METHOD OF MADNESS ━ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐛𝐲 ¹ (Under editing)

𝒾. 𝐹𝑜𝓊𝓇: grand entrance

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : feel something - jaymes young

⇄ ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ ↻

i. four: ❝grand entrance❞

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Small Heath, Birmingham

THE STREETLIGHTS FLICKERED WEAKLY, casting long shadows across the uneven pavement, and Marianna leaned against the brick wall, cigarette dangling from her fingers as though it were an extension of her mood. Each puff was measured, deliberate, curling smoke around her like a veil, the ember illuminating her sharp, hazel eyes and the fine line of her lips, the corners quirked with a mixture of disdain and desire. Her boots tapped a quiet rhythm, echoing the thrum of her pulse, a beat that belonged to no one but her—and yet, inevitably, to him.

Tommy approached, the familiar swagger of his stride unsettlingly measured, as if he knew the exact cadence of her heartbeat. "Have you been waiting?"

Marianna flicked ash into the gutter, lips curling around a smoky laugh, eyes narrowing. "Mr. Shelby, it's been ten minutes. What have you been up to—saving the empire, or scheming more ways to get yourself shot?"

"Aunt Pol needed a word." He said, extracting a cigarette from his back pocket. He offered it to her with a calm, almost intimate gesture, lighting his own first.

She accepted it, inhaling slowly, savoring the smoke, the heat, the tension that hung between them like the thick, cold air around their ankles.

"Bloody hell." Flicking away the spent butt of her previous cigarette, she raised an eyebrow, lips parting slightly. "Planning my demise, are we?"

Thomas tilted his head, smoke curling from his lips, the ember of his cigarette glowing like a secret smouldering between them, fragile yet burning bright.

"If I were planning a murder," he murmured, voice low, intimate, a thread of danger woven into its cadence, "I certainly wouldn't do it in front of my own establishment. Terrible for business."

"Terrible for business, maybe," Marianna's lips curved, a wicked, deliberate smile tugging at the corners, the kind that promised both trouble and delight. She leaned in just enough that the smoke from her cigarette tangled with his, her warm breath brushing against the cool night, the faint tang of him reaching her senses like a second heartbeat. "but perfect for temptation."

Her gaze roamed deliberately over him, tracing the hard planes of his face, the sculpted curve of his jaw, and then deliberately, provocatively, to the faintest hint of steel in his eyes. Her mind lingered on the argument earlier, the sting of his dismissal, the way his eyes had looked through her like glass. She remembered the fire behind those blue depths, the unspoken claims and unclaimed promises.