The Runaway • 𝑇𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑦 𝑆ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑏𝑦

5

So he took over, they came back from the war and Tommy stepped up as the head of the family and started looking at new business ventures, only partially sharing his business plans with Polly. He did nothing else but focus on business since they got back, day after day.

     He no longer had time for trivial things, like falling in love and building a family. He had his family, the Peaky Blinders and business was the only thing that mattered. Tommy hadn't been with anyone since the war anyway. He didn't want to be with anyone. That of course didn't stop his physical desires so he found his release in the form of a whore that no one knew about who he met with a few times a week.

     He started to show up at her lodgings when he came back from France. It was a simple transaction. Someone he went to when the hits from his opium pipe didn't completely silence the war in his head, someone to relieve himself into and leave with a little less tension in his body. He would meet her, bend her over the desk or the bed, wherever, get his release that only lasted him through the night, pay and then leave. Tommy was never one for small talk. It was multiple nights that meant absolutely nothing to him.

Tommy can't remember the last time he actually talked with a woman, built a connection that was more than just sex, more than just a physical release of the tension in his body. Maybe sometime before the war, before he became the man he is today.

This was Tommy's life since he came back from the war, build the family business, get his release whichever way when he needed it, and run from the shovels scraping against his bedroom walls. This was what he had been doing for months, building a life for his family that gave them a chance in the world. A chance to fire back at his enemies while they were stuck in the mud.

Tommy had been thinking about nothing but business since he returned from the war. That is till an American woman by the name of Charlotte Moore came to town.

He had first heard her name at a family meeting a day after she arrived. His brother John mentioned her, as well as her relation to their family friends the Davis', Scarlett and Celeste. The rest of his family had questions about the new woman, except for Polly, Tommy knew nothing ever got past Polly.

     Tommy didn't ask questions. Tommy was thinking. He was always thinking but this was different. This was a woman, not business. A new woman in Birmingham who was in relation to people he knew. A woman from the country that came after the worst of the blood and mud and death. Who was she and why was she here?

     Tommy didn't ask this though, in fact he remained unbothered by the news. His family knew him well, they knew he was thinking about the new woman in Small Heath, maybe enough to look into who she is but he was never going to talk to any of them about it, well except Polly maybe.

     Even though Tommy tried to not think about the American woman, Charlotte Moore, only focusing on business, his family wouldn't fucking shut up about her.

Finn had met Charlotte the day after her arrival to Small Heath just four days ago. Right after hearing John mention her name at the family meeting and was all too proud and boasting about being the second Shelby man to meet the pretty bird from America. Tommy would never admit it but he was just as curious about her as his family, if not more, and did some research on her after the family meeting.

     The information he gathered from his informant was that she came from a wealthy family in America where all her close relatives were now dead. The only remaining family she had left was a grandmother on her mother's side and some other distant relatives as well as Scarlett and Celeste on her fathers side. Her brother, Daniel Moore, was in the war and on the return home he was listed among the shell shocked. He killed himself a few months after returning home. Charlotte was also registered as a nurse in the war after her father died. This peaked his interest even more.