"So, this is her," Polly Gray/Shelby said with her lips quirked up around her clove cigarette in something that was the shape of a smile but wasn't one.

"I remember you," Arthur said brusquely. "You was at the hospital. We thought you was a nurse."

Tessa shook her head. "Not a nurse."

"So this is the reason you got shot up?" John said to Tommy, sucking his cig with an audible inhale. "Tell me bruv, she worth it?" Tommy rolled his eyes and managed to make even that look threatening.

The mousy woman next to John shoved an elbow into his side. Her hair and makeup and eyes were all a bit wild. "Fuck off, John, or I'll hang your balls by the bed."

The house, if it was ever even used as a house anymore, had the general air of being unoccupied for a while. All of its occupants were now so well to do, they could live separately from their gambling business. Back to the roots, indeed. She was imagining Tommy in this house, Tommy without all his wealth, Tommy without all the ghosts behind his eyes. It hurt.

His sister stood in a corner, arms folded. Tessa remembered seeing her at the hospital and being jealous of her for getting to be close to Tommy. And now Tessa was standing in his childhood home. Life is strange.

"And how do we know we can trust you?" Ada sized her up and down, chin tilted defiantly.

"You can trust her, Ada. She saved my life," Tommy said, eyes downcast as he lit his cigarette. When he looked up, inhaling, it was at her, and she met his eyes. They shone out in the dim room like crystal. Blue eyes, black hair, pale skin. A devil or an angel?

"Twice," she said, and he smiled only the smallest of smiles, but Polly saw it.

"Tessa," Tommy said, his voice and eyes lowering. Another hit. "We have some news about your father."

If it was up to Tessa, she would have been out under the sky, riding Chase far, far away. But she didn't know where Chase was, and she didn't know where her father was or even if he was okay, and he had been doing all of it for her and she never even knew. So she sat on the tiny stoop that served as the Shelby House's escape route and looked over at the river past the street and smoked a cigarette, and then another. She and her father had never been particularly close. She had lived with her mother in America for such a long while when she was young, that when her mother died and she was sent back to Europe she was thirteen and angry and her father had been married to his work anyway. But now he was suffering for her. He was going to enlist the protection of an entire gang, for her. That part had worked out itself, at least. Funnily enough. She took another drag. The back door creaked open.

"I brought tea," Ada said softly. Tessa took it as an apology for her sharpness earlier. She didn't blame her. Ada hadn't even known about Tessa's father, just that Tommy had taken some random girl in and she was now the Shelby's responsibility.

"Thank you," she said, and accepted the cup. Tessa was more of a coffee girl, herself.

Ada sat down gently beside her, worn china clinking. Her dress probably cost half as much as the house itself and she smelled like lavender.

"Saw your new car out front."

Tessa didn't know what to say, so she went to drink her tea, but it was much too hot, so she just sat silently and waited.

"He wouldn't do that for just anyone, you know," Ada said, turning to look at Tessa, to search her face as if to see what it was that made her special written in her features.

"I know," Tessa said, which made her feel odd, but she wasn't sure what else to say. The door creaked open and Polly leaned in the frame, the light from the kitchen illuminating her slim silhouette.

"You girls had best be careful, out here in the dark. People say there's gangs in these parts."

Ada and Tessa shared a smile, and the three women together stared out into the night.

In the house, Tommy sat with his brothers, leaning back in his chair. Arthur was sitting with his elbows on his knees, braced, agitated. John was standing, but paced around the room every so often, only to come back to his spot near the fire where he had originally been. Finn was playing with some knucklebones on the floor.

Arthur broke the silence. "So it's settled, then. Tomorrow we split up, take a name and a couple of our boys each. Knock some answers loose."

Tommy nodded, his whisky held aloft. John let out a long breath.

"Well, boys. Best get some sleep. Big day ahead of us." He clapped Tommy on the shoulder, nodded to Arthur, gathered Esme from the kitchen. The women took much longer to say their goodbyes, but soon Ada and Polly departed as well, until it was just Arthur and Tommy in the drawing room. Arthur took a swig of whisky from the bottle.

"I hope the fucking is worth it, Tom."

"We're not fucking, Arthur." Tommy took a drink.

"Well," Arthur said, putting the bottle down with more force than he probably meant to. "then you've got a hell of a lot to make up for before we go swim through the shit tomorrow." The amber bottle flickered in the light of the fire. It was empty. "G'night, Tommy."

Tommy was looking into the flames, and maybe he didn't hear his brother, but he didn't respond.

He certainly didn't hear her when she came into the room, she was sure of it, this time. Her arms were cold from the outside air but her insides were warm from the gin Polly had passed to her and Ada. She watched the back of his head for a while, the dark hair, longer on top and then fading suddenly to military austerity. He hardly moved except to drink or take a pull of his cig. She crept slowly across the room, feeling like just watching him had put her in a trance, and plucked his smoke from his fingers and before she could so much as lift her hand he had jumped up, moved so fast she didn't even see it, had his gun in his hand under her chin before the cigarette could get halfway to her mouth. She forgot to breathe, forgot how to move. The metal of the pistol was cold. His eyes were inches from hers, and they were cold too, before flickering slightly when the realization hit.

"Don't," he said, roughly, grabbing her face with his hand, squeezing her cheeks, just like the German in the hospital, "ever sneak up on me like that again." He dropped the barrel from under her chin.

