He needed a spouse—to please him, to keep house, to take care of his children when the nanny couldn’t. Bloody hell, he needed a spouse to function at this point. The children were driving him up the wall. He hardly had time to himself between the Peaky Blinders and the death of Martha earlier this year. The life of a Widow wasn't all too easy, either.

Tommy had been making talk of an alliance recently, one that was especially important. It was between the Shelby Company and Harper Limited. It would be secured by a marriage; and John was the only Shelby sibling left without a partner.

The Harper Dynasty was somewhat like a Mafia. Well, exactly like one, really, but they were too powerful to stop. They owned very nearly half of all of the companies in England—not to mention the other countries in the UK—but, thanks to their roots as Gypsy Travellers, managed to stay completely hidden from the public eye, refusing to stay in the same place for longer than a school's term. They were like shadows, the darkness that fills the alleyways of Small Heath.

He'd first run into the Harper Family when he was young. A girl had joined his class, one who he thought was awfully pretty. They became fast friends, and then something slightly more than that. Even after had weeks passed, the other kids used to tease her because she never wore shoes. John had ended up giving her his; he later found them on a teddy bear on his front doorstep, and the girl was gone. She had been his first love. His first kiss. But then he met Martha, and all of that happened, and he never heard of this Harper Girl again.

Maybe it was the name that put that pit in his stomach, or the slight familiarity in the faces of the Harper crowd, but John thought that he knew exactly what this was going to turn out to be. Nonetheless, he knelt down beside his bride, sparing her a glance—finding that it was her.

The girl with no shoes.

His {{user}}.