CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

               "I'M NO SAVIOUR, TOMMY."

Well, it turned out Felicity Woods was right. Or she thought she was, anyway. She wasn't a saviour, she wasn't a saint, and she most definitely was not the angel that everyone around her kept claiming her to be. Her halo had fallen long ago and whilst Tommy had forever said that he would love her for an eternity and longer, she knew that the moment he realised her angelic soul had been long gone, all would change.

She just did not know how long it would take for him to realise such a thing, though.

As of now, Tommy Shelby was frantically trying to sort through the papers that had come to be assorted in a horrible mess on his desk, and he was shouting instructions through the door that Arthur would then bark at everyone working on the books. It was all hands on deck, it seemed, and Felicity watched as the chaos unfolded around her, spilling out from every nook and cranny with flying pens and pencils and angry, impatient yells raining from one end of the betting shop to the other. The double green doors had been flung open and chips of emerald paint littered the floors in tiny thin shards, letting the Shelby household cascade into the betting shop as the two worlds collided and Tommy tried to sort everything out before the entirety of his life went to shit all because of that deceitful, meddling Woods patriarch.

"Fuck!" Tommy cried loudly as he bundled the papers into his arms and pushed them to one side, swearing loudly as he could not for the life of him find the one document that had bound the Woods and Shelby business agreement.

Despite herself, despite everything, Felicity found herself by his side.

"Can I help?" She asked him softly.

She had done enough, she knew that.

But any way to fix her mess ― all of this disgusting chaos that was most definitely her fault ― would help, would it not?

Tommy turned to her and shook his head. "There's nothing to do," he told her in return. "He's fucked me over and we won't have a chance to get it back until the races on Monday week." He kicked at his chair with the toe of his shoe and swore once more, unable to keep his fury in check as his eyes fell on every piece of paper that had been strung about every single surface in this office.

The blonde could have cried, if it hadn't meant that he would have realised her part to play in all this, that is. Guilt consumed her and wrecked at her being, fighting with her consciousness to let the tears cascade down her cheeks like waterfalls and show the man her true colours.

She didn't, though. She couldn't admit it to him ― the last thing he needed was her sobbing whilst he fought to get his business back.

So Felicity straightened her back, pushed her shoulders back and pulled her blonde curls away from her face before facing him completely. She had been a Woods, after all, hadn't she? Felicity had dealt with her fair share of bad decisions and chaos in her lifetime and sure, it hadn't been due to a betraying fiancé, but she would still use every ounce of her stubborn blood to at least get back Tommy's business, even if she wouldn't get Tommy himself back.

"Come on," she told him, leading him away from the desk so that she might slip into the chair and try and make sense of the papers. "I made a binder a while back ― maybe it'll be in there, eh?"

Tommy stared at her blankly. "Lizzie's me secretary."

Felicity shrugged. "Yeah, and Lizzie was busy. She hadn't the time with her other job, so I stepped in for a day."

At the mention of Lizzie's 'other job', Tommy made an 'o' shape with his mouth and left it at that. It wasn't a secret that Lizzie Stark still relied on that of sex to have a semi―decent income each month, and whilst this was a well known fact around the betting shop, no one had made a move to provide her with a better source of work that would not provide the men with rude guffaws and occasional nudges whenever the brunette entered the building. Tommy was arguably a little more sympathetic than the rest, but still, he didn't change anything to do with her circumstance, and instead didn't speak of her work.

"Go find Polly," Felicity ordered him sharply, to stop him from making any other comments or protesting at her help. . . or asking why she was so intent on fixing it all, and therefore leaving room for her guilt to crash down and make her spill everything, there and then. "See if she can make sense of a bad situation, alright?"

Tommy sighed, but nodded. "She's not the optimist here, though, Felicity," he told her. "You are ― you're keeping me holding on to this thread, I swear."

Felicity smiled sadly. "Go," she said instead. "I can hold down the shop well enough. Go find Polly."

⎯

               Tommy was right: Polly was most definitely not an optimist.

Whilst her anger was not as physical and obvious as her nephew's had been ― or nephews, for that matter, as Arthur was still barking instructions choppily at the rest of the Shelby Company Limited employee's, and John was cursing as Esme tried to sort through his desk ―, she let her presence be known as she swung into the betting shop with Tommy behind her.

"It wasn't a one―man betrayal, Tommy," she said, all matter―of―factly, without a single clue that the other man she spoke of was actually the blonde before her. "I won't flatter John Woods because I know perfectly well that he couldn't pull this off on his own."

Felicity stood up, pushed the chair back underneath the desk and exited the office at the sight of the woman. Polly greeted her with a warm but distracted smile as she continued to plot and plan with Tommy, discussing the only possibilities that lay before them.

"What's his name?" The aunt said, her features slightly pinched as she wracked her brains for the innocent boy she was about to lay the blame on. "Beni? Cook? Which was the one that joined last month, the one Arthur said he didn't like the look of?"

