Wicked Game | Tommy Shelby ¹

𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘

❝Our bones are stained with sin,
scorched from fires and
broken by betrayals,
cold in loneliness and
soaked with blood, and still—
we keep on fighting.❞

HENRIETTA OWEN TRIED TO stay away.

When all was taken from her by the shadows of war, Hattie refused to stand idle, useless and out-of-reach from enemy lines. So, she instead turned to instinct, using a weapon of her own that men had deemed atrocious; her mind.  Hattie knew that she was respected enough in Small Heath—being a member of a local street gang and all—but such a reputation could not protect her forever. If she wanted to beat a war of her own, she needed to grow up and become a mastermind of her own. Unexpectedly opting to leave her homeland of Birmingham, England behind, Hattie Owen moved to the Colonies and did not ever plan to look back. 

For four long years, Hattie waited across the ocean, listening to and memorizing the ugly secrets that came with dirty business. A silent killer she became as she slowly paved her way to success, taking no bullshit and no prisoners in her wake. Hattie was a dangerous woman with an angry soul, but no one would ever know that until it was too late. But as was natural, deadly actions had graver consequences, and when situations suddenly turned tragic, Hattie had no choice but to come home again. And this time, Hattie was thrust into the very heart of corruption that no amount of scheming could have ever prepared her for.

Thomas Shelby could not escape his family's legacy.

Sent away to battle, Tommy gained his freedom, but lost his innocence.  Holding on to a memory of hope for four long years, all was ripped away from Tommy when the man finally stepped foot back on home soil and found that nothing from his hometown of Small Heath was the same.  Unable to pick up the pieces, Tommy had to move on for the sake of his family and those that he cared about . . . The ones who remained, anyways.

Now the leader of the Birmingham criminal gang, the Peaky Blinders, and the patriarch of the Shelby family, Tommy did not have time to think on past regrets. In an economy growing by the day, Tommy had to be able to do whatever it took to ensure that his family's empire stayed on top. And as Tommy's ambitions continued to grow bigger and darker, opportunity unexpectedly fell into his lap, but it was quickly overshadowed by the arrival of a new threat that had been sent to clean up a city full of crime. 

That, and the fact that Tommy's childhood sweetheart—who had slipped away like a ghost in his nightmares—had finally returned to haunt him.

Forever locked in a dangerous and daunting history, forgiveness and trust were hard qualities to come by, but with new threats closing in on all sides of the Peaky Blinders, Hattie and Tommy had no choice but to unite for the sake's of their deeply intertwined families.  And as the world had seemingly begun to end all over again, Tommy and Hattie quickly came to realize that, yes, a lot may have changed in four years, but a lifetime of love was impossible to forget.

Set in the fallout of the First World War, the story of Henrietta Owen and Thomas Shelby was one that stretched time and borders. Touched by love and tainted by loss, the story of two minds clashing with two hearts is one that is twisted with fate, but sometimes . . .

Fate played a very wicked game.

❝If I told you about
the darkness inside of me,
would you still look at me
like I'm the sun?❞