Lucia Shelby didn't share Alfie's bed that night. She slept in the guest room and Alfie felt her absence as the darkness closed in around him. Staring up at the ceiling, body aching, he kept reminding himself that she was another man's wife and that he should be grateful for having her for himself these last few days.

Alfie could die happy now. He could enter the dust and silence with a little more peace on his mind. Besides, his wife and child would be waiting for him. Twenty years Ruth and their daughter had been dead, and twenty years it had been since Alfie felt so comfortable remembering them. Sometimes he couldn't remember what his wife had even looked like. The only image in his mind was moments before she died, covered in pain, sweat, and blood. He kept a photo of her. It was tucked between the pages of her worn Torah. He kept it inside his bedside table but never had the courage to pick it up.

But now the pretty little wop who had stolen money from him so long ago and paid back her debt in full with interest, had her gentle hand snaked around his heart, and Alfie hoped, when he died, that she could die with him with the same hold. But happiness, he had long learned, was never simply procured. Smiles never came as easy on Alfie's face as they did on Lucia's. The longer she was with him, those small smiles would eventually run out, and Alfie couldn't have that happen.

That's why he heaved himself from his bed, stumbled to the guest room, and pushed the door in. A blue shadow, cast from the moon to the glimmering sea to the walls of this little room, blanketed Lucia. The door shut behind him with an inaudible click, and Alfie lifted the sheets. The mattress springs whined under his weight but soon the noise ebbed away leaving only the silence and their steady breathing. He could tell she was awake. She hadn't moved an inch since the moment he'd turned the doorknob.

The mattress gave another groan as he turned to his side and draped a large arm around her body, pulling her close, hand resting along the curve of her belly. Still, Lucia remained motionless.

"You're right," she finally spoke, and her voice immediately betrayed her. "He will find me."

Alfie's deep exhale made the thin hairs on the nape of her neck flutter. There was no dismissive grunt or noncommittal words.

And there appeared her answer. It was in his silence, the twitch of his finger against her skin, the concerned look that surely sat in his eyes. Alfie was worried about her. Tommy had only made the briefest of contact, and the little world they'd built together within days was being torn down around them.

He pressed his cheek to the knob at the top of her spine. Through the thin nightgown the warmth of her body seared his scarred face. So hot it felt that Alfie pulled his head away and edged closer to her under the cool sheets.

"Say something." Lucia pleaded, "anything."

When his silence persisted, she rolled over to take his face between his, pressing even closer, desperate for his arms to swallow her up into himself. Her thumb traced the outline of his lips, not daring to look him in the eye. Under her palms, Alfie's chin trembled.

Inside, Alfie shook as much as his chin did. He knew that was coming next. She'd say his name and everything he'd tightly raveled together would come apart. She would say his name and Alfie would press his lips to hers because he wanted to stop the searing pain down his grotesque face, his bones, his fingers. Everything burned and all Alfie wanted was the relief only she could provide.

Lucia poised her lips to speak and Alfie brushed his fingers over her mouth.

"Don't."

"Alfie…"

"Fuck."

Alfie didn't know what he'd expected when he came into her bedroom in the middle of the night and put himself under her covers. Heat rose to his face and stained his ears red when he'd connected their mouths and began parting her lips, slow and steady. Kind and gentle. Lucia melted into his arms; her slender fingers wrapped around his wrists, holding him in place against her.

She said his name again, as easy as it would be to draw a breath, and Alfie's kisses became urgent, more desperate. The pain lingering in the spaces between his bones vanished.

Lucia tugged at the sleeves of his undershirt. Her hands moved from his arms, the muscles jumping at her very touch, to his neck, up to the back of his head where his hair was short and soft. A sharp breath caught in her throat when Alfie maneuvered her under his body. The air in her chest cut short and jack-knifed and Lucia didn't wait a moment before reaching up to pull his face close enough. Her fingers combed through his beard, feeling the sharp edges of his jaw, tugging him down and down - hoping their bodies would give way and meld into one.

