XXVII | THINGS LONG OVERDUE
ALL OF THEM A BIT BATTERED and bruised, the company returned from the auction two thousand guineas lighter and buzzing from the adrenaline still flowing through their bloodstream. It took them half a bottle of some unknown liquor they found in the back of the truck and some of the liquid concoction Arthur now had to carry with him, to calm the oldest Shelby brother. Out as lights, he then proceeded to sleep off his temper until they reached Birmingham again.
One thing in particular weighted on Caterina's mind through the entire nauseating ride; Michael's hollow silence as he watched straight on, gripping the steering wheel in a cold surety. Not even when they dropped him off at Polly's at Sutton did he utter more than a couple words of a goodbye and a solemn nod of the head before he disappeared into the house.
To an unexperienced eye, it would look as if the boy suffered a great shock by seeing an unknown man being beaten into a broken pile by his relative, surviving a real assassination, just like the ones he had the opportunity to see in the pictures, or read about in the papers. And yet, Cat could decipher the silence through the determined eye and white knuckles, through the steady and even rise of his chest - Michael Gray had felt what most of them did once the dust settled over the battlefield. He felt alive and blooming in this new environment, cementing his decision to stay in Birmingham for good.
The thought of him joining their ranks, risking his life now, when Polly had finally found some peace of mind, brought in another wave of turmoil that rolled over her chest. Lately, it seemed everyone she met fell victim to the guns pointed straight at her head, and she'd be damned if Polly's son ended up among them.
Throwing away the possibility of stomaching anything but a cup of Earl Grey, Cat pushed into Tommy's office in a search for the fountain pen he kept stealing from her desk on every opportunity he had — she made a point of writing it down as a potential Christmas present for him.
There were still things that had to be handled by the end of the day, and that included listing the unexpected expenses at the auction today, somehow masking the price of the horse so as not to draw Polly's fury onto them.
Tommy's desk was a perpetual chaos; half read books underneath a full crystal ashtray, piles of papers in a desperate need of a signing, price lists and trinkets of all kind. A glaring opposite to a sharp cut, organised man he strived to be seen as.
She complained once how nice it would be if he added one of those fancy phonographs everyone of importance seemed to have these days, only to be cut off by a sharp no.
Cat found his obvious distaste for music peculiar, if not a bit worrying. Sometimes after a particularly exhausting day at work he'd find her in the Shelby kitchen and sweep her off her feet like a gentleman. There'd be no music save the gentle tapping of her heels against the old floorboards and their even breaths as he twirled her between the chairs and the dish cabinet.
I prefer the silence, he admitted once, while they swayed and turned in an embrace that left her skin tingling. I prayed for it back then, and I still do. Just to get some decent fucking sleep.
Instead, he preferred a good book, something useful like that expensive volume about the history of horse-breeding she got him last birthday.
She found what she was looking for acting as a bookmark, chuckling once she noticed the author of the half read volume being the one and only Florentine philosopher who's train of thought mirrored Tommy's almost to a dot. Cat could only hope Thomas didn't have the ambition to take over the country.
Out of curiosity she reached forward to sift through the letters that came in that day, looking for any coming from Camden Town or any other of their business partners. Never in her wildest imagination did she expect to find one that would make blood run cold in her veins.
It was a small envelope, with a dainty, feminine handwriting on it, a very familiar one that brought an onslaught of memories she tried to repress.
For Thomas, she wrote, with deliberate and precise strokes of a pen so very unlike Cat's quick and at times unintelligible scrawl, just as the two women differed. While one wrote with a poise of a well-bred and proper lady, the other's letters found their place on the paper with brevity and sharp precision, as if she was somehow running out of time.
She heard him open the doors and shrug off his coat on the nearby chair before heading straight to the cabinet that housed his liquid vice. As if burnt with some invisible, stinging flame, the letter fell from Cat's hands, landing softly on the papers.
"There's a letter on your desk," she told him tersely, storming past him in a flurry of silk and tweed. "I'm going out."
