WRITTEN FOR ME ( thomas shelby )

𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐌𝐄 ..

She was a glimmer.
His glimmer.

          THE WAR WAS A THIEF in Jacqueline Alloways' life. In May 1917, it stole from her side her two brothers and her father — they were drafted. No later than two months after their departure, it shamelessly stole her mother too — she couldn't live knowing nothing of her boys, so in late July 1917, Amity Alloways was buried without a priest on the hill overlooking the Alloways estate.

Consumed by greed, as all foul creatures are, the war kept taking, showing no signs of satisfaction, never once taking pity in how much it stole from young Jackie — shortly after her mother's death, she volunteered to join the ANC and left America in an attempt to see her brothers one last time. Instead, she was stationed in the French Army field hospital, not to hear or see her remaining family for two more years.

It didn't stop taking, this war to which she was one amongst many to fall victim to — once the war was over and they were sent back, the bittersweet reunion of the Alloways' siblings, left orphaned by the torching horrors of mankind, returned to an estate in collapse, emptied by thievery.

The world had already stolen too much from Jackie for her to even hear the promises of the law enforcement that the thieves were being tracked. No — there was only so many slaps one could take obediently silent before their knuckles whitened and they started fighting back. Within three months from their return to ruination, the Alloways' raised from the ashes an import-export empire, on the foundation of an industry masking a smuggling operation they hijacked in full from the thieves who raided their home while they were away at war.

Rum-running was not the end, but merely the beginning of the Alloways' becoming an underground famed middle-man operation for selling and buying goods like no other ...

          AKA . . .    In which Jackie Alloways and her little brother arrives in Birmingham to strike a deal with Kimber regarding some horses of questionable origin, only to meet Thomas Shelby, a man she was nurse to in France, during the war. " The past — it haunts you, and that one good memory is your salvation. "