a cold slab with my own eyes” Esme shot back, dismissing Linda's plans to save each Shelby soul, as she tossed back whiskey doubles a dozen.

“ They'll have Romany funerals. If, and when, their bodies return to us, Linda” Polly settled the solemn matter before retreating once more into quiet contemplation.

“Nothing” Finn appeared quietly at the drawing room door, empty-handed, carrying the same cursed word he'd returned with for four days straight.

No more news. No more telegrams. No more fucking anything.

And yet there you remained. Still.

Every day, silently watching west, the widow of one month, waiting for a husband your cruel mind insisted you had no right to grieve. No right to mourn like the wives of his brothers as you clutched his last letter to you like a lifeline.

“ I can sit with you if you like? Watch with you?” Finn came up beside you, cautious not to spook you out of the solitude you'd shrouded yourself with as Frances appeared with yet another cup of England's remedy for every earthly sorrow.

“ Mrs Shelby, you must drink something at least” Frances tried where Polly had failed and where she would also fail, as she and Finn were met with a wall of silence and six cups of untouched tea neatly lined up beside you.

“ I need to have Arthur's best suit pressed” Linda, ignoring all logic in the face of grief, bargained with her own mind to make sense of the impossible as she tucked a frayed handkerchief beneath her sleeve, rising to her feet.

“ Can't press a suit with no dead body to dress it in, Linda” Esme stepped into her path, voice snapping beneath the weight of her own sorrow as her hazel eyes hardened.

“ Esme. Get out my way”

“ Girls” Polly's voice lacked its usual weight as her tired eyes turned to you, looking west for a husband three hundred feet under water.

“ Finn, go check the post” Polly sent her hovering nephew away from you, away from the fragile silence of a wife whose grief had yet to find its footing, who had yet to allow herself to feel anything at all.

“ I've already checked, Aunt Pol. Twice” Finn's unfiltered frustrations, his lingering longing for the girl he lost to his brother filled the room.

“ Then you'll check again. And again, until I say otherwise” Polly fiercely protected the fragile start to yours and Tommy's marriage, as you watched and waited for your husband to appear down Arrow house's winding road.

But as you did, eyes drifting beyond the line of larch trees to the open horizon, as if it was the Irish Sea your husband now haunted, nothing came.

No motorcar. No telegram. No Tommy.

Body heavy, you moved for the first time in four days as the room turned to see you silently slip away.

And as each slow footstep carried you through the foyer, past every small act of war you'd once waged against your husband, you didn't stop. You didn't falter. You walked steadily to his room, door closing softly behind you as you slipped under the covers, burying your face into his pillow as tears finally soaked through the Holland linen.

And only then did the ritual begin. Only then did you let yourself mourn.

Oh, my dear. My sweet, sweet, dear.

“ Blankets. Warm water. And keep those reporters away from my ward” The head matron in Holyhead moved through the corridors, herding nurses ahead of her through the hysteria of a hundred new survivors dragged from the sea that morning.

“ Yes, Sister”

The white-frocked women replied in unison before disappearing behind curtained corners to tend to those hanging on by a heartbeat.

“ Matron Hughes” a young doctor, fresh out of school with a polished accent and an eagerness to prove himself, appeared beside the seasoned sister with his clipboard. “How many did we lose during the night?”

“ Thirty seven, doctor” she replied without pause, a number that now belonged to history. To every classroom that would learn of the maritime disaster that saw more souls sink to the sea bed than pulled to the surface.

“ And these three?” he stopped beside the frozen bodies of three men, blanketed in heavy wool and Hessian.

“ Found hypothermic, and half dead the morning after she went down, doctor”

“ Hm” He gave a humming half-reply, stethoscope slipping between his fingers as he listened to the water-locked lungs of the closest man.

“Ex military. Soldiers” He straightened slightly, respect rising in his chest as his eyes scanned the pale arm inked with the scars of the Great War.

“ They said anything yet?”

“ Nothing much we can make sense of, doctor. My girls did their best taking their names” The head Matron stepped forward, eyes drifting from each man until they settled on the shivering soldier in front of her.

“ Though this one…won't stop asking for same person”

“ Who?” The doctor looked up from his clipboard, pen pausing over the page.

“ His wife” She replied, the hardened years of dealing with death and sickness softening for a moment, at the simplest of requests a man could make.

“ Right” The young professional cleared his throat, composure settling back over him as he returned to the rigidity that kept him from caring too much.

“ Have their families been informed? Telegrams sent?

“ Yes. Though whether it will reach them in all this chaos…” The head matron sighed heavily, her words trailing away beneath the weight of an overwhelmed hospital.

“ See that it does” The doctor returned to his notes, reading through the details the exhausted nurses had managed to gather from each man in the mayhem.

“ Mrs Shawley has been informed of your safety by telegram, sent to your home in Warwick. Rest now” the young doctor's duty of care met every guideline given as he and the matron moved to the next ward, missing the mans weak protests in their wake.

“Shel…by. Mrs…Shelby”

Now, in any other circumstance I would tell the fool to sit down, shut up and get back in his bloody bed. But with you in mourning, and the mad bastard hell-bent on reaching Arrow House before Father Philips buried his belongings in a sixty foot coffin, I feel rather inclined to indulge his own particular brand of pratness.

“ Arthur. John. Get up” Tommy dragged the words from his lungs like sandpaper over wood as stiff joints carried him across the ward towards his brothers.

“ Wake up, you bastards” he grunted, bracing against the bedframe before his legs threatened to give way, as an unsuspecting Arthur stirred from sleep.

“ Can't feel my fucking legs, Tom” he mumbled, blinking awake to find a madman looming over him like something dragged straight out of a nightmare.

“ Oh, yeh?” Tommy groaned, sibling sympathy entirely absent as rigid muscles reached for the metal bedpan beside the bed.

With zero mercy and a plan that didn't wait for numb legs or frostbitten feet, Tommy dropped the heavy piss pot onto his brother.

“ Christ, Tommy!” Arthur yelped, startling a snoring John straight out of hypothermia like it was 1917 all over again.

“ Felt that though, didn't you, eh?” Tommy drew a full breath, leaning heavily against the welded bedframe, exhausted by the smallest of movements.

“ Your legs are working just fine, Arthur. Now, get up. Both of you. We're leaving”

“ Leaving? Bloody hell, Tommy, we can barely move” John's protests were heard loud and clear and completely ignored by your husband who'd inconveniently become an optimist now it suited him.

“ Barely’s better than bedridden” he muttered, reaching with a pained growl for his water-soaked socks and boots.

“ And where's it we're going, Tom?” Arthur hauled himself upright, every bone whining and wincing under his weight.

“ Home. We're going home”

And so they did.