Alfie reached for the hem of her nightgown and yanked it from her body with a swift motion. His shirt was lazily discarded beside the bed, and that's when Alfie noticed what lay beneath him. The pale moonlight danced along her skin, a reflection of the rushing ocean outside. Alfie could have reached out and felt her breast. He could have peppered kisses down her belly, tracing the birthing marks on her hips, or spreading her legs to feel her wetness. Alfie could have done any of those things, but he leaned over and kissed her, brushing stray threads of hair from her cheek.

These hands of his that had committed many sins. These lips of his which had ordered many acts of violence. This body of his which rotted away from his bones… Alfie Solomons rejected it all.

Uncharacteristically uncoordinated, he kicked his trousers off. His arms shook on either side of her when he eased himself in. Alfie didn't smother his moan this time - at the tightness, the warmth, the inevitable give. And Lucia caught that moan with her open mouth. She explored the corners of his lips - that part where his beard tapered out the slightest bit to reveal warm skin underneath - and inhaled the smell of smoke and sweat that clung to his neck.

His strokes were slow. There was no rush to reach the finish line. In fact, neither Lucia or Alfie thought about the ending at all. They were too beguiled by the way their body moved in tandem. Eyes watching, staring, drinking one another up. There was no assurance they'd have a tomorrow.

"Alfie." Her hand rose to his gnarled face and stroked the ridge of his brow above the pale eye.

Alfie bowed his head, eyes squeezed shut, brows furrowed. The guilt and an unknown feeling crept up his spine and took housing in his consciousness. Lucia said his name again and he shook his head - rejecting it just as he had rejected the rest of himself. A great wave threatened to wash over his body, to baptize him clean, but Alfie pulled himself out of her and groaned as the warmth was replaced by the cold.

Lucia lay still under him, equally foggy from the pleasure and from concern for him.

He rolled to the side, blindly groping the ground for his shirt and trousers.

"I'm sorry," Alfie said over his shoulder when he rose from the bed. His body told him to turn and kiss her one last time, but his mind finally found control. "I'm sorry."

Alfie Solomons didn't sleep that night. He was too busy trying to forget her touch and her smell that remained on his skin, his clothes, his heart. A telephone was connected to his bedroom, and Alfie decided to make a call.

Lucia knew what happened before he even said anything. He was standing guilty on the balcony when she walked out the next morning. He couldn't even look at her, just kept staring out across the sea.

"You've decided to call him, haven't you?"

Alfie took a deep breath as though his confession would take a heavy toll on his health. "It never would have worked between us."

"How can you know?"

"I'm dying, Lucia. And when I do, I have a woman and a child waiting for me. And when you die, you should die with the assurance that you and Tommy will see each other again."

She pushed his outstretched hand away before he could stroke her hair gently or do something - anything kind that would break her heart even more. Tommy had Grace. Alfie had Ruth. Who did she have? Only her family was waiting for her in the afterlife. "Is this how you really feel?"

He didn't answer. Couldn't.

"Alfie?"

"It's how things should be," he answered, turning back into his gruff self.

Saying nothing, Lucia turned on her heel and disappeared through the house leaving Alfie Solomons to sink into his chair wondering if he'd done the right thing. He felt more alone than he ever had before. Whatever was left of his heart, whatever the cancer hadn't eaten up, was aching with loneliness, with longing, with remorse. If he was any other man, Alfie would have pulled Lucia in his arms, kissed every tear away, and done anything he could to make her smile.

Alfie wondered if she'd ever smile again after what he'd done.

"Self-fulling prophecy," he muttered to himself with a disdainful scoff.

Hours later, Tommy had arrived at Margate. There was no surprise to see his wife's car parked outside the compound where Alfie Solomons lived. She had nearly told him as much before she packed a suitcase and left. Tommy didn't know she'd be gone for days. He dreaded to think what happened in the days it took to calm himself down. He'd been to Alfie's house once before and seemed to know the way years later.

