Lizzie Stark lived off Hob Moor Road in Bordesley Green. Her front door was painted dark red and the flimsy white curtains which hung over the windows were all that separated her from the dusty outside world. She lived alone now but her home was never cold. When Lizzie heard a knock at her door, she was ready to rush back to the betting shop to type up documents for Tommy, but she was surprised to see his wife instead. Opening the door wide enough for Lucia to step through, Lizzie offered, out of politeness, to put the kettle on for tea hoping her guest would decline. She had run out of tea days ago.
The scent of sweet perfume wafted in from further inside the chilly house. The parlour was scantily furnished - it reminded Lucia of her old flat in Saltley, just at the border of Small Heath and Nechells. She made a mental note to stop by eventually once all this shit was over.
Lucia knew full well that Tommy had often sought after Lizzie's services. It was no secret, and Lucia wasn't the jealous type. Most of her life she heard Mary Shelby and Birdie Boswell say that she and Tommy were meant to be together. It didn't matter to Lucia how many women came before her.
"Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Shelby?"
At first glance Lucia noticed Lizzie was dressed much more nicely than she was. All silks and chiffons and imported animal pelts hanging from her coat tree and carelessly tossed on the floor. It was quite a contrast to the muted blouse and skirt Lucia wore under her worn boiled wool coat. Her mother and grandmother always taught her that there was a noble pride in appearing humble in dress, mannerisms, and speaking. Her grandmother had also said that women are at their most powerful when they blend into the background, tugging the strings attached to their men as they go. As much as Lucia tried, heart longing to play the part of the spouse to a powerful man, she could never shake their words off as a woman. The expensive textiles would look so unnatural draped over her body.
"Just call me Lucia," she offered and continued after an awkward pause, "That's a beautiful dress."
Lizzie smoothed her skirt down nervously and forced a smile in thanks, awaiting the reason why Lucia prompted the visit. They both hadn't left the foyer and it felt too late to move to the couches now.
"I wanted to apologize to you," she began. "About Angel."
Lizzie's face pinched at the mention of his name. An old wound had been forced open again and so suddenly. "You don't have to apologize," was all Lizzie could say. After all, wasn't it Arthur who set Angel's restaurant on fire, she thought, John who beat him into a bloody pulp, and Tommy who had ordered his murder? "It wasn't your fault."
"I didn't mean for any of that to happen," Lucia's eyebrows knit together. She was trying so hard to properly express the depth of her regret to the woman whose life was destroyed most. "You didn't deserve any of that. Thank you," her voice cracked, "for loving my brother. I wish I could have fought harder for the both of you."
All Lizzie could do was shrug and look away. There was no bringing back Angel now, but seeds of resentment had begun to sprout inside her. Lucia stood there with a shiny wedding ring on her finger, married to the man of her dreams, and Lizzie had nothing but expensive clothes and a cold home. She composed herself, pushing the angry feelings down.
"Friends?" Lucia attempted with an extended hand.
Lizzie nodded tentatively and took it. "Friends," she agreed.
Before Lucia left Lizzie's home in Bordesley Green, she excused herself to make a phone call. All Lizzie could hear from the small kitchen was Lucia speaking rapidly in Italian to the receiver on the other end. Suspicious and still hurt by the renewed memories of Angel, Lizzie sent Lucia on her way with civility and immediately called Tommy's line in Small Heath.
Luca was perched at the bar, staring forward into the wall of spirits and liquors before him. A toothpick danced between his lips and migrated to the corner of his mouth every time he raised his glass to take a drink. When Lucia slid into the seat beside him and ordered a martini, Luca side-eyed her with an abrupt grunt.
"What?" She questioned in offense. "Aren't martinis what women in America drink?"
Luca took another sip of the amber liquid and turned towards her, point blank. "You should have married Giuseppe Morello."
Lucia rolled her eyes. Suddenly he wasn't the fearsome killer, bloodthirsty for revenge. He was Luca Changretta, older brother. And she wasn't his mortal enemy. She was Lucia Changretta, baby sister, little Luci, sorellina. "Morello's been in prison since 1910."