The three brothers, bred in the muck of the West Midlands city that made them, commandeered a motorcar and got the hell out of Holyhead for home.

But as the rumbling engine fell silent on the frost-hardened drive early the following morning, each Shelby brother was left momentarily speechless by the sight before them.

“Christ…would you look at that” Arthur exhaled heavily, a rough hand dragging down his face as he stared up at Arrow House.

“ They're in mourning…” John's voice carried equal parts disbelief and dread as his eyes travelled from the black-draped windows to the bouquets of flowers gathered at the front door.

“ Easy, lads. We're dead men walking here” Tommy's warning came low, careful. For even he wasn't quite prepared to face a wife who believed she'd been widowed.

As his heavy hand pushed open the door to Arrow House, the three brothers were met with silence.

Not a single soul in sight, only the flicker of candlelight guiding them back into a home that had become a mausoleum of mourning.

That was until steady footsteps walked into the foyer, then the sharp crack of porcelain crashing to the floor followed as Frances stood frozen, staring at the Shelby brothers as if the rituals of mourning had conjured them into being.

For a moment, she would have sworn she was looking through grief into the faces of three ghosts, if not for the sound her shock had summoned.

Polly. Richie. Arney then Finn. One by one, they emerged into the foyer, halting as their eyes widened in disbelief as the three brothers stood before them, weak, weary and very much alive.

But it was the sound of a woman's cry that suddenly brought life back into Arrow House.

Linda. Rounding the corner, collapsing with a pained wail as her husband caught her mid-fall, gathering her against him with trembling arms.

“ Linda, love”

The sound of hurried footsteps flying into the foyer that lifted the shroud of sorrow.

Esme. Running to the man she'd spent four days believing lay beneath the Irish Sea as she collided into his open arms.

“ Easy, Es”

And while the two brothers stood reunited with the women who had mourned them, Tommy remained where he was. Alone. Eyes searching the halls of his home.

“ Where's my wife?”

For a long breath nothing could be heard but the heavy gallop of his own heart, when quietly, slowly, a door creaked open and you appeared.

Now, I could have written some long-awaited reunion where two fools finally faced their feelings for one another, crashing together like the final page of one of Cupid's long-lost romances, he tossed aside the day he became a cynical little shit.

But that's not what came to pass when, for the longest of beats, you stood rooted to the floor, staring at Tommy as though he might disappear if you dared to breathe. Dared to believe he was anything more than a cruel figment of your grieving mind.

Until, that was, when he softly said…

“ Come here. Come here, darling” Tommy's hand reached out slowly, the words little more than a whisper, as he waited with the kind of patience few would ever believe him capable of.

Slowly blinking through the glaze that had clouded your eyes, your feet carried you forward before your mind ever caught up as Tommy met you half way, wrapping his arms around you, burying his face into the crook of your neck, as he breathed every familiar inch of you in.

Then it hit. Every piece of him you'd mourned without ever realising you'd committed it to memory.

The weight of his hand at the back of your head. The familiar scent that had lingered in his empty bed. The steady strength of his body sheltering you safely from the world.

Grounded once more in something undeniably him, you finally lifted your hands, resting them against his broad frame as your arms settled around him in return.

Content to have held you for hours given half the chance, Tommy finally drew back.“ Let's sit down” he murmured lowly, guiding you to the drawing room with a steady hand to the small of your back as the rest of the family drifted after you, each carrying their own relief into a room that, only moments before, had been dressed for mourning.

After fifteen minutes of almost furious fussing over each of her nephews, cursing them for the chaos they'd caused, until she'd made every last one of them swear in blood never to darken her days with their deaths again, Polly finally released them to their waiting wives.

Bundled beneath thick wool blankets before a roaring fire, the brothers slowly recounted the ordeal that had held an entire nation's breath.

“ Thrown straight into the sea when she hit the hull” Arthur murmured over his whiskey, warmed by the spice and oak and his wife's body, nestled close beside him.

“ Feels like a knife to the chest when your’e tossed into water that fucking cold” John muttured around his cigar, as Esme grabbed his cheeks, stealing the smoke from his lungs with a ‘shut up’ and a snog.

They'd found their way back to their wives. Back to the mundane, meaningless little things that anchored them to one another

Linda's unwavering presence that kept Arthur tethered to normality.

Esme's spirited nature that kept John grounded to his roots.

And then there was you and Tommy.

Where do I even begin with the pair of you?

Because as each wife settled back into marriages that had been years in the making, there sat you and your husband of only one month, watching them under the weight of a blanket and the pressure to perform when you'd spent four weeks at war with one another.

“ How long did you wait, until rescue ships came?” Linda looked up at Arthur, eyes open and bright as you remained unsettled, searching for something under the heavy wool to distract yourself.

And that's when you found it, an unconscious little fidgeting of a ring.

Tommy's ring.

Without even a thought as to what you were doing, you spun your husband's signet ring around his little finger like a carousel that slowed the frantic turning of your chaotic heart.

He didn't stop you. He didn't even mention it. He simply shifted a little closer beneath the blanket, giving your restless fingers easier access to your own anchoring.

“ Lost count, love” Arthur finally answered, looking down at his wife as he absent-mindedly wound one of her curls around his finger.

“Never leaving land again. Not for King. Not for country. And not for no bloody Billy Boy” The chuckled remark should have drifted over everyone's head. But it didn't.

For the mention of the gruesome Glasgow gang had one man suddenly still. His ears prick with practised casualness. His thumb pause over a well-worn penny, flicking between his fingers before disappearing into his pocket.

Your father.

Slipping away, the sly old fox fancied himself clever enough to go unnoticed as conversation resumed, the room settling back into stories of survival while he edged quietly towards the door.

Though the fool had forgotten one important detail.

There was still a soldier in the room.

One who had never truly hung up his uniform. Never once lowered his guard where the bastard he blamed for his sister's death was concerned.

Your Uncle Richie.

Tommy's eyes swept the room, taking quiet stock of those gathered.

Arthur and John, buried once more in the story of the wreck, their wives tucked safely against their sides.

Polly, sat beside Finn, finally silencing the incessant click of his lighter with a bone-crushing squeeze of his hand.

Then, his eyes searched for your missing father, finding Richie instead. Already watching. Already an understanding forming between the two men where words were not needed.

While the king had been away...the court jester had been at play.

“ Stay here. Stay right here for me, love” Tommy murmured low into your ear, turning your hand in his with a steady, reassuring squeeze before he rose and slipped from the room with unhurried ease.

Halfway down the hallway, your father came to a halt as Tommy stepped into his path. A man entirely familiar with his own house, and every back corridor that would lead him to a stray.

