The Runaway • 𝑇𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑦 𝑆ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑏𝑦

10

The Runaway
Chapter
10

"First Impressions, Part 2"

♕♡︎♔

     They both walk out to see a bald man screaming while throwing tables around. Freddie is trying and failing to get his attention to calm him down. All the customers had moved to the walls of the bar, avoiding the rampage. Tommy makes his way around from behind Charlotte.

"Leave, now." He tells her leaving her confused.

     Charlotte had never been okay with being told what to do, not since she was a child and not now. She always hated being told what to do and how to act. Especially by her grandmother who saw nothing wrong with reprimanding her for doing or saying the wrong thing, even in front of her family or guest at a charity auction or dinner. Charlotte would listen, albeit with a sour look on her face. As she's gotten older she's learned to relax her face to not give anything away and most of the time would comply. Not without giving the one giving orders hell first.

     Charlotte doesn't leave and instead observes the situation around her before she realized what was happening. The same thing that happened to her brother almost every night and day since he came back from France, from the war. He was having an episode, a war flashback.

Charlotte thought carefully about her next course of action, did she listen to him and walk away or does she defy his orders and stay? Defy the man who basically rules all of Birmingham?

       Charlotte knew that right now, she was dancing in the very pits of hell with the devil himself. She knew the Shelby's weren't to be messed with, most of all Thomas Shelby who seemed to be the head of the family. Despite everyone's warnings, she wasn't scared or worried. Even though she knew without a doubt that she was going to burn in the flames that surrounded him.

     Tommy and Freddie were both now trying to calm down their friend Danny. All the patrons of the bar had left out the back after Tommy's orders for them to leave. No one would dare defy a Shelby, well no one except for Charlotte it would seem.

     Danny was now in the corner opposite of the snug closest to the front door, with a piece of broken glass in his hand. He was using it as a weapon to defend himself against them, thinking they were the enemy, not letting them near him.

     Charlotte takes note of the situation, Danny's bleeding hand from the glass he was using as a weapon against his friends who were trying to help him. She decides to try something before things got worse.

     She carefully makes her way towards the back, walking alongside the bar counter and stands on one of the abandoned chairs. Harry watches from behind the bar, his head moving back and forth from Charlotte to Tommy and Freddie incredulously. "What're you doing lass?!" Harry asks her thinking she's going to get herself killed.

     Charlotte ignores him and starts humming a tune before she starts singing. Her voice amplifying in the almost empty bar. 

     Tommy and Freddie are almost too invested in Danny that they don't notice the singing. When they do they both turn their heads back slightly to see Charlotte standing on a chair singing her heart out.