Nobody answered the door. Tommy knocked first then banging with his fist. He craned his head up to look through the windows. He didn't know what he was looking for, but whatever image took shape in his mind seemed to curl like bile in his stomach. On unsteady feet, Tommy rounded the house, willing to peer through every window and shake every door handle until he found one unlocked.

As he turned the corner, the side of the house that overlooked the ocean, Tommy saw her. Lucia was sitting with her feet buried in the sand, staring into the crashing waves. Alone, thankfully. Passing by her shoes and stockings, Tommy made his way through the sand towards her.

"You should stay in the bloody house before I kill you," she snapped towards the approaching footsteps. The hardness in her face fell away at the sight of him. "Tommy?"

"Of all the places you could have gone, Luce." Hands in pockets, looking back and forth with a critical eye, Tommy made his judgement on the stretch of seaweed littered beach. "Fuckin' Margate."

"I didn't know Alfie was supposed to be dead. Imagine his surprise."

"Imagine mine when he called to say my wife was doing his head in."

Lucia craned her neck back at him and rose to her feet. She wouldn't show the embarrassment his words had caused her. Logically, she knew how Alfie was like and why he'd say she was doing his head in. But coming from Tommy's mouth, it all sounded much more hurtful. "I needed time to think whether or not our marriage has run its course."

The cold civility couldn't have lasted long. They lost no time picking up where they left off days ago.

Tommy had always had the utmost trust in Lucia. It was Alfie he didn't trust. "Did he try to sleep with you?"

"Do you still love Grace?" she shot back.

"I can't help how I feel about Grace."

"Then I can't unfuck Alfie."

A flash of shock and anger passed over his eyes and Lucia was almost pleased to see how his shoulders became rigid. This was her chance to hurt him, finally, for all the pain, doubt, and insignificance he had made her feel. The look he gave her - Lucia exhaled a short chuckle at the sight of him. It wasn't in a cruel way. In fact, she felt very sorry for him and for herself and for their marriage.

"I thought things were improving between us."

Sadness wasn't hidden from his voice. Tommy was a very calculated man. He didn't leave or add anything out of his words by accident, and Lucia searched him now, narrow-eyed, to determine if it was a genuine reaction. She was resolute to stand up for herself. She was resolute to save any semblance of happiness she had found in Margate.

"You can't be so dense, Tommy."

Tommy ground his molars down until he was sure it would turn to dust in his mouth. "What more do you expect me to do?" he demanded cuttingly.

And, for the first time since her father's death, Lucia hit him. Her fists pounded at his chest, his shoulders, his arms. As hard as she fought, Tommy didn't move an inch. He took each blow in silence. Lucia screamed in frustration, still bringing down balled fists and open palms which were absorbed into his thick woolen coat. All Tommy could do was hold her wrists back, hoping she wouldn't use her legs to bring him down, and that made Lucia all the more enraged.

Her blows were finally exhausted and she recoiled from him, prying her wrists away and wiping angry tears from her face in harsh gestures. "I don't want this anymore. If you care more about a dead woman, then I don't want this anymore. Because it should never have come to this, Tommy. I shouldn't have to fuck Alfie to get you thinking!"

Tommy licked his lips and clenched his fists in his pockets, anything he could do to control the heartache and rage he felt growing inside him. The searing image of Alfie and his wife together in bed brought up a wave of nausea. The very thought of Alfie hearing her moaning, touching her body, feeling her warmth… Tommy had taken pride in being the only one Lucia had trusted herself with. "I can't forgive this."

"That's fine," she declared, defeated. "Go ahead and forget me too. Do us both a favor."

He shook his head. "There's no divorce for people like us. No forgetting. No walking away."

"Then all we can do is forgive."

Tommy shook his head again. He couldn't do that. Not yet.

"You say no to divorce, no to forgetting about Grace, no to forgiving. You need to compromise. There will be no bending me to your will anymore, Thomas. You've bent me back so far I've broken."