“ Tommy” Arney nodded, slipping on charm as he closed the distance, intent on moving past your husband before he became the topic of conversation.

“ You mistook my wife's hospitality for a new home” Tommy stopped him with a handful of words, as your fathers eyes flicked up to see whatever tolerance that had once existed between marriage and family had already worn thin.

“Was just keeping watching, son. Keeping everything in order while you were gone”

Son.

Now that, that landed very wrong.

Tommy was already a son to one bastard of a man. And he had absolutely no intention of being claimed by another.

“ Collect your belongings, Arney. A car will be waiting out front for you” Tommy murmured, his boots already turning back toward you, back toward where he could feel the pull of your presence waiting for him.

But before he left, before he bothered to even look back, he gave one last warning.

“ If you ever come to my home, speak to my wife without my authorisation, my invitation, you'll learn exactly how i keep my house in order”

The sun over your family's brewery in Smethwick had already begun to set later that day when your uncle stepped out from beneath the loading dock rafters, winter light dappling through the rustling trees that bordered the quiet yard.

But as Richie walked the perimeter of the property, checking each lock, each gate with the efficiency of an old soldier, he didn't account for the one man who believed he'd been wronged by his dead wife's family.

“ Righteous, Richie” your father drawled, hands buried deep in his pockets as he pushed himself from the weathered fence into your uncle's path.

“ Arney” Richie murmured, stride unfaltering for some fuck that thought his stupid words and stupider thoughts meant something to him.

“ Always interfering aren't you, Rich? First my wife, God rest her soul…and now my daughter” your father didn't budge, didn't let your uncle bypass him with that composure, that control he held over everyone's head.

Boots coming to a stop, a feud that had simmered for over a decade finally came to the boil as your uncle stepped closer.

“ You killed my sister, Arney. Killed her with your affairs. Your disrespect. And the chokehold you had over her, everytime you told her you loved her”

“ I did love her!” your father snapped, clinging to the belief that a roof overhead and a full pantry were enough to excuse every night he'd disappeared into another woman's bed.

“ No. You loved the money. Loved the life I broke my back for her” Your uncle moved closer, control rapidly unraveling itself at the seams, as your fathers face twisted into something sinister.

“ You're a chancer, Arney. A con artist. You'd sell your daughter out for a…”

A gunshot suddenly shattered the winter air, as your uncle staggered then fell to the frostbitten ground, blood pouring from his chest turning the earth crimson in colour, with each gasp for a breath that wouldn't come.

“ You're right, Rich. I’m a chancer. And I've taken my chances with the Billy Boys” Arney tucked the revolver back into his trouser pocket as Richie's weakening eyes drifted high into the blue skies.  

“But I loved your sister, and I love my daughter. But one's gotta make a living, no, Richie? Gotta provide?" Your fathers corrupt concept on what makes a family man, fell on deafs ears as he loomed over your uncles dying body. 

“ Don't mind if i do, brother” he hummed, as he crouched down, slipping his worn, practiced fingers into Richie's suit pocket.

Wallet pulled from the dying warmth of a body, your father folded the bundle of notes into his pocket before tossing the empty leather on Richies bleeding chest as he stretched his back under the winter skies your uncle was losing his last breath to. 

“ Almost forgot” Arney reached deep, pulling out the old penny he'd kept like a trinket, a talisman, for ten years.

“ For the ferryman, Rich” Arney folded Richie's stiffening fingers around the coin before he turned on his back, leaving by the old train track out of the brewery with hands loose in his pockets, and a conscious as clear as the yard he'd let your uncle die alone in. 

With the last of his strength, Richie closed his hand around the penny before the wind carried away the final breath of a good man. 

He had spent his life trying to control those he loved. Not because he believed women belonged beneath men. Or because he thought obedience made a family. But because love had scarred him one time too many to never trust it again. 

And when a month ago, he'd arranged a marriage between you and Tommy without a second thought. To keep things strictly business. Structured with no expectations beyond the terms of a contract. It was done in the memory of your mother who had been failed by love. Done with the protective instincts of an uncle who had tried with all his might to keep the most precious thing in life safe.  

You. 

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

[Next Part] coming soon!

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And as the winter sun rose way out west in Warwickshire, where the morning dew glistened across the galloping grounds of your home, you had yet to learn of your husband's predicament. 

That was of course, until three women on varying levels of ferocity stormed through your front door with urgency, and even more dire news for those a thousand feet from Davy Jones's locker. 

“ Where is she? Where's the bastard's wife?” 

Linda. Ah, lovely Linda. 

And just behind her, came an enraged Esme, followed by a poised Polly who'd seen and survived every Shelby shitshow up to date. 

“ Ease up on the girl. Not her fault she's married to the prick” Esme's no-mess, matter-of-fact voice cut through the room as she twisted the top off a bottle of gin, before Linda landed the blame on your shoulders by sheer Shelby association.

“ Your husband dragged my Arthur across the Irish sea…” blondie began, newspaper rolled between her wedding ring and palm, you half expected to be hit around the back of the head with.

“ Nobody dragged anyone, Linda” Polly sat, voice and posture entirely blasé about the current situation, as you remained uninformed and looking absolutely bloody useless.

“ Arthur does in fact possess fully functioning limbs. Whether his brain is currently participating is highly debatable” The matriarch casually chastened her nephew's inner workings through an elegant tendril of smoke as she lit her cigarette.

As you sat there, looking between the three of them, Polly's knowing eye waiting to see if you'd join the other wives panic and Linda's righteous fury aimed at a man you called husband one hundred miles away. It was Esme who finally relieved you of the sudden wave of worry. 

“ The three bastards have only gone and got themselves lost at sea” she held your eye across the room, voice catching your heart mid-plummet to your stomach.

“The ship's gone missing” 

Missing. Not off course. Not steered into another harbour. Fucking missing. 

But that wasn't all. It was never just all. For when it came to the Shelby brothers, disasters lined themselves up like bullets. Each one another chamber loaded, another spin of the cylinder. A game of Russian roulette in predictability, outcome and ending.

“ Show her” Polly murmured, sharp eye watching your chest rise tighter, heavier, rattled despite the unwavering front you kept on everything Shelby. Everything Tommy.

Newspaper rolled out before you, fingers curling around the printed words, the headline didn't speak of your husband's missing ship. It spoke of another. A larger one. One whose engine had failed in the cold snap, in the freezing fog swallowing the Irish Sea. One whose anchors hadn't taken hold. One now believed to be moving blindly through the darkness on a collision course with the brothers vessel.

And her name?

The Valkyrie. 

Chooser of the slain. Decider of who lives and dies. 

Your breath didn't just stop in your chest. Hands didn't just pull away from the paper. You physically recoiled, as something unsettling unfurled inside you. Something that continued to shadow every corner of your thoughts, every inch of a motherless child's mind. 

