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There were rare moments in any man's life where he would have to choose between love or power. Thomas Shelby was a man who would always choose business, or at least so he thought. He'd never had the option to choose love, so he presumed he'd never need to choose it. That was until Francis came along.
He remembers the day him and Francis met. It was in the garrison. She was wearing a light blue dress cinched tightly at the waist. Her now mid-back length hair was then just above her shoulders bunched into loose curls, and instead of her natural lips they were adorned with a deep shade of rouge.
She had come for a job. The garrison was in need and Harry had apprehensively taken her on. When the three brothers bumped into her she had a fierce fire in her gaze. Her cheeks were plump and rosy and her skin bright like the moon.
Nothing like the woman he now looked at.
Her eyes had grown tired, her usual plump soft face was hardened and skinny, the ringlets that use to lace her hair were no more and her bright smile was gone. Something that he had done changed her years ago. He had broken her soul and withered down her spirits.
Thomas was sat staring across at her with a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Francis was sat tensed, due to her uncomfortable situation, flipping through that days newspaper.
"I answered a call earlier..." she shot out from the blue never once looking up.
"And?" Thomas pressed.
She sighed, folding the papers and placing them in her lap. "It was, Grace, calling to ask to speak with you. I said no, I said you were married with a child on the way. Then do you want to know what she said?" She now lifted her gaze to meet his own. "She told me... that you had arranged to meet her. In my house." The final words came out in a venomous tone.
In her eyes it wasn't the fact he had arranged to meet Grace at all, no in fact she could care less who Thomas chose to fuck, it was the fact he had chose to do so in her home the one she was the sole owner to. The home she would raise her child and other future children, the home she would give birth in, the home where her family portraits lay hanging.
Her home.
"I did agree to meet her, yes," Thomas spoke truthfully "but I cancelled when I found out her reasoning" he said in an attempt to aid his case.
In truth Francis knew why Grace had asked to meet, she wasn't stupid. But she needed to hear it from her husband, the man she was supposed to trust to protect her.
She was content with his answer, not happy just content, and chose to speak no more of it. She simply placed a palm up in his direction and once more opened her papers back up and continued to read paying him no mind.