"He got out," he scanned the room to make sure they weren't being watched. "By order of President Harding himself."
"Well, it pays to have friends in high places."
"You would have made him a good wife."
Lucia did the maths quickly in her head. "Yes," she sardonically drawled, "it would be easy to be a wife to a man who is twenty-four years my elder. Like a dog, he's probably set in his ways now that he's 59 years of age."
"That's not what I meant, sorellina."
"What did you mean?" Lucia demanded. "If I hear you say another goddamn thing about Giuseppe Morello, I'll strangle you. You have never seen me as a person. I was always just a pawn to you. For more money, more alliances, more power."
The insistence in her voice made Luca chuckle to himself. She was so sure it was the truth. "You would have had a good life. He is the don of all dons. Capo di tutti i capi, sorellina. I was looking out for your future. You could have had all of New York City under your heel. But," he leaned back and waved away what could have been, "you're in this shithole of a city, married to a man who uses the same techniques men like Morello have long since perfected. You should be sitting in furs being driven around in expensive cars. Safe while all the men do the fighting."
Lucia listened with a grim cloud looming over her head. She started off taking slow sips of the martini placed before her but soon tipped it back to fuel the fire set ablaze in the pit of her stomach. Reaching her arm out, she pulled the whiskey from her brother and another furnace ignited the instant the liquid hit the back of her throat. She nearly coughed but sealed her lips shut - hoping to suppress both the cough and fire she'd set ablaze through her chest, muttering "What a pleasant fiction," once the alcohol numbed her enough to resume the conversation.
Instead of running after Thomas Shelby all her life, Lucia could have saved herself from twenty years of unnecessary suffering. She mulled over the life she could have had with Giuseppe Morello. Perhaps she could have learned to love him. Perhaps he would have been gentle with her, kind to her. "What a pleasant fiction," Lucia repeated under her breath. It was more to convince herself that it was just fantasy and that reality was always far more painful.
After several moments under the same gloomy cloud, Luca leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his chest, and said, "Let me give you one last piece of advice - consider it parting words from the older brother I used to be."
"You'll be my older brother always."
"Not always." He pulled the toothpick from his mouth and dropped it into her empty martini glass. "Here it is. You shouldn't have called me here. Unless you are looking to take control of your husband's empire, I won't let you betray him. It's a matter of principle. Honor," he pinched his fingertips together with emphasis. "Go home and be a good Italian wife to your gypsy husband."
"You talk about principle and honor, but what about family? All my life I've only heard: The family comes first, don't abandon family, always trust family! And all you've done has been to abandon and push me aside. You're my blood, Luca!"
Luca ignored the question. "How long did you think you could balance it? One foot with us, one foot with them? No, Luci," he waggled his index finger in objection. "You chose which family your loyalties lie. Now be a real woman and die with your husband." Beginning to button his jacket, Luca was preparing to leave but his sister caught him by the arm and pulled him back into his seat.
"I want to make a deal," she insisted. "My life in exchange to spare them. Papà's death, Angel's death...it was my fault. Their blood is on my hands. The Blinders would have burnt down Angel's restaurant and left it at that. Now let me do right for both of them. I," her voice faltered at Luca's body language. It was too rigid. He had already decided to deny her. "Yes, you're right, I did choose the Shelby's over our family. But, however misguided, it was in favor of peace. I started this blood war, so it should end with me."
Her brother shook his head vehemently. "That, I cannot do. If you were family, I might have considered it. I might have written it off as an error of judgement and killed you with respect. Killed you with some dignity and honor." Luca absently swirled the remaining whiskey in his glass. The amber liquid jostled and jumped, nearly spilling onto the polished bartop. "But," his voice dipped low and menacing, "you are not my family and you have no honor. We will fight this vendetta until the end, and you will watch when I put a bullet through your husband's eye." Taking hold of his hat, Luca Changretta stepped away from the bar. "You are not my blood," he ended. "Don't ever come to me again. We're strangers now."
Lucia bit the inside of her cheek and mirrored his fierce gaze though it made the hairs on her body stand on end. As he wrinkled his nose in disgust once more for good measure, she wanted to sink into the comfort of the shadows again - suddenly wanted to be part of the heritage she had left behind along with her family. It was all shadows to her.