Grief. 

You felt both your brain and body scrambling to prepare and punish you with the worst of outcomes. And as the other wives watched you, unified in the same level of urgency, Polly's eyes drifted to the door, where a set of ears were listening in, unexpectedly there to comfort you in the chaos. 

Arney. Your father. 

“ Right” Polly pulled herself up from the upholstered chair, stubbing her cigarette out, prepared to give a tough-love lesson in keeping one's wits about oneself. 

“ We're no use to anyone sitting duck, frightening ourselves, ladies” she looked to each of you, with the demanding eye of a woman who'd raised enough of her kin to know no Shelby ever went down without a fight or a fuck load of money to either bribe or bludgeon someone into making sure they came out unscathed. 

“ Let's see what the clever bastards been hoarding in the great big bloody safe of his” Polly turned for the door, mother hen fully expecting her three deflated little ducklings to follow suit. 

“ Miss Polly” Arney murmured with that characteristic charm, entirely lost on Polly as she strode out of the room, wise with years of dealing with wankers.

As the three of you followed, so did your fathers gaze as it swept past the distress on his daughter's face to the far end of the hallway where Tommy's study and safe sat. 

“ What good is money going to do when my Artie is missing in the middle of the Irish sea, Polly?” Linda's heels clicked sharply through the foyer, as Polly pushed open the study door, brass bell you'd fastened to the fixture weeks prior during your waging marital war, jingling joyously. 

Christ. 

“ Pay for their funerals and the bairns they've left behind for us to rear on our bloody own” Esme's words felt like a sharp knife of reality to a deep cut already weeping with worry. 

“ Esme” Linda turned on her sister-in-law, face scrunched up red like a slapped arse, as Polly spun the safes dial. 

“ She's not wrong, Linda. Although her delivery could do with a little more tact” Polly murmured, back to the bickering room, as you stood there in the middle of family dynamics you had yet to learn after a mere month of marriage. 

“ If the worst happens, we'll need money. And if it hasn't, then we'll need contacts” Polly's pragmatism kept the room from spiralling, as each spin of the Iron vaults dial failed to free itself open. “He's changed the bloody code” 

All eyes suddenly snapped to you. The wife. Because isn't that what wives should know? The codes, the numbers to the heart of their husbands daily life. 

What to do. Where to go. The safety net any man who cherished his wife's worth had put in place in case of a day, just like today. 

“ Frances…” you murmured quietly, swallowing back what felt like a sharp piece of shrapnel, that your husband had failed to entrust you with the codes to his safe, and instead, left them with the housekeeper. 

But the reality of it was a little more complicated, my dear. And watching you stand there feeling the heat of humiliation, I feel the irrepressible need to set the record straight and shake any silly thoughts out of you before they sowed themselves bone deep. 

Calling on Frances. Somebody please fetch the wearied woman before miss misery makes a mountain out of a molehill.

“Can I help, Ma'am?” Frances appeared at the threshold, passing the prowling presence of your father in the foyer, as she stood like a divine intervention sent to you via courier by Cupid himself. 

“ The code for the safe, Frances. It appears my idiot nephew decided to change it without having the common sense of informing his wife” Polly's patience for every prat in her life was threadbare as she waited by the welded vault. 

“ Yes, Ma'am” Frances stepped into the room, professional in every sense but undoubtedly sharing the sentiments of the Shelby matriarch. “Mr Shelby changed the code a week after the wedding” 

“ To what?” 

“ To Mrs Shelby's birthday, Ma'am” 

Mrs Shelby's birthday. 

Now, before you start over-analysing every syllable, before you tell yourself Frances had ill-informed you and it was, in fact, the birthday of a previous Mrs Shelby, I would urge you to move your arse and find out for your bloody self.

“ Well. That's rather stupid” You cleared your throat, head tilting a little higher like you wasn't entirely affected by the implications of it all. 

“ Stupid. How romantic of you, love” Polly was halfway to shaking her head with amusement at your own flaring ferocity as she watched your heels strike closer to the iron vault.

“ Yes. Anybody that knows me, knows how to get into his safe. Frankly, It's completely impractical and highly idiotic” you murmured with a tone that said you were completely unaffected by the gesture, as your hovering hand, shaky over the silver dial, did not, and would not, ever prove anybody's point as long as you lived that you were anything other than unbothered. 

There. I think I made the point clear enough for you, darling. 

You absolutely were affected.

Dial turning right, then left, then right again, your fingers curled around the handle, bracing yourself for further humiliation when it wouldn't open.

But the heaviness of embarrassment didn't come. Instead, a cold breeze met your heated cheeks as the door swung open and your breath quietly left your lips.

“ Move, child” Polly murmured gently as you absent-mindedly stepped aside, eyes fixed on the safe, willing it to bloody well explain itself for this sudden show of sentiment that had knocked you off your axis.

Stood with far away thoughts, stretching as far as the Irish sea where the man responsible for your sudden slip in composure waited for a way back home to you, Polly crowded the safe, hands pulling out bundles of cash, address books, telephone numbers, shipping contacts and emergency names. When her fingers suddenly stilled over a file named…

Billy Boys. 

“ Christ, Thomas” Polly muttered under her breath, all but a whisper in a room full of worry and three wives waiting on her next word. 

The Billy Boys weren't news to Polly. She knew of the Protestant group rising in the north. The steady drip of dock trouble slipping down south to Liverpool, where the Shelbys held the quayside with a dozen armed men. 

But what she didn't know, what she hadn't anticipated, was just how heavy a file your husband had compiled on the gang of men who killed with the grandiose belief that God was on their side. 

Door slammed shut. Dial spun. Polly turned around to you with half a thought already forming, when the finery of your father's polished shoes stepped into the study.

“ Poppet?” 

There it came again.

The heavy sound of the Valkyrie’s horn, cutting through the fog and freeze of the Irish Sea, answering the stranded passenger ship not with a rescue call, mercy, or relief from the rabid fear that had taken hold of the vessel. But a warning.

A blind, useless fucking warning no one could see coming, yet felt creeping ever closer through the thick white wall of fog.

Death. It was death. 

Just like the papers had predicted.

And as four hundred passengers broke into panic, scrambling for lifeboats, for wooden like coffins that would be crushed under the Valkyrie’s hull if the two ships met in open water, the three Shelby brothers stood at the stern.

And watched. Waited.

“ What's the plan, boys?” Arthur’s chest rose sharply, teetering on the edge of fight or flight, as his sharp blues swept over the chaos. Children screaming for safety, women clutching their husbands as terror took over the deck, while the Valkyrie blew her horn again, bristling the neck of everyone aboard.

