Chapter 46) Going North.
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She had never swum in the sea. Her home had been surrounded by farmlands, oak trees and meadow flowers. As a child, she loved to climb the hilltops and watch how the rustic cabins where dotted onto the rural grassy area, as if they were painted on. She'd spend hours and hours watching the view of cornfields and the deep valley that was split by the easy current of the Cobbler's brook.
Although Maria had never witnessed the power of the ocean washing over her body, she'd felt as if in a split second she'd be thrown into the mighty waves of the sea.
Her feet carried her effortlessly closer to home, pounding down on the tainted bricks of Small Heath. Yet she felt like she was being pulled under by a strong current of great proportion.
Powerful emotions tugged and pulled her underwater and for a moment she needed to halt her hurried footsteps in order to breathe.
Anger, relief, fear, hope, Maria could not detect which one plagued her the most, although she was able to accept that shame weighed her down, as an anker tangled around her feet.
She'd lived inside a tiny bubble in Amsterdam. Overseas, in the capital of Holland she'd been granted one day of happiness, which had been enough to make her realise that she'd allowed a damaged man to steal her heart.
She'd quickly learned how easy it was for a man to break it.
Once she'd traded the foreign country back for familiar English soil, reality struck her like a bolt of lightning. Betrayal of the worst kind had been her wake up call. A familiar hard lesson had been re-learned, this time not by the whippings of her father's belt, but by Ada's catty lips.
Lust, arousal, sins, it would get a girl with her background no-where in this world. And without holding a grudge for Tommy, she'd been able to squeeze every bit of dread into a small tombstone inside her heart, locked up and away from the world.
Maria almost wished that Tommy's escapades inside the Shepard had been the truth. And that his straightforward promise hadn't been real. But she could still sense the last kiss on her lips, which was enough evidence that the mighty gangster of Small Heath held more integrity then she could have ever imagined.
Strangely enough, his sincerity made her thoughts blacker. The promise she made to her late father was etched into her brain; she's sworn to marry a good man, a man who'd make her father proud.
Her father would turn in his grave, knowing his eldest daughter desired a ruthless gypsy devil.
If her father had still been alive, he undoubtedly would have cast her out for bringing so much shame and immorality into their home.
And her mother, she'd never forgive her for defiling their family name if she considered giving into Tommy's efforts of persuasion.
Guild-ridden, nausea clawed at her throat, and she tried to force down the upcoming bile, but it was a lost cause. Her stomach kept on contracting violently and forced the pitiful content out onto the street. The stench invaded her nostrils and she heaved even though there was nothing left to relive.
She lurched forward and sank down to her knees, sensing how all color drained from her face. Her grandma had once said: 'sometimes there is simply too much too fast.' But that was over the passing of her pet rabbit, when she'd been four years old.
Nowadays that phrase was an everyday occurrence, only alternated by a moment of sleep, although that wasn't much more than a hasty slumber.
Like a dog kicked by its abusive owner, Maria dragged herself home. Once she reached the house, she was startled by her two younger sisters still being out of bed.
When she questioned both girls, May awkwardly shrugged her shoulders and continued braiding the hair of a self-made doll. April simply pointed out that their mum was feeling unwell and had gone to bed in Maria's room.
Maria noticed how her mother had closed the door of the windowless bedroom, which was very unlike her, since her fear of the dark always lingered. When she asked her sister how late their mother had gone to bed, April had shrugged as well and viciously kicked her younger sister against the knee.
Pulling the two malicious girls apart, Maria ordered them to keep their voices down and go brush their teeth. As the twins pushed and pulled each other on their way to the bathroom, Maria stared up at the old cuckoo clock and noticed that it was far past ten.
It was a school night and her mother had failed to put her youngest children to bed. Anger sprouted through the thick layer of guilt and heartache. Her mum had one job, one darn job. She'd calmly asked the twins if they'd had dinner while watching them brush their teeth. All their teeth, not just the ones in the front.
April must have sensed her older sister's resentment and neatly informed Maria that they ate, which was later confirmed by May, who'd defiantly whispered that they had biscuits for dinner.
The empty content of their cookie jar confirmed their story.
She told her sisters a little bedtime story and promised them that tomorrow night she'd tell them all about Amsterdam again.
Maria stared dejected at the smoldering fire inside their furnace. The flames curled and swayed, casting shadows over their rough rug. The flickering and crackling of the burning dry wood was hypnotizing and oddly comforting.
They were almost out of kindling with barely enough left for tomorrow. Maria made a mental note to buy some after work while she fiddled inside the flames with the fire poker.
The heat scorching her hand was more than welcoming.
Placing the poker aside, she held out her hand and extended her fingers. Was this the path she'd choose to take? Bracing herself for the little hint of inferno, she allowed the flames to singe her skin.
