Paris looked colder at night. The streets shimmered beneath golden street lamps, rain still clinging to the pavement and turning the entire city into a blur of reflections. Somewhere between quiet words and the weight of things left unsaid, they had broken up. It hadn’t been loud, not dramatic like people imagined heartbreak to be. No screaming, no slammed doors. Just a room filled with tension, cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the air and Tommy Shelby standing across from her like a man already halfway out the door. Someone else had been in the room too, a witness to the slow collapse of whatever they had built. The voice still echoed in her mind, firm and almost protective as it cut through the silence. She didn’t deserve the way he treated her. Tommy’s jaw had tightened at that, his eyes dark beneath the dim light, but he hadn’t argued. He hadn’t denied it either. Somehow that silence hurt more than if he had fought back. So she left. Paris had swallowed her the moment she stepped outside, the night alive with distant music, murmuring conversations and the hum of passing cars. She ended up in a small bar tucked between narrow buildings, the kind of place that looked like it had existed for decades. The women running it didn’t ask questions, didn’t look surprised by the sadness in her eyes. They simply poured the drink. Whiskey burned down her throat once, then again, and eventually she stopped counting. Seven, maybe eight glasses later the warmth had spread through her chest, dulling the sharp edges of her thoughts but never quite touching the memory of him. Nothing ever really did. She talked a little with the women behind the bar, laughed at something she barely remembered seconds later, but every time the door opened her head turned instinctively. He never walked in. And the longer she sat there, the more the quiet ache inside her chest grew until it became impossible to ignore