She was close. Very close.

“ Fuck!” John shouted, teeth bared, fisting the iron railings as a surge of men pushed up against the metal beside him, squinting through the fog in a futile attempt to find her flagpole. “ We're sitting ducks out here!” 

“ The plan boys?!” Arthur's head snapped back to his brother, yanking John from the railings as Tommy stayed silent. 

For as commotion unfolded around him, your husband had come to the harrowing calculation that they couldn't bargain their way out of this one.

They were at the mercy of something that didn’t care about names or reputation.

For the seas abyss had a place for everyone, even those named Shelby. And for a man who had spent a lifetime waiting for a way out, to be offered one without consequence, without burden, Tommy had suddenly found the only reason he wanted to stay.

You.

The thought of you, his wife, back home in Warwickshire didn't leave him or soften into something sentimental. It sharpened and surged, with a reason to survive as his eyes drifted homebound through the fog, east towards England. 

“ Arthur” 

“ Tom” Arthur’s attention snapped to his brother, the Sergeant surfacing in him in the face of survival, ready with orders to pass down the line.

“ Stop the lifeboats. Nobody leaves until we can see her” 

“ On it” Arthur took off immediately through the crowd of frantic families, rushing for safety, for something more than a fool's hope. 

“ John” 

“ Tommy” John spun, straightening instinctively, standing to attention with the confidence that his comrade in arms, his brother, would see them through.

“ Go down deck. Make sure no one panics the passengers into the water” 

As the brothers moved, Tommy remained at the stern, eyes fixed into the thick fog before slowly closing, waiting for the Valkyrie’s cry.

“ One. Two. Three. Four. Five…” He counted each beat between, each breath, as she came closer.

“ Six” Tommy whispered as she blew again, the sound rolling across the hull, swallowing both time and distance. 

It wasn't random anymore. It wasn't just a warning. She was counting them in, counting them down until there was nowhere left to go. 

For anyone else it would have sounded like a death call. Something to be feared, to flee from. But to Tommy, whose mind worked like a well oiled machine, it was familiar. It was fact. 

“ I’m coming home” He opened his eyes to Arrow House, to you, through the fog and the hundreds of miles between.

“ I'm coming home to you, darling” 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

You counted each stroke of the grandfather clock in the drawing room as it ate up time entirely, swallowing the space around you until it became the only thing loud enough to block out the room.

Linda's sobs had fallen silent in your ears around ten o'clock that morning. Esme's pacing to and from the window, at noon. Polly's fingers drumming against the armrest at two. And your uncle's thumb turning the pages of the morning's paper, reading every sentence, every word, over and over again until it was seared somewhere deep in the mind of a soldier, had finally fell silent at four o'clock. 

The headlines from previous days had predicted it. The Valkyrie had hit.

And as the fog parted the next morning like some cruel curtain call after a night of iron crushing steel, of wood splintering and souls screaming for a saviour, the country waited to hear how many had perished in the cold, watery deep

“ Go lay down, girl” your uncle's steady voice came from behind you, hand settling on your shoulder with a gentle squeeze, urging you to rest your tired eyes away from the clock and sleep.

But no reply came.

No reaction rendered itself beyond a slow blink as your thoughts remained submerged somewhere deep beneath the Irish Sea with your husband as Richie's hand left your shoulder, eyes hardened, back straightened, turning for the hallway in search of Arrow House's stray.

The words did not wash over me, ladies. I was not ignorant to your rebel yell, your thirst for blood as you chanted, “Fuck Arney” in spectacular succession.

And while I'm partial to a good culling of deserving cunts, this particular one is about to show his true colours.

It is imperative, my dear, that you watch closely. Because depravity rarely announces itself with fanfare. More often than not, it walks into a room with all the characteristics of a charming man. 

“Fuck” your father muttered quietly, stood in Tommy’s office, fingers spinning the dial of your husband’s safe. The frustration of failing to open it for the tenth time heating his blood like hellfire.

“ Five…no twenty, twenty…shit” he mumbled, jaw working as that casual charm curdled into something ugly and undignified. “ One, eight…come on you bastard. Come on” 

“ What's wrong, Arney? Can't get it open?” your uncle's voice cut through the room, disgust deepening it into something that rarely surfaced. 

His own daughter. He didn’t know. Didn’t bother to remember his own daughter’s fucking birthday, so he could rob her blind while her husband’s fate hung between heaven and earth.

“ Richie…” Arney turned, arms unfurling, trying to summon charm from something already charred inside of him.

“ Your daughters in the other room” Richie stepped forward, steady as a soldier now.

“ Her husband is lost at sea” 

Another step. 

“ And here you stand. Awful Arney.  Monetising off your own bloods misery” 

Another.

“ You never did notice her. Never did notice my sister…” 

“ You're not so righteous yourself, Richie” your father stupidly stood his ground, suddenly struck by some sense of superiority when he spat the words...

“ Don't talk to me about my own child when you've killed how many children, ay? How many sons in the Battle of the Somme did you kill, Rich?” 

Richie lunged forward, slamming your father against the safe, losing every inch of composure he’d constructed since the end of the war, the one he'd built so he’d never, never be haunted by another dead man’s face.

“ I should have killed you when my sister stopped sleeping” your uncle hissed, fist twisting into your father’s shirt, tightening like a tow rope dragging something back from the sea.

"When she stopped eating. When she cried herself sick waiting for you to come back” Richie's grip tightened again, watching you father writhe beneath him without a flicker of mercy. 

“ When she walked out the door for the last time onto those tracks and..."

Your uncle stopped, breath hitching, lungs dragged air like it physically hurt to hold the words as he let them hover there instead, trembling on the edge of saying something irreversible.

Not here Richie. Please.

Not today. Not like this with her in the next room. Not when she still believed her mother had simply been taken by illness.

But as one man's grief buried itself deeper, the wail of another's tore through the empty halls of Arrow House.

Linda. 

Head snapping towards the sound, your uncle's grip loosened, let go as his boots followed the cries of a wife back into the drawing room, where Linda stood weeping, crushing her cross to her chest.

Where Esme’s eyes wide and haunted, folded to the floor in a single breath.

Where you stood. A telegram trembling in your hand. Shaken into a thousand-mile stare as the printed words settled over every woman in the room.

Presumed dead. 

Yet even as the words hung over Arrow House like a burial cloth, as tears fell and hearts broke, somewhere beyond Warwickshire sat another telegram. Undelivered and waiting.

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

[Next Part] coming soon!

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Sharpnel. The emotional injuries a child collects in the crossfire between two warring parents.

Wreckage. What's left after anger has finished throwing its weight around a room. 

Turmoil. How life is lived in the echo of each battle. 

And what word should we give the current state of affairs? 

