THE WILDEST OF THEM ALL - a Peaky Blinders fanfiction
-IN WHICH all sorts of things happen, at home and outside, every day, but Darcy doesn't recall having ever thought that in the life she had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's...
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"If nothing could save us, not money, not a male body, and not even studying, we might as well destroy everything immediately."
❂
Prologue
No one knew that the world would go up in flames the day Arthur Shelby Sr fell in love.
In the spring of 1904, the head of the Shelby family met a woman with golden skin and black eyes. He had been traveling in the south of France when he crossed paths with the Italian beauty; Carmela. She was from a rich family in Naples, spending vacation in the fields of Avignon. Arthur Sr wanted to seduce her and eventually rob her. She spoke a few words of English, but that was enough for them to keep each other company. One night they shared the shadow of an olive tree, and as the sun arose Arthur Shelby awoke to the sound of his own sleeping. He was alone. His horse was gone, his watch was gone, all his clothes and all his worth.
Along with Carmela. That's when he realized that the woman he thought he was going to betray when the time was ripe― outsmarted him.
He couldn't deny the love that flickered within him like a stubborn flame refusing to be extinguished. It was maddening, this love that defied logic, that clung to the fragments of trust shattered by her deceit. He realized that love was a force beyond reason, an unfathomable wellspring that refused to be tamed, even in the face of the deepest betrayal.
A girl, nine months later was born to the lover and thief of Arthur Shelby in Naples. She was named Idalia Cerullo. Ida, as everyone called her. Her mother never told the little girl who her father was, because she knew that was for the better. They lived in poverty, but delight. That's how she remembered at least.
In 1910, when Ida was five years old, her mother was thrown in jail for all the thieving she's done, and it was preposterous, really, because the woman had stolen not only priceless treasures but also the affections of countless souls was, in reality, their very own enchantress. It was more humiliating for the town than it was for her, and as the eyes of the mob grew wider, her yells echoed louder, calling the name of her daughter. For her allure had been both her greatest strength and her gravest deception.
Carmela loved her daughter, but some women just aren't made to be mothers. And some girls aren't made to be daughters.
The little girl was taken by the authorities and was sent to her father. To Birmingham. She had nothing, utterly nothing but a pocket watch squeezed between her little fingers, a pocket watch with the name 'Shelby' engraved.
Ida had her eyebrows furrowed together, anger bellowing from her face as she stood on the Shelby doorstep, the doorstep of her so-called family, her arm gripped tightly by the woman she was passed on to by the coppers, the one who was in charge of orphaned kids in Birmingham.
