devil's backbone 🗝 tommy shelby

chapter 14

n// sorry for the little update spam i've been doing but i just love this story so much and i love where it's going and i can't wait until i get it to the part i'm
most excited about so! here you go! i hope you enjoy it, and thank you all for showing this book so much support and love!

Dread.  That's all Sybil felt as she woke up: nothing but dread.  What was she dreading?  Well, the answer to that was simple.  Sybil Day was dreading everything.  She dreaded getting out of bed, she dreaded getting ready, she dreaded going to work, and most of all, she dreaded even the slightest possibility of running into Archibald Hayes.  She dreaded it all, and so she decided that for once, she was going to give into that dread.  She called into her work, feigning illness, and as soon as she had gotten that sorted, she went back to bed.  And there she stayed, staring at the walls, so deep in thought that nothing could pull her out of her own head.  It was there where she lost all track of time, lost all sense of feeling, and lost herself.

Tommy Shelby, on the other hand, was slowly growing manic.  Inspector Campbell was still looking for Freddie and Ada, his business was just a step from becoming legitimate, that same business had just been done over by the Lee Family, and on top of that, his little brother had almost been blown to bloody smithereens while pretending to be him.  Which, naturally, all lead Tommy to where he was at the moment: making his way over to Sybil Day's home as quickly as he could with Finn in tow.  He was going to sort things out with the Lee family, and there wasn't a chance in hell that he wasn't going to make sure that Finn was in the safest place he knew of.  A place where Finn could maybe forget about what'd happened for a minute and be a regular kid.

Arriving at her door, he kept one hand placed protectively on his little brother's back and used the other to knock on the door.  But when no one answered, he began to grow worried.  He'd already called the school to ask if she was in, and they'd said that she sounded awful and that she was home with an illness, so he knew that she couldn't have been anywhere else.  So, he knocked again, and again, and again, until he grew tired of knocking, and began searching for a key.

"Maybe she's not home, Tommy..." Finn muttered, watching his brother look under flower pots and above the door frame.

"She's home, Finn," Tommy responded, gripping the key that had been stashed under the doormat. "I know she is."

Tommy wasted no time in unlocking the door, stepping inside the familiar home slowly and quietly, looking around.  But he was soon to find that the home he'd become accustomed to didn't feel like a home.  It felt cold.  The blinds had been drawn, there were no lights on, and most importantly, his Sybil was nowhere to be found.

At the sights — or lack thereof — he began to worry.  He'd managed to keep his cool exterior for everything else that had happened, but this was the end of that.  If the Lee family were bold enough to try and blow him and his betting shoppe up, what was stopping them from going after the woman he loved?  Or had the Inspector gotten to her?  What if he was using her to get to him in some sort of sick ploy to get his guns back?  He'd obviously shown an interest in her before, and he knew better than anyone that he wasn't going to just forget about her that quickly.  Either way, the possibilities were endless as to what and who could have gotten to his Sybil, and if he wasn't panicked before, he sure was now.

"Stay here, Finn." Tommy instructed quietly, closing the door behind him, slowly making his way around the small area, looking to see any signs that may have given any indication as to where she was.