Pain flared up from her fingertips, sending a solid message to her head, to pull back unless she wanted to be scarred. But she already was, in more ways than one. And although the pain brought out so much hurt, it was almost healing. Nurturing, cleansing. The radiating pain brought her back into a primal state of being, in which emotions such as guilt and disgust were all of secondary importance.
Her small act of self-harm was her way of repent. What she wanted, it didn't matter. It had never mattered, not at all. And by God, she didn't want to matter. She never wanted to be of any importance, to have a name for herself, to be noticed.
Yet she'd found herself in the position of being placed onto some treasurable pedestal by one of the most infamous men in Birmingham, maybe even England. And what was most upsetting was that she was clueless to what she'd done to earn such a privilege.
A cursed position. One that would force her closer to criminal acts of violence and retribution, every day. Like a moth, towards the flame. Until she touched the inferno and burned.
.-.-.
Growth wasn't always linear; it was mainly two steps forward, one step back.
As an agnostic, a gypsy, Tommy did believe in very few things. He believed that breaking a mirror was bad for the soul. He'd knock on wood three times before heading off to make a promising deal. If he crossed paths with a black cat he'd have a tendency to walk away. He'd never buy a horse on Friday the 13th. Occasionally he'd throw a penny up.
And he was a firm believer in kismet; karma. And karma was a bitch to him.
By the beginning of a new day there wasn't just one step back. No, they were head over heels, tossed into trouble.
John had vanished, only leaving a short note to explain how 'love could not be tamed' and that he was going to find the mother of his unborn child.
Right after discovering John's message, Arthur got a call from none other than Zilpha Lee, spitting venom about how the Wolverhampton had been raided by the coppers. The police men had done a marvelous job of tearing the place apart and arrested every poor son of a bitch who'd been present. Sixteen Lee-boys, eight Blinders and a bunch of hung-over spectators were occupying the cells of Small Heath.
In her mother's tongue, Zilpha called off their alliance, packed up their camp and went traveling North.
As Arthur muttered something about 'a woman's grudge', the phone rang again. Another proud gypsy was on the line, one who was rooted overseas. The director of the NCF was happy to inform them that, 'because of their shared blood', he'd put a lot of pressure on his workers. And that their first shipment of cocaine would be reaching the docks of Harwich in less than a week.
Tommy had been able to overhear the conversation and hurriedly nodded to Arthur to accept the offer. Rejecting it would have been perceived as a high offence and paint them as ungrateful.
And so before breakfast, Tommy had lost his brother, his main mode of distributing cocaine and had possibly made a new enemy because Zilpha was not the type of woman to fuck around with. Oh, and he had his first shipment of cocaine heading to England, without a proper place to store or sell it.
And he hadn't even thought about the Chinks yet.
Or found time to visit aunt Pol in the hospital.
And he was about to greet the woman he'd expressed his deepest feelings to, with the pitiful result of her running off.
At times, Tommy wished he could be an ignorant schmuck like John and just leave this damned place without a care in the world. Because 'Tommy will keep business growing, Tommy will know what to do, Tommy will carry the weight of the world, just so I can fuck off to God knows where…'
So, to set the record straight, they were close to six strikes behind, Tommy pinpointed down after doing a little calculation. Seven, if he added the tense and awkward atmosphere that crept into the room the moment Maria tiptoed in.
Most men wouldn't be able to handle all the pressure, but nowadays it was the fuel that kept Tommy going. The sporadic moments that did not include an emergency or crisis where the times Tommy got locked back inside his own head and forgot the first and most important bodily function; breathing.
So, he familiarised himself with the soldier inside, ordered Arthur to seek out the new leader of the Chinks and send him a note of condolence, with an attached invitation to their office. He then handed a letter to Ada telling her to fetch Finn and visit aunt Pol. Although Finn wasn't a fan of hospitals, the prospect of having a free day from school sounded like music to his ears. Ada was a bit less enthusiastic, but after being assured that there would be men on guard, she quietly left with her little brother.
Maria seemed to shrink two sizes when she noticed they were all alone at the office. Tommy's mind however was taken over by all the possible threats heading in their direction and coldly signaled for her to rearrange the files he'd angrily thrown across his office last night.
He granted himself a little break and walked outside to have a smoke. His feet paused at the threshold of their house. He contemplated if it was too early to get drunk. It was, because he needed to stay sharp. So instead he prepared a fat line of cocaine and shamelessly sniffed it off the package of cigarettes. Leaning against their doorway, Tommy stared into space and wondered if his relentlessness had reached its limits. Had he been too ambitious when his damaged mind mapped out their fortune in the form of cocaine? By now, two enemies had been assassinated, one ironically murdering the other to tighten their bond. Tommy himself had nearly been tortured to death, got his aunt sent into the hospital and apparently lost a brother, for a while.
