mozzafiato ➝ peaky blinders

due

manhattan, new york
december, 1925

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As a nineteen year old girl, it was a bizarre feeling to walk down a street and have people cower in her wake.

Gianna Changretta wasn't doing anything incriminating; she was merely on her way to a friend's. But still, people knew who she was. They averted their gazes, urged their children to walk faster with wide eyes and desperate tones. Some covered their eyes with brims of hats or coat collars, or even crossed the street in order not to brush past her.

Gianna found it all a little perplexing. 

Granted, she was carrying her gun in her holster, but it was only for her own safety. She didn't know who had a vendetta against the Changrettas, who could potentially jump out and seize her whilst she was alone. Her father, along with many other aphorisms, had drummed into her to never step onto the street without her gun.

But people forgot that she was only young. She wasn't constantly on missions; she was still in school, for God's sake.

For the most part, anyway.

She was majoring in Literature at her university, but, due to her duties with the mob, she didn't have the most excelling attendance.

In most cases, her constant absence would have gotten her kicked out of the college, but she was studying as hard as she could at home. Her grades were excellent; the professors could hardly turn away such a good student.

Plus, Nico and her father had threatened the headmaster into submission.

Anyhow, she wasn't always the street-smart mobster that people saw in shoot-outs. She was only a girl, if one mature beyond her years due to circumstance. Sometimes, she just wanted to let loose a little, to step onto the streets as a teenager, not a gangster.

Continuing to walk, the girl rounded a corner, and turned onto her friend's street. Even from a distance, she could faintly hear the American jazz drifting from a gramophone, and the laughter from the people who were already there. Smiling a little, Gianna picked up her pace.

Sabine Nikola's house was tall and narrow, wedged amongst an upright regiment of identical buildings. It held a different scent every time she went there, due to her mother's habit of burning incense and candles. Jasmine, pears, vanilla, mint - the list was endless. It was always pleasing to walk through the door, and to be hit by a wave of lush smells.

Gia's house never smelt so luxurious. Gia herself only used perfume to mask the scent of smoke in her room.

Her mother, though, had been a different story. She had always smelt of a musky Chanel perfume, a scent that filled her mind with nostalgia.

A slight smile graced Gianna's face at that moment as memories of her mother flooded her mind.

Mia Changretta had been beautiful; while Gianna had inherited her dark eyes and hair, her lean, slim frame, she always felt she wasn't a patch on the beauty of her mother. The woman could banish any bad blood from a room with merely her laugh, and enchant people with her smile. 

It was her smile that had enchanted her father, as she had been told.

She brushed away the thought of her mother. She didn't want to be a downer tonight.

She had barely knocked on the door twice before it was flung open, letting the jazz blare clearly, and Sabine threw herself around her.

"Gianna, baby, you're here!"