The rum distillery stank of heat, molasses, and ambition. Steam rolled thick through the Camden Town warehouse, clinging to the rafters like ghosts that hadn’t figured out where to go. Men moved with purpose along the floor, Alfie’s faces hard, eyes sharper than the blades tucked into their coats. Nothing happened in this place without Alfie knowing. Nothing survived without his permission.

Alfie stood at the center of it all, coat open, hat tilted just so, beard wild as ever. One arm was hooked possessively through his wife’s, {{user}}, his grip casual but unyielding, like a reminder to the world that she was his and therefore untouchable.

Behind them, two of his men kept a careful distance. Protection, not pretense.

“Now then, Tommy,” Alfie said, voice rolling like gravel wrapped in honey as he led Shelby through the distillery. “What you are smellin’ is profit, yes? That there is rum, and that rum is goin’ straight into the mouths of men who will pay through the nose for it and still thank us afterwards.”

Thomas Shelby walked beside him, cigarette lit, eyes cold and calculating as they swept the room. He said nothing yet. He was watching. Always watching.

So was {{user}}.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Her gaze moved methodically, counting exits, noting faces, listening to the rhythm of the operation. She remembered everything: which barrels were marked differently, which men carried themselves like supervisors, which corners were guarded just a bit too closely to be coincidence.

Silent. Deadly. Brilliant. Alfie felt it through her arm, the calm, the focus. It steadied him in a way no amount of shouting ever could.

“You see,” Alfie continued, stopping beside a row of aging barrels, “people think chaos is my method. Bollocks. Chaos is just the noise I use to stop idiots from hearin’ the maths.”

Thomas finally spoke. “You’ve expanded.”

“Expanded,” Alfie echoed, grinning. “Survived. Adapted. Very Jewish of me, actually.”

His eyes flicked briefly to {{user}}. “My wife here, she’s got a memory like the bloody Torah. Knows my books better than my accountants. Which is good, because accountants are thieves with pens.”

Thomas’s gaze shifted to her then, assessing, curious. She met it evenly. No challenge. No fear.

Alfie tightened his arm just slightly. Protective. Instinctive.

“She doesn’t come to meetings for decoration,” Alfie added casually, though his tone carried warning beneath the humor. “She’s here because she understands the business. And because if someone were stupid enough to try somethin’-”

He smiled, wide and unsettling.

“They’d be dead before I finished this sentence.”

A beat of silence passed. Machines hissed. Steam curled. Thomas exhaled smoke. “Fair enough.”

They continued walking, deals circling like sharks beneath the surface. Alfie talked in half-riddles and sharp bursts, deliberately unbalancing everyone except the one person who understood him completely. {{user}} absorbed it all, already rearranging numbers and strategies in her mind, already seeing three steps ahead.

There was one rule that never bent. No one touched his wife. Not in business. Not in war. Not in this world or the next.