Though Caterina had a peculiar habit of showing up at peoples doors uninvited and unexpected, at queerest possible hours, Lizzie never failed to usher her in and offer her a freshly brewed tea or something stronger.
In a dim lighted room, Cat and Lizzie laid on the bed, the former's head nestled in the latter's lap, eyes closed and thinking. On the outside she seemed almost peaceful, her hair fanned out underneath her, but there was a thunderstorm brewing inside her heart, mocking her, clenching and pinching with every breath she took.
"He's just a man," it was the third time Lizzie repeated that sentence, each time in a varying amount of disbelief in her voice and Cat couldn't help but sigh.
"I know Liz. But he was, he is..." she paused, unable to concoct a normal sentence out of her jumbled mind. "The only man I could consider as my equal, the only man that doesn't look at me through my name and its weight but as a living, breathing person with opinions he values and — fuck, Liz— he's been nothing but kind and supportive to me for the last three years. I want to believe he cares."
Despite all the trouble he and his family had gotten her into, it was undeniable that Tommy Shelby made her feel alive and living in a way no other man had ever achieved, an addictive all time high that flushed her cheeks as if she was twelve again and he was her first love. Love. It was not a word that came easily to her mind.
"Kitty, darling. I've known Thomas Shelby for quite some time and not once did I see him look at anyone with such adoration as he looks at you. Stop torturing yourself and tell him," Lizzie argued, trying to understand what made it so difficult for the two to express themselves, apart from being utterly emotionally inept.
Some years ago, when she first met the Blinders leader, Lizzie entirely sure he was one of those men that would drink and whore and work themselves into oblivion until they died alone and repressed by the regrets that had accumulated over their lifetime.
The same thing could've been said about Caterina; she drank, swore and smoke like a man, completely unapologetic of her sex and opinions, and without a single emphatic bone in her body.
But they changed, slowly but surely, until Thomas stopped seeking her out for nightly dalliances and instead employed her in his company, asking her about her day and workspace satisfaction instead of her former services. And Cat - her dear, darling Cat - no longer hid her insecurities behind artificial smiles and clouds of smoke, and reached out to her when she needed help, and that's exactly why she turned up on her doorstep that very day.
Opening your heart to another person was, in fact, absolutely terrifying, and Caterina was well aware of it. To place our fragile souls in the hands of another equally flawed individual was an equivalent of handing them a knife and placing an x over your heart.
It's gut churning, nerve wrecking, insane and irrational, and so very human.
"But what if... It won't work, Liz," she squeezed her eyes shut, taking another pull of her smoke. They were too stubborn, too ambitious, too reckless for their own good and all she could think about is the inevitability of their disastrous clash.
And still, there was the issue of the blonde he already once chose before her — who was to say he would not do it again? Who would want her sharp tongue and dark mind? Wouldn't it be more attractive to compliant and proper lady on your arm, and not a gun wielding, foul-mouthed criminal?
"Do you have an insurance that either of you would live a long and healthy life, that'd you'd have time? No, love, as much as it pains me to say, you could be shot dead on your own doorstep tomorrow. Do you truly want to feel regret then, for not simply telling him how you feel?"
Lizzie took a deep breath, restraining the pain seeping through the cracks of her being, letting her fingers glide through her friends hair. "What I'm trying to say is, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain."
At first, Thomas was confused.
He poured himself a hearty glass of whiskey and sat down behind his desk, pleased with the day's outcome despite the unfortunate turnout in the end. Now more than ever he needed to find something to occupy Arthur with, for his own safety. The Garrison and the boxing was obviously not enough to tire him or calm his nature.
Sinking into the comfort of the leather and sighing, he reached for the papers he saw Caterina shuffle through earlier, before rushing out in a hurry. He had wanted to run after her, but presumed it was just nerves from the exhausting day catching up with her and decided it would be the best if he left her alone for a while. He'll seek her out before he went to sleep to check up, he though.