His voice was so low, so quiet. Her breathing was now coming in tiny little gasps, and she was afraid that if she tried to fit more air in her lungs, her heart would fall right out of its spot in her throat.

"Fuck," he said, even quieter. "Fucking scared me." His voice like music, his lips full, face like it was carved from marble by the hand of God. Me too, she wanted to say. He let go. She backed up quickly, grabbed blindly for his glass, took a drink between sharp breaths, bracing herself with her hands on the fireplace mantle. She should have known. She should have fucking known to stay away from a gangster who sliced people open with razor blades, Jesus Christ, how stupid was she? Her breathing evened out, slowly. The whiskey made her stomach clench but she took another drink. He spoke from behind her, his voice emotionless.

"You can stay here tonight. I'll go back to my house and come get you in the morning. I know it's modest, but no one will think to look for you here." She stared at him, open mouthed in disbelief.

"Just to be clear," she said, her voice quiet but shaking. "Your idea of keeping me safe is pulling a gun on me and then leaving me alone in a house no one has lived in for years?"

Tommy looked at her, right in her eyes in that arrogant, empty way he did.

"Yeah. That's pretty much it." Then he downed his glass, put his pistol back in its holster, pulled on his coat, and stalked out the door. She picked up and threw his empty glass at him as he it slammed it, and it shattered behind him on the wall but he did not look back, and she heard the lock click from the outside.

She drank the rest of Polly's gin, and some of Tommy's remaining whiskey too, but it tasted like him so she spat it out in the sink in a pointless, indignant gesture. She roamed the house like a ghost, a departed soul, just visiting this life, thanks. There were old photographs everywhere. They made her want to cry. She found the boxes that still had the imprints of his war medals nestled in their velvet linings, hidden under piles of old newspapers. She sat in the betting room, crushed chalk between her fingers and wished it was snow. She went through the cupboards of the kitchen, empty but for more tea. And even though she told herself she wasn't going to, after most of the gin was gone, she made her way upstairs, pushing open the doors to the bedrooms. She knew which one was Tommy's because it was the plainest, and because it was the one with the most light. He hated the dark, and if he slept he slept under the stars or left lamps burning, even though he would never admit to it. His bed was small and stiff. She had never lived like this. All her life, even in America, her upbringing had been modest at the least, "comfortable", to phrase it politely. She lay down on the bed and watched the sun creep up over the other dark buildings through the window, above the smoke stacks and pipes of the factories. And then, suddenly, she cried, for the first time in weeks, because she was lost and alone and she missed her father's smell of pipe tobacco and wood varnish and she missed the way he used to call her "Tessie" and when he taught her how to ride. When she huddled her face in the pillow, she found a long pipe under it, and that made her cry more, until she was holding an old pillow in one hand and a pipe in the other and sobbing, because she was too tired and scared to fight the knowledge that she was in love with the man who it belonged to and she hated thinking about him using it and needing it and she hated that she knew why. She lit it with the lighter she kept permanently in her pocket now next to a pack of cigarettes she had taken from Tommy and inhaled the excess sticky tar but it was still too strong and she saw her mother brother grandfather dying and she saw Tommy standing over two men in a burning car and then she saw him standing over all of her lost family, holding a gun. And then she saw nothing until the bright sunlight cracked through her eyelids.

Tommy didn't sleep that night. He didn't even bother to try. He didn't go home, either, he pulled the gleaming copper-colored car up with a screech of wheels on pavement and instead knocked on Alfie Solomon's "bakery" door. A surprised-looking Jewish boy opened the peephole, his eyes wide, curly hair visible because only reached the top of his head unless he stood on his toes to see through it.

"My name is Tommy Shelby," he said, and the door creaked open. Years ago, he had dreamed of the day that just saying his name would open doors, literal and figurative. It felt almost as good as he had imagined it would. The boy led him to the back office, where Alfie was leaned over his desk, glasses held up to his eyes, dangling chain glinting in the low glow of the lamplight.

"Dearie me, you gypsies never sleep, do you? Have a spell for that, eh? A little voodoo in place of a snooze?" He said, without looking up.

Tommy didn't respond, but gestured to Alfie's clearly very conscious and hypocritical state, which the other man must have either sensed or caught out of the corner of his eye, because he said,

"Oh yeah, well, but I've got work to do, don't I?" As if Tommy didn't. He adjusted his glasses, sniffed loudly. Tommy wondered vaguely if getting more sleep would help the condition of Alfie's skin. "Now, what kind of meeting do you need to be conducting at-," he paused to check his pocket watch, "two fifteen in the morning, hmm? Got some eyes you need to cut out that can't wait till they see their last morning light?"

"I wanted to know," Tommy said, instead of replying to any of the numerous, circling statements that Alfie had dependably made, "if you knew anything about a man named Adolf Hitler."

Alfie froze, ran a hand down his beard, then stood up very slowly. Tommy heard the distinctive sound of a gun cocking under the desk. "Now, listen, Tommy, if you've come here to threaten me, how's abouts you just go ahead and do it like a man, eh? Straightforward, like, yeah? Not by mentioning that name in my fucking presence-,"

"I'm not trying to threaten you, Alfie. If I was threatening you, believe me, you would know. Now sit the fuck down, yeah? That's a good man." Alfie sat, but warily. Tommy would have bet his weight in silver that there was still a gun pointed at him in the other man's hidden hand.

"Let's just talk, you and me. I believe we are in a position to help each other."