"Cook," Tommy answered slowly. "But he says that about every boy that walks in ― he's paranoid."

Polly rolled her eyes. "You don't say."

The guilt was too much, Felicity realised. As she watched Polly talk with Tommy and make arguments as to why it was probably the new boy, the one who had just started work at the shop a couple of months ago, Felicity realised that this was how it was going to be. This was how it was always going to be ― he would have found out eventually. She knew that: she had known it on the day she had made this traitorous deal with her vile father. . . no, she would not ever call him that. John Woods. And she was Felicity Shelby now. Supposedly. Supposedly, she did not ever have to associate herself with him ever again.

So she stood up, her throat closing in on itself as she fought to get the words out before it was too late, before Tommy did something he would not regret to a boy that most definitely did not deserve it.

"Tommy," she spoke up after a moment, and Felicity had to strain to make her voice come out louder than the whisper it ached to be.

He didn't even glance up as he waved her off, too caught up in whatever it was his aunt was quietly telling him. 

Felicity's eyes prickled. "Tommy," she tried again, even though every single nerve in her body was screaming at her to stop.

"I'll be with you in a minute."

"Stop. Just stop."

"It was me, Tommy."There. There, she said it. "Not Cook, not Benji, not anyone. Me." She bit her tongue to stop herself from rambling anymore, and held her breath whilst she waited for someone, anyone, to say something.

Both Tommy and Polly turned to face her slowly, her words having the initial shock on them that she had expected them to have. The older woman's features consorted together, trying to make sense of what she had just heard, whilst the man simply stood there and stared at his wife blankly.

"Say something!" Felicity pleaded. Minutes had passed — minutes filled with silence that felt like hours, days, an eternity as she waited for him to say something. Anything.

"You fucking what?" Tommy said eventually, his voice barely a whisper: the calm before the storm, no doubt.

Felicity pressed her lips together, bit her fingernails into the palms of her hands before fighting to meet his gaze once again. "One telephone call a month," she told him quietly, her words beginning to tumble into one another as she rambled. "That's all he wanted. . . that's all I had to give to stop him from raining bullets upon you. Coventry was the last. He said he'd stop afterwards, said it would be over after the wedding. Everything would go back to normal, he said. He promised."

That was the thing — he did promise. John Woods, despite his blackmail and threats and awful tendency of being one step ahead of Felicity every single moment, had promised his daughter that it would all be over and done with the moment that the wedding had come to a close and Tommy and Felicity were in the carriage, driving away from the church and the family and all the horrors that came with the Woods and its patriarch. However, they had not even managed to get to such an affair, as John Woods had stood up from the pews and fired a bullet into the blonde angel's chest, aiming for her heart but only just managing to scar her breast with pink tissue that sure, would fade over time, but without the memories to go with it. Without the guilt, the tears, the memories of every single phone call that had led to this moment of complete and utter betrayal.

"Get out." Tommy's voice was soft and dangerous — something Felicity knew was never good and, if anything, was worse than if he was shouting. 

Felicity watched him: she was too in shock to do much else. Her heart was pounding, seeming to go too fast for her to catch up with it so that she was a mile behind, even though she was wishing desperately that she'd click back into action and fix whatever mess she had made. But she couldn't, and instead found herself frozen, fixed in time.

He held her gaze right back, his eyes a thousand degrees colder than they had been five minutes ago.

Neither of them moved.

"Out! Get out!" Tommy eventually shouted, anger finally resonating through his tone, pulsing through and vibrating through the walls of the betting shop. 

Switched on in a moment, Tommy Shelby watched the blonde standing before him with disbelief and betrayal in his eyes.

"Go!" He yelled once more. As his whole body trembled, he nodded sharply to the door, his demeanour just as cold and collected as ever... not letting his quickly closing-up throat betray him. He managed to choke out the in

So she fled.

Felicity left the betting shop without hesitation now, fleeing from the house she had once called her home and out onto the cold streets of Small Heath: the streets she had once walked with another. With their hands intertwined and their bodies fitting perfectly together side by side, it was as though they had been crafted by the gods, perfectly folded to fit together and be as one. 

Now, though, she was not one with that other. She was one with herself — alone, so very alone, as she ran the streets alone with her tears streaming down her face as though they were waterfalls.

And yet despite everything, despite the shame that burned inside her and fury that scorched her, Felicity made sure not to let herself cry until she was at least out of the Shelby's home.

She was a Woods, after all.

Or had been, anyway.

AUTHOR'S NOTE!

whoops. my bad. sorry besties!!!!!

(i listened to cornelia street when writing this so if it makes you feel any better, i cried. a lot)

anyway. . . thank you so so so much for 100K! i can't believe it pls, it's crazy. i love you so much omfg. also, i'm isolating as of now so i'm hoping to update this and false god lots more than i normally manage to. #pollyisaliar