And, for the first time since her death, Tommy tried to remember why he loved Grace. Truly why he loved her. With Lucia standing in front of him, he had a harder time than usual concentrating on his gilded memories. Desperately he tried to think but it all failed him. Tommy was afraid. Grace was gone and if Lucia left too… there would be nothing left for him. If Tommy had to open his eyes a bit wider for Lucia, he would. He couldn't bear the thought of another woman he loved falling back as another memory in his crowded mind.

"Luce."

"What?"

"We settle it now."

She considered him carefully though narrow eyes.

"Whatever our differences and qualms. We put it away and never speak it again. Agreed?" He held out his hand.

Lucia looked down at him like she was looking down the barrel of a rifle. "No."

"No?"

"No, Thomas. That's not good enough."

Tommy's mind whizzed, piecing together new words and fresh compromises. He was usually so quick with offering advantageous compromises benefiting both parties, except he was coming up short on this go around. All she wanted was his love, and Tommy resented himself for having such a hard time following through with it. A tentative breath choked out of him.

"The path you walk is the path I walk, Lucia." A step back was all he could manage at first. "Wait here."

Tommy turned and walked back to the car, leaving Lucia confused on the sand. Neither of them saw it, but Alfie Solomons watched from his room, hidden by the shade of the balcony. When Tommy returned he carried two weapons in either hand.

"Hold your hands out," he instructed, and Lucia, knowing what was coming, refused to do so. Tommy thumbed her chin, coaxing her eyes back up to him. "The day you married me, you said we will live by the gun and the knife and we will die by the gun and the knife. Hold your hands out."

Lucia slowly held her palms up towards the sky. The gun was placed in her right hand and, before the knife was placed in her left, Tommy sliced the tip of finger with the sharp blade. He placed one droplet of blood on the gun and one on the knife.

"There's no more me if there's no you, Luce. We're one family and I love you, furiously and forever."

Swearing on the gun and the knife was no little matter in the mafia. It was a binding promise, an unbreaking oath, a baptism. Lucia had seen many kinds of baptisms. The Sabinis would burn pictures of the saints and would recite, "As burns this saint, so will burn my soul. I enter alive and I will have to get out dead." Giuseppe Morello, a man Lucia had many times been betrothed to, would have his men draw blood with a pin and say, "This drop of blood symbolizes your birth into our family, we are one until death."

We are one until death.

Lucia looked towards Alfie's home for a moment. She could see the balcony to his sitting room. The curtains were lazily shifting with the ocean breeze. She could have been so happy with him. But Alfie had a woman and a child waiting for him in the afterlife. Her forlorn eyes returned to her husband. He knew the monumental promise held in his actions. The gun felt heavy in her palm - the knife even more so - and she offered it back to him in rejection.

She'd made her decision, vow or no vow.

Disbelief reappeared on Tommy's face. "So you're going to stay here? With him?"

"No." Lucia squared her shoulders, staring at her husband through unfamiliar eyes. "No, I won't be staying in Margate and I won't be coming back with you to Birmingham. This morning I made an agreement with a certain Sicilian businessman in New York. He's agreed to support me as I implicate Sabini, empty his racetracks, his bookies, his business. And I get London. I get all of it. I also get two boroughs in New York. They were Luca's. Sabini took them over after the vendetta. But they're mine now and I'm handing them back to Luciano as a sign of good will."

Still barefoot, Lucia Changretta stepped closer to the man who was once her husband. "You wanted to be business partners, Thomas. Let's be business partners. But whatever our marriage was, it's gone."

"What part of yourself did you have to sell to get all that, Lucia?"

Lucia cocked her head. "You," she answered plainly. "I sold the part of myself that was in love with you." She stepped back again, changing her mask to steady indifference instead of the familiar comfort of a wife. "Once I get to London, I'll give you fifty bookies. Maybe a club or two if I'm feeling generous. Buy a new horse, train it, race it on one of my tracks. But for fuck sakes, Thomas, don't name it yourself. You're no good at it. I like Khartoum." Lucia managed a shadow of a smile. It reminded her of Alfie.