Rising from the bar, Lucia Shelby clutched her purse and walked out of the building. Many people watched, took note, and word had already been sent to her husband, but Lucia, on determined legs, stepped into the cold and toward the Italian Quarter of Birmingham on Bordesley Street.
As a girl she was known by all the ice cream street sellers. "Piccola signorina," they would call with warm smiles under bushy mustaches. Little miss. Now the streets weren't as empty as they used to be despite the January cold. At the corner of Bordesley and Bartholomew, a thin man stood alongside his ice cart, bundled against the elements in a coat with more holes and sewed on patches to count.
"Padre," Lucia crossed the street and gestured to his cart, ignoring the pointed stares and whispered gossip from Italian men and women alike. "Padre, quanto per tutto il ghiaccio nel tuo carrello?" Father, how much for all the ice in your cart?
The old man turned about slowly, his legs stiff with the cold, to get a better look at her face with his aged eyes. His eyebrows danced as he squinted and studied her face before finally settling on half a pound for the whole cart of sweets. Lucia cracked a smile at his honesty and placed a ten pound note in his palm. It was twenty times the price of his products and the old man couldn't help but blink at such a sum just there in his hand. It was the most money he had ever held in his life - a year's wages for an average laborer.
He pointed a gnarled finger at her through worn gloves. "C'era una ragazza come te in queste strade molto tempo fa. La conosci?" There was a girl like you on these streets long ago. Do you know her?
"Yes." Lucia searched his tired face, the graying hairs on his mustache and the wrinkles along his cheeks from years of laughter despite living in crippling poverty. "Quella ragazza è morta." That girl is dead.
Instructing him to give the ice creams to little children and to keep the money as a blessing from her to his family, Lucia walked with her head held high through the Italian Quarter towards the markets.
Unlike her husband, Lucia wasn't made to part fearful crowds. Instead, and much to her discomfort, the crowds gravitated towards her. They watched through windows, doorways, and bare-faced on the streets, but Lucia walked on toward the stalls filled with ice-frosted vegetables, jars of homemade olive oils, and bottles of strong anisette. The whole block smelt homely but she didn't feel like she was at home. Lucia quickly paid for what she needed, tucked a loaf of rosemary focaccia and a bottle of campari under her arm, and hurried back to Small Heath.
Since home didn't seem to be a place anymore, only proved by the scowling faces around her, Lucia was determined to make home with her own two hands. She bustled into the kitchen of Watery Lane, kneaded dough to roll out her spaghetti, chopped up vegetables, mixed campari with a splash of the bottomless gin that never seemed to leave the house, and then leaned over the boiling pot of sauce on the stove - an image of Mary Shelby herself. That's how Tommy found her.
"What are you doing?" he asked, perplexed.
She brushed aside a stray tendril of hair that had escaped from the headscarf. The top buttons of her blouse were undone and an apron was tied around her waist to keep the sauce from spitting onto her skirt. Face pink from standing over the steam, Lucia looked up. Trying to find home, she wanted to say. Instead she smiled and said, "being a good Italian wife."
Using focaccia to mop up a bit of sauce, Lucia directed it into Tommy's mouth. "Is it good?" she asked before he could swallow. He nodded even though it was too hot to taste anything except the bread. The bread was good and he figured nodding would be a half-truth to make her happy.
"You won't be going out on business again tonight?" Lucia pulled the coat from his shoulders, draped it over the back of a chair, and put a plateful of food in front of him.
Tommy watched her curiously from where he sat at the head of the table. Lucia bound from the pot of sauce at the stove to the table to the counter and returned with a glass of whiskey. She looked the same as she always did but now strangely disarming, demure, and joyful. On anyone else Tommy would have found it irritating, but on her it was pleasant, gorgeous even.
"Will you be going out again?" She asked again.
He shook his head and waited for her to drop what felt like a facade but Lucia perked up, eyes brightening, chirped in approval, and continued sipping on her campari-gin concoction.
