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chapter eight / season one episode three.
TW: scenes of a violent nature, discretion advised if you are easily triggered by scenes of such natures.
OLIVIA NEVER REALLY KNEW THE TRUE EXTENT OF WHAT BEING A SHELBY MEANT.
When she was younger, five or maybe even six, before the war had started, being a Shelby was just like being any other family in Small Heath. The Shelby family didn't have excessive wealth, they didn't have much money to spare on anything other than necessities, they had lots of children (with the new addition of Finn), an absent Da and a struggling Ma.
They were just like any other family in Small Heath.
The eldest sons jumped straight into work and piled their earnings on the table weekly to discuss with their Aunt Pol what their hard earned coinage would be spent on for the week. It was late at night when those talks would commence, but there would always be a small, chubby hand that reached up onto the table - week in, and week out - to hold onto one of the grubby coins that looked like it had lived a thousand lifetimes.
The boys would laugh.
Polly would gasp and curse Olivia Shelby's name under the sun, wondering what on earth the little girl was doing up past her bedtime.
That was probably the first few examples of why Olivia Shelby had her name cursed under the sun.
It had been nothing bad, it had been something funny. Something her brothers had laughed at. Something that made her giggle too.
If anything, Olivia would class it as the most positive cursing of her name to date.
She'd been innocent then, the Shelby family had been innocent too at that time. And then sometime during the war that innocence vanished.
The Shelbys weren't just Shelbys anymore. They were a business. They ran a gang. They had targets on their backs. They were devils in peaked caps.
They weren't just a family who spent week nights counting their coinage on the kitchen table, and there was no small, chubby hand reaching up into the coin pile. It was serious now when they sorted through their recent earnings. And it no longer included the eldest boys and their aunt, it was just Tommy and Polly.
Tommy was turning this family into the business he'd always dreamed of, the better life he'd always talked about. The automobiles, house, nice necklaces and as many teddies as he'd promised Olivia.
