✓ | GOLDEN LIAR ↠ Thomas Shelby.

46.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX.

               FELICITY HAD NEVER INTENDED to be the one with all of the power within her grasp: it simply was not in her to think in such a way, but hey, that was how she found herself to be one morning. With her breath rattling, her hands shaking and her heart thumping oh—so loudly within her chest, she stared down at the man before her. Her vision was obscured by blurry, fast—falling tears as she stood there, trying not to let every single emotion overthrow her rationality as she took the pistol from the other's grasp. One bullet was all she needed.

They say your life flashes before your eyes as you come close to death: that all of the adrenaline and. . . fear? She supposed it was fear that would then take hold of you and cause you to remember every single memory in a blinking, bright flash of the past. Felicity Shelby hadn't found that in the few times she'd caught a bullet speeding towards her, but now she did. It was ironic, really — she wasn't in any danger, not now, not anymore. Rather, she was supposed to take a life. How was that? How was it that she suddenly felt the flood of memories the minute she was to end another's? It didn't feel right.

But we haven't got onto that part of the story yet.

Two days prior, Thomas Shelby had taken to confiding in the woman — pride taken in his hands with a little bit more than a struggle, he had eventually told her of her father, of his visit, of everything. . . or, as much as Tommy thought was actually relevant.

So, with that secret off from his shoulders, the couple could return to their lives as normally as one could when they were constantly intertwined with the Peaky Blinders.

Yet neither stopped thinking of the man in the hospital, not that they initially admitted such a thing to one another.

"I think it's daft, really," Felicity commented now, as she sat in the corner of a booth in the Garrison, with her husband taking the chair opposite her as he idly read a newspaper and flicked through the news of the city that he reigned. The pub was empty — suspiciously so — with all of the usual drinkers gone from their usual place at the bar, leaving a silence that only Felicity and Tommy were there to fill.

The man glanced up. "What is?"

Felicity shrugged, her pencil turning circles on the page before her as she drew lazily. "All of this," she affirmed, and before Tommy could echo her words in that bemused way that he so often did — a way that bothered her to no degree, not that she would remember her annoyance after half a minute anyway —, she opened her mouth so to cut off any interruptions. "All of these troubles, I mean. And don't look at me like I'm being vague, Tom, you know I hate it."

"I wasn't doing anything of the sort," regarded Tommy, turning back to the newspaper as he suppressed a smile and awaited for what the woman had to say further.

"All I was saying was that it's silly," Felicity continued. "You men and your power struggles. Why, just last week some bloke threatens to blow out another's brains with a bullet and then two hours later you find 'im at the pub, too wasted to even remember the threat he made. You're all idiotic, I'll say."

Tommy raised an eyebrow. "All of us?"

"Yes, all of you," she returned matter—of—factly.

"Hm." Was all Tommy had to say to that.

Felicity let out her own sigh of bemusement. "What, did you think you'd be let off just because we're married?"

"No."

She smiled. "Good."

"I was, however, hoping I'd be let off 'cause we were fucking."

"Tommy!"