Because I'm trying to be gentle, my dear. Trying to guide you far away from the fallout of your father's misgivings, even now, even after all these years. 

But the one word that just won't let me be, that keeps pushing its way through my pen no matter how many times I try to erase it from your history is…

Inheritance. 

Not the inheritance of wealth or wisdom, but the inheritance of wounds. Deep, painful ones. 

The sins of a father. The misery of a mother. A cycle handed down like an heirloom. An ugly thing that had circled back to the present. Back to this very moment, where you stood on the steps of Arrow House watching Tommy and his brothers pack their bags into the Bentley.

For as dawn broke through the mist, settling on the marigolds that once became the burying ground of your waging war on Tommy’s wrongdoings, you looked absolutely fucking miserable.

Gone was the girl who fired back as fast as a gunshot, as she watched her husband sling his suitcase into the boot of his car.

Gone was the girl who stood poised and perfected, with the pettiness of a woman who knew her wit could outsmart her husband’s stubborn will.

Gone was you, and in your place stood the ghost of your mother, watching your father fuck off to God knows where to do God knows what.

But the difference is, darling, that bastard, the one right there, eyes flicking back to you as he stood beside his Bentley, jaw working into something that looked an awful lot like regret, wasn’t your father.

Now don’t get me wrong. He’s a bloody idiot, that much we're well aware of. But he's also a man of his word. One who, I might add, has yet to tell you his dalliances in downtown London are a thing of the past.

Straighten up, girl. Quick now. He’s heading this way. 

Shift that slouch into the stance of the strong woman I know you are.

“ Ship leaves Liverpool docks for Holyhead, nine sharp” he murmured around his cigarette as he stopped in front of you, eyes dragging over your silk dressing gown rippling wistfully in the Warwickshire winds.“ Then it's straight to Ireland” 

Yes, yes. We know all this.

Now what about that other matter?

That rather significant decision you made yesterday.

The one where you, the philandering fuckboy, finally hung up your bachelor belt.

“ We'll port sometime tonight…” he added, as John and Arthur shifted behind him, grimacing through the painful spectacle of their brother attempting basic human interaction. “ Weather permitted” 

Christ on a tricycle.

And, Thomas?

And…

“And...” he murmured through a wisp of smoke, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he searched for his bearings. For his footing. For where exactly he stood on your emotional barometer.

For Tommy could negotiate with gangsters, politicians and murderers, but seemingly couldn't find the words to tell his wife that despite the thousands she'd spent practising her pyrotechnics with his money, despite the warfare she'd waged on his beloved whiskey, and despite every single headache she'd gifted him since the day they married...

He was going to miss her.

He was going to miss his wife.

“ …Tell the gardeners not to touch the south hedge. They've butchered it twice already" he finally finished, completely fucking up his long awaited thought as his eyes drifted across the lawn to said hedge looking nothing the butchered bush, and everything a perfectly pruned privet. 

“ The south hedge…” you repeated quietly, eyes fixed on his, squinting through the rising sun stretching over Arrow House's sprawling grounds.

 “Aye” he doubled down, blowing a stream of smoke heavenward, the only tell to his masterful mind currently berating him for every stupid syllable, was the way his gaze kept cutting to you in the corner of his eye as he silently willed his words out of existence.“ South hedge” 

The bloody hedge. 

He knew it was stupid. His brothers knew it was stupid. You knew it was stupid. And I wouldn't put it past the hedge itself, victim of these heinous accusations, knowing it was stupid.

Oh, Thomas. 

God help you. Someone bloody help you. 

“ Tom. We need to get move on…” Arthur, the unlikely hero to his brother's helplessness, stepped in, saving Tommy from further self-inflicted torment. “ Long drive and all”  

“ Right” your husband cleared his throat of the morning gravel, taking a final drag, a final stolen glance at you through the smoke as he turned to leave, when…

“ You not gonna kiss your husband goodbye, love?” 

Arthur. Bloody Arthur. 

That conniving, conspiring, gangly gangster I would bet every penny I possessed had colluded with our little chubby cherub up in heartbreak heaven.

Alright, ladies. I hear you. Loud and bloody clear. Your screams for me to scribble out a snog are ringing at a rather murderous pitch in my ears.

You’re right. The bastard doesn’t deserve an ounce of affection. But before you decide I’m daft, before you damn me to kingdom come, just hear me out.

You and Tommy have a lifetime together. And although your husband had failed to inform you he wanted more than an arrangement. More than any business deal. You had to start from somewhere, had to move past your stubbornness and his stupidity if you were ever going to make something of a marriage made from a snowstorm and a scandal. 

“ Arthur…” Tommy muttered, now the one to save you, to step in before the pressure of performing as his wife led to your embarrassment.

But even then, even as he gave his brother a murderous look to quit his mithering, he couldn't help but cast a curious glance your way. 

Would you? Would you give your husband the simplest of things? A kiss?

Caught between Arthur’s stupid grin, chewing a chunk of gum, and John’s smirk as he twirled a toothpick between his teeth, your eyes landed on Tommy.

It was just a gesture. You told yourself as you stepped forward. 

Something to shut the Shelby brothers up. To stop another mouthy maid from flooding the West Midlands with your marital woes.

Just procedure. Part of being the dutiful wife who sees her husband off at the doorstep before he ventures beyond the borders of your home.

Just a kiss. 

But when you came foot to foot with your husband, you felt your resolve falter under the weight of his unwavering stare,  watching every fraction of movement as he waited for you to close the gap. 

Leaning in, your mouth hovered a hesitant breath, before a brush became a kiss. A soft locking of lips became an embrace.  And as Tommy's body folded into yours, a gentle hand to your cheek, became one man's hope as he deepened his desire for you. 

“ There we go. That wasn't so bad, eh?” The eldest Shelby broke the spell, hands slapping together like a thunderclap, as your lips parted and Tommy silently prayed for the hammer-wielding God himself, to strike his brother down where he stood.

“ Right. Come on then, kids. Chop chop” Arthur’s mischief knew no limits as he landed a heavy hand on Tommy’s shoulder before swaggering towards the four-seater and an amused John.

Hand fixed firmly against your cheek, a breath of frustration left Tommy as he traced your bottom lip with a sweep of his thumb. A frustration born of his brother's interruption, but one that had quickly tangled into a man's frustration with himself, that he could read everyone's mind but yours. 

For as your husband looked down at you, he still didn’t know where he stood. Still didn’t know what he was to you beyond ink on a marriage certificate locked away safely in his study.

And for a man like Thomas Shelby that was a very fucking frustrating thing.  

“ Go inside” he murmured, the words coming out like orders he hadn’t meant to give, one after another in a chain of command he couldn’t seem to stop.

