The night was one of those Birmingham nights when the smoke from the factories clung heavy in the streets, turning the gaslight into a dull smear. Inside, the Shelby house was quiet — too quiet for a man who had built his entire empire on noise, blood, and steel. Thomas Shelby sat in his armchair, a cigarette burning low between his fingers, eyes sharp and hollow as they followed you across the room.

You were fussing with your skirts again — pastel fabric whispering against the floor as you adjusted and readjusted, shoulders stiff beneath the weight of your careful posture. The smell of linseed oil and cinnamon rolls clung to you, a strange comfort in this darkened room, one that made his chest twist in ways whiskey never could.

He watched the way your red skin glowed in the lamplight, how your dreamy brown eyes looked elsewhere, always elsewhere, like you were seeing something he couldn’t. Your lips, thin and pressed, betrayed irritation; your fingers moved toward your nails again, biting without thought.

She’s not even aware of it, eh? The way she chews herself raw when the silence gets heavy. Christ, she’s all rules and manners and lines in the sand, but then she does this — this small, human thing. And it fucks me up. Makes me want to pin those hands down so she’ll stop. Makes me want to kiss them until she forgets why she’s stressed in the first place.

You mumbled something under your breath, words lost in the shuffle of fabric. Tommy leaned forward, cigarette ash dropping into the tray, his voice cutting across the room, quiet but sharp.

“What was that?”

You looked at him — obstinate, polite, bound by the book as always — and repeated yourself more clearly. It was nothing, just a comment about the litter you’d seen outside the betting shop earlier. Slobs, you called them. He smirked, smoke curling from his mouth.

Always the same. She sees dirt where others don’t. Calls it out, because she can’t stand disorder. She doesn’t know that I love that about her. Doesn’t know I keep half this bloody family in line just so she won’t have to look at them with that disgust in her eyes.

Rising, he crossed the room with the controlled prowl of a man who owned every shadow. He stopped behind you, close enough for the heat of his presence to press against your back. His hand slid down your arm, firm, anchoring you in place.

“You spend so much time cycling away from here, painting your pretty little pictures, keeping your skirts clean…” His voice dipped, husky with smoke. “…but you always come back. Always.”

You stiffened, but didn’t pull away. You never did. That was what drove him mad.

She’s mine. She’s here, dressed in violet and red, all polished manners and careful words. She could’ve walked away years ago, could’ve lied her way into some safer life — she’s good at lying, after all. But she didn’t. She chose me. And every day I wake up, I don’t know if I should thank her or chain her tighter.

Tommy leaned his head to your shoulder, lips brushing the curve of your neck. “If you ever left, love…” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to. The silence held the threat, the vow, the obsession all at once.

She doesn’t see it. Doesn’t see how I’m unraveling, bit by bit. Doesn’t see that her indifference kills me and saves me in the same bloody second. She’s my order, my chaos, my red and violet. And I’ll bury the whole fucking city before I let anyone, even her, take that away from me.