WRITTEN FOR ME ( thomas shelby )

001 ━ A New Piece on the Board ..

"Our business is a one night stand with the buyers, Gene," Jackie reminded him before blinking herself out of her mind in time to steal a glimpse back towards Kimber's table. She fell still once she noticed a man seated in Gene's chair.

Know your enemy. Well, the easiest way to understand this cornerstone is through the allegory with mathematics, but Jackie preferred a whole different outlook. In her mind, her dealings happened on a chessboard. But this chess game they were engaging in had something a real and legal game would not: the ability to conceal pieces. You cannot defend yourself from a move you cannot see coming, thus knowing your enemy becomes curcial in maintaining a course for success; a pseudo-legality.

Mr. Kimber was discussing with a piece Jackie did not uncover yet.

She swept her brother's arm underneath her own grip and dragged him along with a calculated haste back to the table. There was time for her to suck in a breath and raise her chin, prepare that stellar smile that gave the Alloways the "friends" they now had.

"Mr. Kimber," Jacqueline called the second the man raised from his seat, a sour paleness elongating his features. At the sound of her voice, some sly brightness returned to him. "Well, aren't you going to introduce us to your new friend?" She slowed her and her brother's pace to a stop behind the new guest seated at the table.

"He's of no interest to you, darling, believe m-"

Movement creaked the chair in front of them and the man seated there turned around, and then, after a look carrying over a clear assessment, stood up. "Thomas Shelby."

"Gene Alloways," he shook the man's hand. "And this is my sister, Jackie-"

"Did you serve in the war?" Jackie interrupted, her tone dropping from the pitched and bubbly attitude she adopted around Billy Kimber, back into the serious depth she held around people like her brothers, around which she had no masked roles to play. Her tonality stiffened Gene besides her and though the signal was clear, Jacqueline refused to take back her question. While the nature of Mr. Shelby's gaze was no real puzzle for her to solve, it was its familiarity that allowed her the dangerous gamble of ignoring his competitor status for the moment. Unfortunately, she never forgot a single soldier that passed through her care during the war and him... his eyes... His name may have told her nothing, but his eyes told her of the handful of tunnellers she nursed back in France.

Her questioned seemed to have puzzled him in return twice as much as his nature should have had her. Only the evocation of the Great War was not entirely to blame for his the hesitation time laying silence between her inquiry and Tommy's answer. What startled him to a pause of thought was just how familiar this woman looked, despite being certain this was the first time he's heard her name or met her eyes.

"I have."

"Somme?" Gene inquired, receiving a prompt nod, however not also the grace of being preferred for a glance over the sight which seemed to be his sister to these English men.

"Tunneller..." The lack of a question in her intonation raised on the flinch of her smile, but dawned on Tommy's features as a troubling dilemma, something very disturbing to see on the face of a stranger.

"Excuse my sister," Gene tossed a blanket over the fire Jackie was poking. "She was a nurse on a frontline hospital. Seen enough faces that she thinks she knows everyone these days."