“ Frances has the code for the safe. Hotel number is on my desk. And…eat. Eat something” 

Ah, there he is. The Tommy we all know and begrudgingly love. Expecting his wife of one month to somehow decipher the workings of his mind and everything it refused to say out loud.

Allow me…

Go inside – it's freezing, and I don't want you to catch your death on me. 

Frances has the codes – there’s money in the safe, and I feel guilty as sin. Spend it.

Hotel number on the desk – ring me…please. 

And eat – don’t you dare waste away and make me a widower before I’ve even learnt how to be your husband.

There we are, dear. Deciphered by yours truly. 

Now, where were we…

“ Hurry up, Romeo! We've got a boat to board” John boy called out, the jeering jokester to every meaningful moment as Tommy gave one last lingering gaze over your features before letting go. 

Boots moving, coat tails catching the cool morning breeze, your husband turned for the car without a single glance back until he was seated. Until the wheels ground down the drives gravel. Until he was halfway down the lane, far enough away for distance to soften the sting of rejection, did his eyes drift to the rear-view mirror. Just in case. Just in case you were still there…

And there you were. There was his wife. 

The route to Liverpool had been a long drive for Tommy as he sat in silence, dwelling on your doorstep kiss. 

The crossing to Holyhead had been smooth sailing, allowing him ample opportunity to slip away from the herd of families, labourers and farm workers making their way home across the Irish Sea.

And as he boarded the vessel bound for Ireland, to meet with his contacts outside of England, outside of politics and the precipice of a gang war with the Billy Boys who'd steadily been choking the Liverpool routes, he sat in solitude with a sour whiskey and an equally sour mood. 

For a month, a battle had waged between you. A month of routine, of reckless words, of refusing to consider one another anything more than unwilling companions bound by the terms of a contract.

And now, as Tommy sat at the bar with a long week of meetings ahead of him to unfuck the fuckery the Scots had made of his orderly world, the liquor turning in his hand felt tasteless compared to his wife's clever little war on his whiskey.

“ Another, sir?” the barman gestured with a rag towards the mahogany bar, giving it a rough wipe down as Tommy watched the amber liquid slosh against the sides of his tumbler.

“No” the answer came easy enough as he settled the crystal glass down with a steady clink. “Pressed apple” 

It was a highly unexpected order from a man who looked like he'd murder you for making his Martini wrong, but one that made complete sense to you and I. To your husband, whose lips twitched with amusement as he slowly swirled the freshly poured drink around his glass.

Apple juice.

Christ.

After all the threats, all the arguments, all the warfare you'd waged upon his drinks cabinet, your menacing little mind had somehow managed to ruin whiskey for him.

But as he raised the glass to his lips, offering a silent toast to his beautiful wife's brilliance, his quiet moment of contemplation was suddenly interrupted by an invasion of perfume and the sound of sky-high heels. 

“ Do you have light?” Came the sultry sound of a woman's voice beside him, stood draped in fur and diamonds, looking every inch the Dublin-born debutante.

No. Be gone, woman! Leave the brooding bastard to us and strut your stilettos elsewhere.

For Thomas has become a born-again husband, and I refuse to watch some diamond-draped Jezebel drag him back to the sins we've spent seven chapters trying to beat out of him.

Eyes flicking over the rim of his glass, Tommy’s gaze settled on her batting lashes and red-stained lips smiling back at him with an offer of a discreet dalliance below decks. A shag with no strings attached.

A month ago he would have. Hell, two weeks ago he would have, if it meant he could muffle the relentless whirling of thoughts in his mind.

But Tommy wasn’t thinking about ways he could numb himself from the chaos within. He was thinking about the way back to his wife, and the chaos you’d created together.

“ Keep it” he murmured, tossing his lighter onto the counter, dragging his drink along the weathered wood into his hand as she headed for his cabin. 

“ Stay for a drink?” she called out, hopeful for a distraction from her boredom before the ship docked.

Coming to a stop, Tommy’s eyes cast over his shoulder, not to her, not to the triumph prematurely tilting at the corner of her lips, but to the barman stood beside a long line of liquor.

 “A whiskey for the lady” 

“ And for you, sir?” she cooed, already basking in the idea she’d bagged herself a Brummie gangster for the night, as Tommy turned to face her fully.

“ Oh, I've already got a drink, love” he drawled, raising his glass, watching her practiced smile slip clean out of its debutante charm.

“ And a wife, that'll expect a letter from me on her bedside table when she wakes” 

And with that, your husband turned out of the bar, up the stairs, and into the quiet of his room, shutting himself away into the routine he’d built since the morning after your wedding.

Except this time, he'd sign his note…

“Yours Sincerely, Tommy”

Back at Arrow House, it had been four days since Tommy left for Dublin. Four days since the King had abandoned his castle, entrusting the reign of power to his Queen, who, quite frankly, was doing a rather shit job of it.

You see, whilst you may be masterful when it came to marital warfare, to holding Arrow House under siege through flying flowerpots, the humans under your employment unfortunately did not survive on spite alone.

Substance was, in fact, required for basic survival.

Cupid, for the love of your cheruby cheeks, please shoot an arrow into the arse of our precious protagonist before she withers away in her wallowing.

Because that's exactly what you were doing, currently perched on the edge of your bed, trying to decipher the ending of Tommy's letter that had arrived the day prior, whilst the people under your roof cried out for something heartier than half a day old bread.

“Yours sincerely” had somehow become "Yours when I'm guilty”

“Yours when I'm not out the county and country”

“Yours when it suits me”

There felt nothing sincere about it as fear took hold and you found yourself missing the marital warfare that kept him coming back. Missing the witty words that kept him on his toes. Missing him.

Shit. You missed him.

Well, this was a catastrophic marital miscommunication. Written sincerely by Tommy, and read as another confession of sin by you.

Yet as your finger traced over your husband's name, you didn't toss the letter aside. Didn't shove it out of sight and out of mind. Instead, you folded it neatly and nestled it into the drawer of your bedside table, where a month's worth of notes sat stacked together like a paper trail of your marriage.

Downstairs however, command had already taken control, a different way of doing things steadily etching itself into the foundations of Arrow House.

“Have the deliveries come through the back road” your father instructed Frances as he stood in the foyer, taking the helm of a household left to its own devices. “ Front drives no good in this weather” 

“ Mr Shelby has always insisted on deliveries be brought to the front of the house, sir. Where he can see who's coming and going” Frances' professional veneer didn't so much as flicker as she remained steadfast to the rules your husband had put in place.

“ Mr Shelby ain't here though, is he Francesca?” Your fathers charm curdled as it met the resistance of your housekeeper and where her loyalties lay. 