"You don't have men or weapons or capital," there was more concern in Tommy's voice now than just bitterness. "You can't just take over a business without the strength to protect it. You're making a lot of enemies for yourself, Lucia."

"I have friends in high places. And I have you. I expect you to send as many men as you can spare when I get back."

Tommy shook his head vehemently. "You can't keep naively relying on people you have no right to trust. Like Alfie!"

"Am I naïve to trust you? And Alfie… " she found herself at a loss for words at his very name. She was still hurt that he had rejected her, called Tommy, told him that she was doing his head in. If Lucia had taken a moment to think about it, she might have realized that Alfie cared for her. Not for her power, her ambition, her stronghold in London, but for her. "Alfie's been good to me."

"I bet," Tommy's voice clipped with bitterness.

"I'm not as naïve as you think I am. I was your goddamn consigliere for fucks sake! It'll be good for us, having some space." She looked down at the sand. "It was supposed to be an anniversary present. Ten years married. I promised you London, didn't I? I make good on my promises. It's a shame a dead woman stands in between yours."

Tommy didn't want to be touched. He wanted to sink into the sand below him and drown in the waters ahead. When Lucia stood on her toes and pressed a feather-light kiss to his cheek, he knew he couldn't possibly move, couldn't sink, couldn't drown. He was cursed to just exist while the world went on around him.

"Drive safe, Thomas. There's some business I have to finish up here. I'll be back in a few days to take Sabine."

"She's my daughter too!"

Coolly, Lucia responded, "and I'm your wife. You're a possessive man, Tom. Nothing but business is worth fighting for until a threat appears to take everything else away. You can fight Alfie, Sabini, the Americans, the IRA, King George himself. But fighting me is a losing battle. If I can take London with one phone call, imagine how much easier it would be to take everything else you want. Either comply or I'll bend you until you break. It's your choice."

"Luce, you're not thinking things through. I'll send you the men. Anything you want. I need you to be alright. Whatever our differences, you have to know I need you to be alright."

"I'll be alright."

He shifted in the hard sand, not believing her. "Do you think we'll be together again?"

"I don't know." It was a truthful enough answer. "Do you ask because you want London or do you ask because you want me?"

"Both."

Lucia Changretta had learned a lot from Tommy Shelby. She learned how to use the truth to tell lies, to mask her emotions with a thick layer of indifference, and how to use the motivations of others to move her plans forward. She planned to learn even more from Alfie.

She smiled at Tommy now, a real smile, unmasked. He could have lied. He could have said that he wanted to try again with their marriage because he loved her, wanted her back. But Tommy's ambition knew no end and, somehow, he couldn't quite bring himself to lie to her. Even now, at the end of everything they'd built together, he didn't lie. And to Lucia, that was nearly endearing, almost honorable. Almost.

"This is just another mountain for us to climb, Thomas."

"Just another mountain, just another failure." His weak snort leaked out as only an uncertain exhale.

"We were a lot of things but failures is not one of them. I'm still the mother of your children, and you're the father of mine. Between us there'll be no backstabbing, no secret ploys, no compromising allegiances. No lack of absolute trust. What's good for me will benefit you. And what's good for you will benefit me. Keep that in mind. Wouldn't want to make an enemy out of me, Thomas, I know you too well."

"Fuck." A pained expression of realization settled on Tommy's grimacing face. "Fuck," he echoed again and speared his finger towards her knowingly. "You were the right woman."

"Right woman, right time, right path, just the wrong way."

They attempted to smile together but it faded on both of their mouths until only uncertainty remained.

"Consider it poetic justice." Lucia shrugged. "I suppose forgiving me is easier now that I own London."

Tommy had momentarily forgotten her infidelity, but the reminder was still salt on a fresh wound. Nausea rose in his stomach at the very thought. If that was the price he'd have to pay to get some semblance of control in the capital then so be it.

