Lwhite19999
Ruby Shelby had inherited more than just her father's sharp blue eyes-she carried the Shelby fire in her blood. At sixteen, she had already perfected the art of testing boundaries. Her mother Lizzie fretted, her older brother Charlie scowled, and her dad-Tommy Shelby himself-watched her every move with a quiet intensity that Ruby sometimes found suffocating, sometimes reassuring.
That was the problem with being a Shelby girl-every man in her life thought they had the right to police her. Uncle Arthur was the worst, always muttering about "men with bad intentions." And Billy, Arthur's son who was Ruby's age, didn't help. He wasn't cruel, but he had a knack for snitching.
Still, Ruby found her ways. She slipped out of the house when Lizzie wasn't looking, met friends behind the pub in Small Heath, and occasionally tasted gin when someone older brought it. She wasn't reckless-not really. She just wanted to breathe, to feel like the world wasn't already mapped out for her.