The envelope was carefully torn open on one side, and he presumed it was the one he saw Cat drop earlier. The senders address stood out sharply, black ink on expensive white paper; Grace Campbell, Dorset Street 14b, London.
It was the very same letter he received a week ago and decided to tuck in somewhere in his belongings, preferably to forget about it entirely. He never assumed she would find it — he hoped she would never find it.
He slammed the now empty glass on the table, leaning on his elbows, tempted to simply pull every hair out of his skull.
For two years the Irishwoman's shadow hung over them like a fiend, an invisible barrier that created a suffocating air of hesitance between him and the temperamental Italian, despite the culprit being hundreds of miles away and well out of their lives.
How tempting it was, the sense of peace he's been running towards for what seemed ages now — and then it's ripped from underneath him like a rug, mocking him, sneering above him as he laid in the mud.
For all he seemed heartless there was no one that felt more deeply than Tommy Shelby. It was a curse of a gypsy's heart — they loved as fiercely as they lived and in the end it was to become their ruin.
Truly, he hadn't felt that way even with his first love, the gentle Greta Jurossi who drowned men in her blue eyes, who held his heart in her dainty grasp until the unforgiving stroke of destiny took her away. He refused to acknowledge the feelings worming their way underneath his skin, settling in the valley of his ribs and the cracks in the marble of his posture.
Thomas hated himself for loving her the way he did.
He tried to push it away — by the God he really did — to convince himself that the searing feeling on his skin when they touched was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. To ignore the nagging jealousy he felt every time he saw Michael watch her with wide, fascinated eyes as she smiled and talked and touched his arm in the utterly frustrating friendly manner.
No, he did not deserve her — for all her sins Caterina was still a saint comparing to him, a martyr of familial ties. She deserved a house in the country and a man who'd shower her with flowers and kiss her tears away until laughter spilled through her dark lips again. All he could give her was an uncertain future and bloodstained gold, a war-weathered heart of his being that ached for her light.
Maybe Caterina Cardinale could be his salvation; an answer to his whispered prayers in the crumbling trenches of France, when he prayed to God to send a heavenly angel to wash away his death stained hands.
No, he would never be good enough for her, but he'd damn well try, with every breath that he took, every step of his torrentous path, every beat of his depraved heart.
In the dining room of the house Arthur flipped through the day's newspapers while John propped his feet on the adjacent chair, baby Harry napping on his chest. The two sat quietly ever since they got back from Doncaster, as if nothing at all happened. As if they swept it all under a rug, the brothers sat down for dinner Esme cooked up, enjoyed s few drinks and some of the day's papers in a quiet content.
It was their brooding brother slamming the door loud enough to wake the baby that snapped them out of their evening monotony.
"Oi! Tommy!" John called after him over the screaming of the newly woken and wailing child. He had just been trying to light the cigarette between his lips, almost dropping it on his son in the process.
"What devil got into him?" Arthur lowered his papers. He took a glance at the coat rack on the side. "Didn't even bring his cap."
"I bet it's that stew Esme cooked up for dinner," John made a face at the bare mention of his wife's cooking. Esme had many talents, really, but anything in or around the kitchen was a complete catastrophe. "Cleaned up my guts good, I think I lost two pounds."
If Arthur hadn't gushed with laughter he never would have heard his wife coming up behind him as he said that, whacking him with a wet cloth over his head. He screeched in disgust, wiping the droplets of dirty water from his face.
"You can cook yourself from now on, ungrateful bastard." The raven haired woman spat, taking their child from her husband and marching off upstairs.
"Esme, Esme love, please-" half guilty and half exasperated, John pleaded, scrambling after his scorned wife. "I was joking, I swear!"
If it was any darker the two shadowy figures would have passed each other without noticing, but the row of streetlights provided enough light for the two to see each other clearly as they advanced, nearing each on an empty road of Small Heath.
