"even when she was lying, there was a certain truth she always told"
A pretty girl, a deal gone wrong, an ultimatum, and a death...
Another average week for the Peaky Blinders.
[T. Shelby]
[Under Editing]
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Jonah came to their flat later that night.
He was all smiles and charm while Thalia was in the room with him and her brother, trying with great effort to woo her into submission with his sugared lips and honeyed words. Thalia knew how to play the game; she'd been doing it ever since her family—her true family—had died. She smiled back and batted her eyelashes like a good little girl, until the boys dismissed her to her room to speak about "men's things".
While the thought of whatever they needed room to talk about was sickening enough, Thalia was floored by the misogyny of it all. She didn't let this show, of course, as she was too far into playing the role of the good little girl, broken into submission, to back out now. Instead, she excused herself for the night and retired to her bedroom.
Or, at least, the boys thought that she was retiring.
Instead, she found herself clawing at the window above her bed, balanced precariously on the creaking frame of her mattress. She gripped the wood framing on the window panel and shoved as hard as she could. It did not push out smoothly. The window was not made to be opened very wide, if at all, as she was three floors up from the ground. She could do this, though, she knew it. Breathe in, breathe out. Push. A stinging pain erupted as she dug her fingers into the frame, pushing with all her weight. One nail splintered clean off while a second shattered down to the nail bed, drawing blood and stinging worse than the sudden cold that bit through the barely a foot wide gap she had managed to push the panels of the window into after a bout of adrenaline shot through her.
She threw a leg up quickly, ignoring the loud creaking noises she was making, and she hoped to squeeze her way out even knowing that it was likely impossible. Reason was falling on deaf ears in her panic to escape. No rescue would come, she knew, so she would be her own rescuer tonight.
Her first leg was quickly followed by a second, and she was teetering on her window sill with barely any room to breathe. She began squirming her way out slowly, trying not to focus on the fall to come afterwards. She had to bite her lip to keep from yelling out in pain as the frame scraped against skin. Her body was not meant to be moving through such a tiny gap. Her thighs pushed through and her weight tipped suddenly, but her hips snagged on the frame. She choked down her own tongue in an effort to keep from crying out and the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth as she hit down too viciously onto the inside of her cheek.
She couldn't stop. She wouldn't stop.
She let gravity do it's work on her as she inched her way forward more and more, slowly—painstakingly slowly. The fabric of her pants was rubbing an uncomfortably harsh pattern against her hips. For a moment, the movement stopped, and she panicked, fearing that she'd gotten stuck when she was so close to freedom.