"It's best if we stay married legally. Birmingham, London… soon enough we'll own the whole country. It'll be good to poise a united front." Lucia extended her hand out, palm up. "I'll have my ring now."

Tommy brought her wedding band from his trouser pocket and turned it between his fingers. "Are you going to wear it?"

It fell into her open hand.

"Of course not. Are you going to wear yours?"

He looked down at the band that had remained on his finger, turning his hand to see how it looked against his calloused palm. "Yes," Tommy said. "Any reminder that I haven't lost you entirely."

"I'm already gone, Thomas."

"I look forward to doing business with you," Lucia had said and watched Tommy shut the car door. Her husband's Bentley had long disappeared around the bend, down the road, towards Birmingham. The wedding band sat heavy on her palm. Lucia walked down the sand again, poised her arm high above her head, and lost her ring, her love for Tommy, and the last few decades of her life to the sea. The door to Alfie's house was unlocked when she turned the knob.

"Where's Tommy gone?" Alfie had a gun laid across his lap. The feeling of dread had vanished from his chest at the very sight of her. He was glad she hadn't gone along. "I was looking forward to seeing him."

"Back to Birmingham. I made a rather lengthy international call earlier. I'll pay you back once I get to London, plus interest."

"I know you're good for it." He didn't seem too concerned or surprised.

Lucia sat across from him, sinking into the worn armchair with her legs crossed, staring. "It's good business, you being dead. Now that I have London, I'll need your help. Might need to pick at that beautiful mind of yours."

"You think I have a beautiful mind?" He asked it in the same mocking way she had the other day. "What else do you think of me?"

"I think you're extraordinary, Alfie."

And there it was, Alfie braced himself. There it was - that glimmer of pride in her eyes and even more of it on her voice. That absolute comfort. It was better than a kiss or sex. It lingered, and it would linger long after she left the space she took up.

"I find myself wondering," she began, "what a lifetime with you would be like. It's a shame we don't have much time together in this one."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?" Lucia studied the scars and lesions covering his face, all that cancer. All that death. "Do you still think it won't work out between us?"

Alfie Solomons considered her for a moment, hoping she would give him another smile that he desperately needed to get his fill of. The soreness of his body had been exacerbated by its absence. "It might," he finally admitted. "I thought I lost you, you know."

She smiled sadly. It didn't reach her eye or spread over much of her face. "Nearly thought so too. I have a nasty habit of losing peace in all the places I go to find myself."

"And what have you found here?"

A true love, a friend, a consigliere? Lucia didn't know how to answer. "I suppose I finally found where I belong."

"And where's that?"

Under you, over you, all around you. Lucia smothered the unnamed feeling. "London. Will you help me or not?"

Alfie leaned forward on the couch, wrists hanging off his parted knees. "What's in it for me?"

There was that smile again. It was an expected question, a welcomed one - one Lucia was eager to provide an answer to. "Anything you want."

He hmmph-ed and gestured her closer. When Lucia stood before him, Alfie had an answer. "I'll do it… for a price. I'm retired, after all, and it'll be steep."

Lucia laughed, "what's your price, Alfie?"

"You come here. Whenever you're not in Birmingham or overtaking London with your wop ideas."

"Whatever would I do here?" she teased. "Shoot seagulls? Watch ships? It's fuckin' Margate."

"Well," he took her hand, looking away almost bashfully, "I'm here. Warm bed, open heart and all that. If you feel the same."

"Yes," Lucia smiled. "I feel the same."

Author's Note:

Khartoum translated from Arabic means "elephant's trunk." Do with that information what you will 😉

Eventually I'm planning on using this three-part series as the foundation for a sequel but probably not until after season 6. It has a lot of set-up for Lucia ruling in London while Tommy stays in Birmingham with the kids.

Hope you enjoy this chapter! I was super proud of Lucia for standing up for herself for once haha