She stared down into the pink liquid and felt exhausted by her sudden cheeriness. The logic behind it all was that she would pretend - pretend to be brave, pretend to be happy, pretend like she didn't wish to have married Morello, pretend to be a "real woman." Pretend, pretend, pretend. It was taxing.
Looking over at Tommy, Lucia could tell how concerned he'd become on her account. She did what a good wife should do: she made dinner from scratch, she greeted her husband with liveliness, and she planned on fucking his brains out afterwards. She wanted to be everything all at once - a wise confidant, a dangerous marksman, a gentle wife, a sexual goddess, a brilliant cook, a loving mother-figure for his child. But it was so unlike her!
Lucia reached the bottom of her glass and refilled it again, this time just with gin. It was stronger and it stoked the furnace inside her belly in all the ways she needed. Though he only saw her shoulders fall forward, Tommy could recognize the difference in her demeanor. The facade was gone. She was back to being Lucia now.
"You spoke to Luca today?"
She wheeled around, the brim of the glass pressed to her jaw, looking anywhere but at him. "I didn't betray you, I only wanted him to think I was capable of it." Expecting anger, disappointment, and betrayal, Lucia was surprised to see how calm he looked. Tommy leaned back in the chair with an arm hanging off the back and slid the half eaten plate away.
"To what end?" he asked evenly. When she refused to answer, the chair groaned as he stood and he said, "you tried to be a sacrificial lamb and Luca said no, didn't he? So what's all this about?" He waved lazily at her apron and the food she had prepared.
Pretend, pretend, pretend, the voice in her head screamed. Pretending to be the wife of Giuseppe Morello so I don't have to face death with you, Thomas Shelby.
The glass in her hand was abandoned beside the stove. What had happened to the strong woman she used to be? Two conversations with her older brother and she was sinking, doubting, and struggling to reach the surface for air. Luca was a cancer and Lucia was falling victim to it again. She questioned herself, questioned her husband's love, questioned her brother's hatred. What was the use of building a home when it stood right in front of her in the shape of Thomas Shelby?
"I am sorry for how difficult I've made things for you." She took up the gin again and anxiously pulled the liquid down her throat. "I've spent so long trying to escape my family and now...they're dead and gone. But Luca was all I had left. He tried to sell me into a marriage, threw me into the bloody Cut, and still I tried to do right by him." Lucia laughed at herself. It was ridiculous. "I'm all here," she assured. "I didn't betray you. I'm no traditrice."
"Alright." Tommy lit the cigarette poised between his lips. "I believe you, and I trust you. Next time," he swung his hand out sending ashes drifting to the floor, "tell me. Don't let me find out about it from Lizzie Stark, eh?"
"Aye. But we could use it to our advantage," Lucia slowly posed. "Luca thinks I'm the weakest link. We can use it at our most opportune time."
Tommy wasn't angry. In fact, he was pleased. The opportune time had only to present itself. With Luca Changretta on his heel, the Shelby's were caught in the defensive. With Lucia Changretta on his side, clawing their way up to the offensive became much easier.
Lucia began towards the parlour taking Tommy by the wrist as she walked past. "Charlie is with Ada and Polly is at hospital with Michael." She looked over her shoulder and Tommy caught a glimpse of a peculiar glimmer in the pools of her brown eyes. "I have a gift for you."
Left on the couch, Tommy watched his wife disappear up the stairs. The floorboards shifted and he heard it the moment she stepped down toward the parlor where he sat.
Lucia cocked her head toward him when she entered the parlor and Tommy immediately recognized the wolfish look. He braced himself under the intensity of her gaze. It was loving, sensual, wicked. She stood above him, teasing his knees apart so she could drift closer. Slowly, so slow that Tommy still didn't have enough time to control the desire within himself, she lifted her foot and placed it on his knee. She tugged her skirts up past her ankle, her shins, her knees, until she bared her leg before him.
An anklet was tied around the soft curve of her foot. Little beads, metal flowers, and tinkling bells hung from the thin silver chain. Tommy leaned forward, grazing his fingertips up her legs and under her warm thighs.
"Who gave it to you?"
"Your nad'ram-tom," she answered in Shelta. Grandmother. "Birdie told me I had to wear it for you when you finally married me."
