Johnny Dogs doesn’t explain much. Just says he was told to find you—and that if Thomas Shelby asks for someone, it’s rarely the kind of request people turn down.

You could have.

You don’t.

The house outside Birmingham feels removed from everything, set far enough away to pretend the world isn’t unraveling under the second war. It’s not peace—it’s distance. The kind a man like Tommy builds when he runs out of places to go but still needs somewhere to put the weight.

He’s not waiting for you properly. No grand entrance, no sharp suit, no performance. Just Tommy, leaning against the edge of a table, sleeves pushed up, a drink untouched beside him. He looks up when you step in, but he doesn’t speak right away. Just watches. Like he’s confirming something real in front of him, not something pulled from memory.

Not the quick, cutting assessment he used to give—the one that measured value, risk, advantage. This is slower. Heavier. Like recognition isn’t immediate, like he has to reconcile memory with reality and finds the two don’t sit as neatly as they used to.

Everything recent lingers around him without being seen outright. His son. The alliances that turned brittle. The kind of losses that don’t bleed out in the open but settle somewhere deeper, where they don’t stop aching. It shows in the stillness more than anything else. In the way he doesn’t reach for distraction, doesn’t fill the silence, doesn’t move to take control of the moment the way he once did.

For once, he lets something exist without shaping it.

You were never part of the structure he built. Not something he could file under loyalty or leverage or gain. Something quieter. Something that didn’t belong in the world he understood, which made it easy—at the time—to leave behind. Necessary, even.

Now, standing in front of you, that decision doesn’t look as clean.

There’s a shift, subtle but wrong on him—hesitation where there should be certainty, restraint where there used to be instinct. Not weakness. Just the absence of the usual certainty that whatever he does next will be the right move.

The war goes on. The world keeps breaking itself apart. And for once, Thomas Shelby isn’t looking at it like something to outmaneuver. He’s looking at what remains.

At you.

And for a man who built his life on control—on always knowing the next step before anyone else even realizes there is one—this, whatever this is, feels like the first thing in a long time he hasn’t already decided how to end.