"What do you want? It's still drizzling if you've haven't noticed," Caterina blurted out impatiently after the long beat of silence once they could see each other clearly. In truth, he hadn't noticed the slowing but relentless patter of droplets around them, or the way it soaked his black coat, seeping into the clothes underneath, nor could he care less about it. It would stop at some point, but he would not let himself be deterred by the damned rain.
"I want," he stopped two steps before her, tore his fingers through his wet hair. "Forget it," his voice was quieter, now. How to begin? Maybe he should have sorted that one out in advance.
"What? What do you want?" Caterina demanded, every fibre of her being alight with anger she could never possibly explain.
She wanted him, in the bluntest possible ways. She wanted his striking gaze, his calloused hands, his arms wrapped around her, never letting go. She wanted him the way waves wanted to kiss the shore, the way flames consumed plains, insatiable, the way a drowning man would gasp for air.
She wanted him completely, infinitely, all the broken pieces and all his darkest thoughts, and no amount of rain could douse the feelings she had tried to repress for so very long.
"You. For a really fuckin' long time," his voice came out breathless, unapologetic. Blue never seemed to be such a warm colour. Tonight, it burned.
"The moment you walked away that day we defeated Kimber, I knew I've made the worst decision of my life," it must have been cold outside, for sure, Caterina couldn't feel her legs properly, and her fingers shook slightly on her sides.
All the courage and determination with which she exited Lizzie's house seemed to have melted away with the falling droplets. "What about Grace?"
"A proof of my cowardice," it crossed her mind then, that maybe they had to break each others hearts in order to know the worth of what they were given, no sooner so as not to burn out, candles dancing wildly on the untamed winds.
"Do you not see it, woman? I haven't spent a day not repenting," his eyes and voice were fierce, fiery. She didn't notice him stepping closer to her, a breath away as he cupped her face gently between his calloused palms.
"I ran away from loving you because you deserve more than a war torn man, a broken man with nothing more to give you than himself, all I have and all I will ever have," he couldn't resist it anymore, his hands bringing her to him, not giving her time to talk for he feared would lose his courage.
"I ask your permission to be selfish."
She was acutely aware of every inch of Tommys pale face, of his half-closed lids and the darkest eyes boring through her own, of the shadow of light stubble across his jaw where he hadn't shaved, of the fading white scar that remained on his left eyebrow — and above all his red, inviting mouth, gently leaning, waiting. Testing the boundaries.
It was in that moment Caterina Cardinale was the most powerful woman in the world, holding Tommy Shelby's heart in the open palms of her hands.
"Don't break my heart, Tommy Shelby," a point of no return; her eyes drifted up from his lips to his eyes, giving him permission and Tommy couldn't quite shake the feeling that maybe he was dreaming. He'd be jolted awake by an unforgiving phone or someone knocking on the office door at any moment, wouldn't he?
"Wouldn't dream of it, Kat Cardinale."
It was far from a gentle kiss, though she could feel him trying to steady himself beneath her fingertips, to rein the desperation she too could feel stirring in the pit of her stomach. The earth twisted and trembled beneath her feet. Or was it just her knees?
It was not electricity running through their veins either, it was a thunderstorm boiling her blood and she knotted her fingers in his shirt, pulling him harder against her. Her body curved desperately into him, hands grasping at his collar, trying to close the nonexistent distance between their bodies. One of his hands wound its way to the back of her neck, the other pressing against the small of her back as the edges of their bodies slowly melted away.
They broke off only to gasp for air before his lips were on hers again, eager and unrelenting, yearning, making it up for all the reluctant glances and passing touches exchanged over the years in a hesitance of wanting more.
He kissed in the same manner as he wade through life, grasping as if she was an apparition, a fragment of his imagination and bound to slip through his fingers once again, like all the goodness he seemed to find in life.
Only this time Caterina was as real as he was, nestled in his arms, fitting as perfectly as he imagined, a lost piece of the most complicated puzzle he ever tried to solve.
That night on the dirty Small Heath street, as the faint shine of the petrol lamp extended its pale fingers over two entangled beings, two brokens made a whole.
