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23
Ekaterina was restless. The ticking in her brain had always been there, constant but dull, like a timed bomb waiting to blow. But with the pressure of waiting for her daughter to find a way to those jewels, it was louder and she was afraid it could go off at any moment. She was scared of what she would do.
Placing responsibility onto someone else was hard enough, but it was Anastasiya, her darling daughter. She had planned this from the start, ever since she threw her on the train and ordered her to never look back. Yet now that her planning was in motion, and there was a chance that all could fail, she was regretting it wholly.
She was worried about Tatiana just as much as Ana. Her eldest child always had a habit of ruining things before they had already begun. And her plan hadn't even been made yet.
Ekaterina was restless. She needed those jewels and yet they seemed so far away from her sight. It seemed she would have to plan a way to get them herself.
Ana had hoped that she had heard the last of the priest that she hated with such passion, but the minute she had heard of Tommy Shelby's missing child, she knew it must have been him. She felt sick, her stomach curling in on itself. This was the man who her family was working with? She couldn't believe it, even if the knowledge came securely from her mother. She couldn't believe anything she said.
Tatiana seemed to have no knowledge of the situation with Tommy Shelby, in fact, her sister's calmness nerved Ana far too much. It seemed that everything was going normally for her- that was the first indication that Ana had noticed.
She would have to think. Her mother had already taken to observing her every movement, making sure each one was used wisely. Whether the woman knew that Ana was aware of the gazes or not, she wouldn't care, but Ana took it as a hint to get the job done quickly. But, if anything, it just made her panic even more than she already was.
Ekaterina had cornered her that morning too, adamant that she wanted a conversation about something other than the jewels. So Ana talked about her time in England: of Tommy's wedding and the meeting after it, of the parties and even of John Shelby, though not as intimate as her thoughts of him. Anything to keep them both distracted. But Ana's thoughts kept coming back to the plan.
They had gone to the treasury the other day with the jeweller, Mr Solomons, as per Tommy Shelby's request. That had to be significant, she thought. Tommy didn't seem the type of man to be awfully bother by which jewels he was getting for his money- she couldn't imagine him having much use for them.
Not that he would ever see those jewels. Ana knee her family and their ways well enough to know that they would never pay out a single diamond from that treasury. They hadn't even used it to pay for a doctor for her father when he was terribly ill and out of money.
