🥀|| ❝𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭, 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝❞ ||
Sooner or later, it was going to happen. Sooner or later, she would pay the price f...
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𝕋he board meeting was the last entry in Olivia's first diary. Tommy closed the notebook sadly and stopped leaning against the wall. He had been on that cold Whitechapel sidewalk for quite some time, standing in front of a hat shop, and across the street was the Westerling family home.
Tommy couldn't say for sure if he was gathering courage or was afraid to discover a truth that he wouldn't be able to bear. In the latter case, what would that truth have been? That Olivia was, indeed, dead? Or that she was alive in some corner of the world, hidden with the help of Ada and Polly? Tommy couldn't establish what caused him the most fear because the result in both scenarios would be the same: uncontrollable rage.
He crossed the street with determination and a car almost ran over him. He was distracted and the heart asked for the tranquility that only laudanum gave him. But Tommy needed to be sober, at least as long as he was in the Westerling's house, since he didn't want to miss any detail, no matter how small it could be.
He knocked the door and was answered by silence. On the other side of the old wooden door, absolutely nothing was heard. Tommy waited a couple of seconds and just as he was about to knock one more time, he heard slow footsteps crawl across the parquet floor inside. Before he could assume someone was going to greet him, the door opened.
The first sign was bad: the woman in front of him, short with a thick build, wore mourning clothes. She had purplish circles that framed her dark eyes, similar to Olivia's but opaque, and her wrinkled face revealed the nights of endless crying.
"Yes?" The woman looked intimidated by Tommy's presence at her door. It was remarkable to see a man so well dressed in that area of the East End.
"Good afternoon", Tommy said, trying, that way, to reassure the woman. "My name is Thomas Shelby, OBE. I'm a Member of Parliament for South Birmingham". It took him a while to realize that most of what he had said had been unnecessary. His name would have been enough, since his rank and position in Parliament made the woman hide a little behind the half-open door.
"Do you need something?"
"I'm Ada Thorne's brother".
"Oh". Tommy witnessed how the woman raised her eyebrows. "Is Ada with you?", she asked and began to look for his sister.
"No". Once again, Tommy was cursing Ada inwardly. Things would have been easier with her there. "Ada couldn't come, but she sent me instead", Tommy lied.
"And what does Ada need?" The woman had been less sullen since Tommy had communicated his consanguinity with Ada.
"Some things she loaned your daughter when they both lived here in London and Olivia never took back to Birmingham".
The mere mention of Olivia caused the woman's gaze to darken again, and Tommy took the reaction as the second bad sign. Olivia's mother stood aside and with a slight wave of her hand, allowed Tommy into the house.