“ Gravel up front is fifty percent mud. Tyres will get stuck. It's basic mathematics, pet” Arney insisted, chewing the inside of his cheek, a wide smile of disbelief spreading across his face at your headstrong housekeeper, when the sound of your heels descended the staircase.

“ Poppet!” Your father swiveled on his Derbys, arms opening as he closed the gap, drawing you into the fold of your own bloody foyer.

“ What's going on?” you murmured, caught between two very strong opinions on how Arrow House ought to be run.

“ The grocer's delivery Ma'am. Mr Shelby…” 

“ Is a sensible man, Franny” your father cut in, butchering your housekeeper's name for a second time as he continued to hold court in a home that wasn't his.

“ Best they come through the back, Poppet. Saves Shelby the hassle of gritting the drive again”

“ Right…” you muttered quietly, looking between them over what felt like the most mundane of matters. “ Have them pull up behind the house, Frances” 

“ Yes, Ma'am” Your housekeeper replied with poise and professionalism, in no position to argue with the lady of the house whose word became law in the absence of her husband.

And just like that the great debacle over Arrow House's driveway had been settled. Or so you thought. 

Because as Frances stepped out the foyer, another pair of steady feet stepped in. 

Richie. Uncle Richie. 

“ Gravel can be gritted for pennies. Tyres can be replaced” Your uncle's voice came quiet as his boots breached the marble flooring, carrying him further into the foyer.“ People slipping in through blind spots however…”

“ Those are a lot harder to account for” he paused, stopping directly in front of your father with a steadiness about him that rarely splintered.  

“ Brewery waste needs checking back in Smethwick, Arney” Richie directed your father away from Arrow House, from the helm of command he'd begun to commandeer.

“ Already sorted, Rich” your father pushed back, turning the temperature ten degrees colder into something dangerous as the tension between brothers-in-law began to freeze. 

Stance unflinching, your uncle didn’t just lock onto your father with the eyes of a man who held half the West Midlands brewery rights, he locked on with the discipline of a soldier waiting for the opposing side to tread further into enemy territory.

 And as that lone penny of Arney’s turned like a talisman born out of habit in his tweed pocket, Richie’s attention shifted to you. 

“ Go take tea in the drawing room. I'll join you when I'm done” 

“ Uncle” Your voice cut through before you could check it, before the politeness you were raised on had time to surface.

You were tired. So fucking tired. 

A grown woman being ushered out of every room your uncle had ever chosen to control, since he took you in after your mother died.

“ She can't be controlled, Richie. Just like her…” 

“ Now” Your uncle cut straight through your father’s words, killing them before they were born as he nodded for you to leave.

Your steps were hesitant, the unfinished revelation hanging in the air behind you, curiosity denied its answer as you were quietly ushered out of the room.

And once the door was shut, once Richie was certain you were safely out of earshot, he turned on your father.

“ You don't ever think you can utter my sister's name in front of me, or my niece again” his voice was cold, clipped of any remaining courtesy, any trace of the fragile bond that once existed between men tied by marriage.

For a long beat neither of them spoke. And as Arney exhaled a slow breath between them, penny pausing in his pocket, cruelty dressed itself up as concern. 

“ You're cracking at the seams, Richie. Cracking, in the head. Just like she was” 

It was only when the engine changed that Tommy looked up from his tumbler aboard the LMS crossing back to Britain.

The room didn’t register it as glasses still clinked, cigar smoke still curled into the air,  laughter still lingered over the bar like nothing in the world outside the hull mattered more than the heat of whiskey warming cold bones.

But for three men, sat still and silent, born on narrow boats, raised around machinery, the gentle halt of a coal-fuelled lullaby that once would’ve sent them to sleep, couldn’t have been louder.

“ Something's wrong” Arthur murmured lowly, glass pausing midway to his lips as his eyes scanned the room, landing on the small painted porthole window.

“ Can't see for shit” John muttered, brow creasing as he squinted out into the Irish Sea now swallowed by a heavy fog. 

“ We've stopped” Tommy's voice came quiet, controlled, as he lowered his glass, and lifted his eyes toward the sound of boots above deck, dozens moving in the dead calm of the night. 

Oh, fuck. 

Within seconds he was on his feet, his brothers following a fraction behind as their boots hammered up the stairs and onto the deck.

It wasn't mayhem. There was no frantic rushing of bodies, no passengers succumbing to panic, trampling on one another in their desperation to understand what the hell was happening.

But there was an eerie stillness. A sheath of white wrapping itself around the vessel, swallowing both sea and sky until the ship seemed suspended in nothingness.

“Oi” Arthur caught a passing sailor by the collar, shiny black boots and a pressed uniform suddenly making the lad the most important man aboard the ship.

“Why've we stopped?” Tommy stepped forward before the sailor could stammer out some rehearsed reassurance, the air of authority making it abundantly clear he didn't want the shite they'd feed the socialites to keep them drinking their shandy. Nor the stories they'd tell frightened children to keep them calm.

He wanted facts. Because facts drew the line between surviving and succumbing.

And with a wife waiting at home, he now desperately wanted to return to, facts were the only thing that would get him safely back to her.

“ Come on, lad. Spit it out. We sinking or not?” Arthur encouraged, giving the boy,  barely past his teens, a chance to offer something more than the stuttering one-word syllables he'd managed so far in the face of three gangsters.

“ Strand-ed…sir” 

“ Stranded…” Tommy repeated, the word barely more than a whisper as the first fact was put forward, and his first thought went straight to you. 

“ Nah, fuck this. I've got a wife and five thousand bloody kids at home” John piped up, temper flaring as Arthur finally released the grey-faced lad from his grip.

“ We've all got wives, John boy” Arthur muttered, as the sailor all but bolted across the deck before one of the Shelby brothers decided to throw him overboard as the first casualty of the maritime mess, while Tommy stood there silently…thinking. 

Stranded meant mechanical failure. Mechanical failure meant delays. Delays meant exposure. Exposure meant uncertainty.

But morning would come. The skies would clear. The sea would settle.

He'd step off the gangway, find the nearest telephone, and call you before your imagination could put miles between you and places he couldn't reach. Before you convinced yourself he'd abandoned you for some hotel room. Some brothel. Some stranger's body that wasn't yours.

It was a good plan. A good bloody plan.

So why were the sailors panicking?

Why were officers moving across the deck like men racing against the clock?

I'll tell you why, my dear. 

Because the LMS service from Dublin to Holyhead wasn't the only vessel stranded in the Irish Sea that night.

And as a fog so thick it swallowed the horizon whole, currents shifted dangerously beneath black water and visibility was measured in mere yards, another ship was out there somewhere, moving blindly through the darkness. 

God help them all.

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

[Next Part] coming soon!

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