Tommy raked hungry eyes up from the marriage anklets, up her bare leg, and paused at the way her breasts stretched the buttons on her blouse, threatening to spill out if not freed. His gaze drew up her neck, her lips, and Tommy held his breath when he saw the insatiable desire in her eyes.
Easing down to straddle in his lap, Lucia pressed herself flush against his chest, fingers dragging through his hair. She peppered wet kisses into his jaw, his throat, his cheeks, guiding his hands from her ass up her body to her chest, rolling her hips down against him, trying to feel how hard he was. Trying to angle it just right.
"Thank you for believing me," Lucia's hot breath fanned past his ear.
Tommy gripped her thighs tighter and bucked his hips to thrust deeper inside. "You're not good at lying to me."
"No, I'm not. I love you too much it seems." Her words were broken by soft moans, desperately trying to even her breaths. "When does Aberama Gold caravan in?"
"Tomorrow. Luc, I -" His fingertips dug into her soft skin, wavering. Tommy ripped his eyes from the steady roll of her body against his and the way her breasts bounced through the thin blouse. The twinkling bells on her anklets rang in his ears, mixed into her moans and her feel and her warmth.
"We'll have to be up early. I have to take the empty bottles from the Garrison -" another moan, "and - and I'll…Fuck!" Lucia felt a dull sensation build around her clit. She clamped her mouth shut. It was a small feeling until it wasn't - until it plunged into the deepest parts of herself and Lucia held on as tight as she could, fingernails digging into Tommy's shoulders, leaning down to bite his bottom lip between ragged breaths.
Tommy grunted through the pain but, when her body relaxed and his strokes became slower and longer, he couldn't hold it in anymore. His member seemed to overtake whatever control his brain had and all Tommy could feel was the way she pulsed around him, the wetness and warmth. It felt like home.
Everything went still. Lucia doubled, nuzzling her nose into the curve of his neck, desperately trying to catch her breath. Wrapping his arms around her, Tommy felt his cum drip out of her. He shifted into a more comfortable position and lit a cigarette.
"There's a woman arriving from London tomorrow," he said, "We're fixing races and she needs to train our newest filly. Meet her by the Cut with Curly."
"And this woman...you slept with her?"
Tommy pulled the smoke into his mouth and didn't answer.
"Hmm. I'll find out soon enough."
"You're not the jealous type, Luc."
She lifted her head from his shoulder and chuckled. "Why should I care how many women you sleep with after all those years of your ma telling me that I need to take care of you. No, I'm not the jealous type. I had the benefit of knowing the end long before it arrived."
They sat in silence exchanging the cigarette back and forth until it was stubbed out.
"Tommy, Luca doesn't have a consigliere."
After thirty years of knowing Lucia, Tommy was familiar with most of the Italian words and phrases she would use but he wasn't familiar with this term. It showed as much on his face,
"Consigliere," she repeated. "An advisor to the don. Luca doesn't have one. Which means he's not a don. Which means he's answering to someone else. Could be the Morello Family, Masseria, Maranzano, Luciano."
"Capone?"
Lucia shook her head. "No. The New York Five Families don't deal with Capone. A bunch of savages, they are, in Chicago. Mad dogs and rowdies that follow their own rules. They're the black sheep of our world. No, Luca received protection from Sabini and Sabini works with Magaddino in Buffalo. Stefano Magaddino is a bootlegger." She paused. "You need to call Solomons."
"I'm not involving Solomons, Luc."
"We need him," she insisted and reached across the couch for the phone on the side table. "I'll call him then."
Tommy yanked her back. "Solomons will call when he can benefit from it. Until then, don't give him your voice. I have a plan."
AN: Ahhh! I think it's adorable how Tommy is so understanding about Lucia's cultural struggle and how Lucia has picked up words and traditions from the Mincéirs (Irish travelers). I'm definitely going to explore that more in my next flashback chapter.
Happy New Year to you all! Thank you for reading!
Preview for chapter 12:
May Carleton cautiously took a seat, eyeing the exits, ready to block a punch if it was thrown.
"Did you sleep with my husband?"