How many criminals was he going to fuck over, before he'd be staring into the barrel of a loaded gun? How many crimes was he allowed to commit, before the noose around his neck grew too tight? And how many decent law abiding citizens was he going to corrupt before enough was enough?
At least one more. 'I need Ste', Tommy thought to himself and made a mental note to have Arthur fetch the young surgeon from the hospital after his shift ended.
Resolute, he marched back into his office and sat down behind his desk. Burying his face into the palms of his hands, he tried to come up with a plan to get all the different wires spun back together. It was a bloody mess, this puzzle. Because he had the cocaine, the Lee's, the Chinese, which all three could turn into a blessing or a curse. But which of them should be dealt with first, which might be the biggest threat or their best option?
'Fuck it,' he forcefully exhaled through pursed lips and threw himself back into his seat, craning his neck upwards. Was his current position an improvement from shoveling shit inside the stables?
Staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, Tommy briefly wondered if that same pattern ran along the inside of his skull. Bones, gnashed, brittle, with lines of plastering old white paint. Unintentionally, his fingertips brushed over the thick lines of scar tissue that ran unevenly over the side of his scalp. The last one was still healing; a stingy reminder of Russo's basement.
What could he do to maintain the upper hand? Absentmindedly, his fingers traced over the lines tainting his scalp, as if he was blind and learning braille, he tried to memorize the rooted pattern.
The tip of his index finger halted when he felt a familiar dent underneath the surface of his skin, just above his left temple. It was the exact place where the surgeons had drilled a hole inside his head to lessen the pressure on his brain. It was there, right there where the surgeon had made a fatal misjudgment and damaged his speech forever. Broca's area, Dr. Rivers had called the tiny part of his brain which held the secret to vocalising the human thought.
After Russo's ordeal, he'd been forced to remain in the hospital. With his arm in a sling, he'd tried to use his time as efficiently as possible. He'd read parts of a medical article about the varieties of brain processes. It made him wonder if the surgeons may have started the trepanning too late and that more parts of his brain had been damaged by the buildup of pressure inside his skull.
The amygdala -the primitive part of the brain for processing fear- seemed like a broken compass inside his head. At times the clapping of a young child could make him snap; yet facing the Chinese hadn't given him a moment of distress. The sudden, overwhelming aggression that could reduce any form of intelligence into the far back of his head, stirred up as unexpectedly as snow during summer.
Some might even say he was possessed and he could not blame those foolish believers of good versus evil. It wasn't about that, it never had been about something simple like that. What kept the world spinning wasn't the power of love and death. It wasn't good or bad, nor was it black and white. No, it was about money, corruption and war. The power to have or to take away. About big fucking small. About taking and claiming for what there was and reassuring his family of enough wealth and fortune to live on.
So, what could he possibly do to maintain it? He'd fucked up some vital necessities within his plan, such as the pack with the Lee's. He needed to be back on Zilpha's good side, without her and her boys, there would be simply too much cocaine to export without alarming the coppers. It wouldn't matter that he'd have a legal permit to import it, exporting such amount within the country was not possible.
All of a sudden the little wires inside his damaged brain seemed to click and Tommy shot up in his seat. A new plan started to take form as Tommy rushed to their safe. Dialing the combination, Tommy was relieved that his family hadn't changed the code.
Due to the illegal aspect of their businesses, the Shelby Company did not have a penny in the bank. All their wealth and treasure lay locked behind a steel door, imbedded into the structure of their house.
Tommy took one of the briefcases and started to fill it up with piles of money bills. In his rush, he dropped a few stacks and silently cursed as he scooped it out of sight.
Locking the safe back up, he headed to Arthur's desk and tore out a page from his notebook:
Having a heart to heart with Zilpha, will be back soon, Tommy.
He could feel his fingers trembling around the briefcase as blood rushed through his ears. His physical state of alertness made the corners of his lips turn into a little grin. At least he would be out of the office and back in action.
His unaware partner in crime did not seem so pleased. When Tommy ordered Maria to go home and pack for at least a day or two he could practically see her heart shatter.
Tommy parked their old Ford T at the doorstep of Maria's apartment complex about an hour later. In the trunk of the car, he'd hidden the suitcase containing the money underneath a knapsack and he'd changed from his usual iconic outfit to the worn rags he used to help out in the stables.
"Where are we going?" his speaker asked jittery, as she watched him dump her suitcase in the trunk.
North, Tommy signed, opening the door for her, we're going North.
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A/N: I will be honest with you, I seriously did not have a plan for this chapter. I basically summed up all the problems that needed to be dealt with and then MuteTommy made up a plan to tackle all the errors. So credits to Tommy!
Xoxox Nukyster
