— 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 —
⁰⁰⁵

Cecilia walked down the stairs to see Reggie with his head in his hands. She practically ran to him with worry and placed a hand on his back. "Has something happened?" She asked.

He slowly lifted his head and looked up at her. "Mum is gone, Cecilia." He spoke quietly.

Slight relief flooded through her and she sighed, sitting beside him. Although Cecilia hadn't been a fan of their mother, she knew that Reggie was a mother's boy. Who could blame him? He was the child that got to feel the love from their mother. Something that Cecilia never got.

She tutted and held his face. "At least her pain has ended, Reg." She offered. "Hm?" She hummed. He avoided her eyes and Cecilia sighed. "You need to stop drinkin'— it's making you weak, brother." She said sternly, a stone expression on her face.

Reggie stared down at his lap and bit down on his bottom lip.

"Will you stay in London or go home?" She questioned. Reggie shrugged. "I don't know.." he said honestly. "Dad needs me in Boston to work." He said.

"Of course—" she scoffed. "Work. Always fuckin' work." She whispered to herself. "Get yourself together, Reg." Cecilia stood. "Tell Da that I won't be home till later."

And she walked to the door, leaving him with his thoughts. Of course she was worried about him — who wouldn't be worried about their brother. But she also knew that he needed to toughen up. And drowning himself in his cups would not toughen him up.

Tommy stood smoking a cigarette whilst leaning against the Black Rolls Royce.

"I didn't think you'd show." Tommy admitted and threw the cigarette to the floor. Cecilia looked him up and down. "Yet you still wait outside my door, hopeful and desperate." She said sarcastically.

"Now, desperate isn't the word i'd use." He opened the door for her.

"So what word would you use, Tommy?" Cecilia got into the passenger seat. Tommy looked down at her. "I'd say i'm just a man of my word." And he closed the door over before she could say anymore.

Cecilia waited patiently for him to get into the drivers seat and start up the car.

"So where are you taking me?" She asked, glancing at him briefly as he began driving. Tommy kept his eyes forward. "Do you like to dance?" He asked seriously. "I'm a show girl. Of course I like to dance—" Cecilia felt a playful grin creep onto her lips.

"I was hoping you'd say that." Tommy smirked to himself.

—

Cecilia's eyes wandered over the exterior of the club and a frown was now visible on her face. "This is Sabini's club." She said, a hand on the inside of Tommy's arm as they walked.

"It was. But as of the other night— Arthur and my men have taken it over." He said.

She shook her head. "No wonder you have enemies— it is easy to dislike you." She muttered, keeping her eyes forward as they entered the club. Tommy didn't wait to be seated, he walked to a table in the middle of the room and pulled a chair for her.

"Such a gentleman." She said in a mocking tone.

"You joke a lot, Cecilia." He said bluntly as he too sat down. She put her elbows on the table. "No— you're just too serious." She said. "Maybe if you smiled every once in a while, you'd enjoy life."

He just stared at her.

Cecilia looked around at the people who were dancing. Without another word, she pushed away from the table and walked toward the centre of the room. Tommy watched carefully and she spun on her heels to face his direction. Tommy watched in amusement as she started dancing to the lively music, her hips moving completely in sync.

Cecilia held her contact with him, a flirtatious look in her eyes. Tommy's eyes wandered down her body and noticing the way her golden dress hugged her in the right places.

His heart rate picked up slightly and he clenched his fist. Cecilia was getting lost in the music. Tommy couldn't focus on anything but her. He didn't care for the mad people dancing around her or the strange people who sat fulfilling sexual desires with others. It was her who his eyes were glued to.

Cecilia had noticed this quickly and felt she had some sort of power over him.

The only moment he looked away from her was when a waiter came to take his drinks order. And even then he struggled to keep his eyes away. Before he could look back at her, she had returned to her seat.

"So, Thomas—" Cecilia kissed her teeth. "Have you ever loved a woman?"

He was completely take aback by her sudden question and looked at her with raised eyebrows. His lack of answer made her believe he had loved a woman before.

"Depends what you mean by love." He said, exaggerating the word.

"I wouldn't know. I've never been in love." She said truthfully, watching his expression falter. Tommy took a deep breath and waited for the man who placed the drinks down to leave. "Do you want me to be honest?"

"Completely." She said. "I don't like liars."

Tommy looked down, the feeling of embarrassment and betrayal washing over him all over again. "There was a woman. Grace, she was called. I'd never seen her before— one day she had just appeared. Claimed she worked in a pub somewhere in Ireland. But I checked that and she had lied. It turns out she lied about a lot of things."

Cecilia leaned on her hands.

"She wasn't the person I thought she was." Tommy clutched his glass tightly. "She betrayed me." He said with slight anger. "In a way I would have never expected."

"Did you kill her?" She questioned.

"No." He shook his head. "Once her business was over, she left. I could have went with her but I chose not to."

"If you loved her, why didn't you go with her?" Cecilia asked. She understood that the pain of a betrayal was like no other but she assumed love could make you forget.

"Because I had fallen in love with a lie, Cecilia. And I don't like lies."

"What does love feel like, Tommy?" Cecilia's voice was soft. For the first time since they had met, she didn't sound hostile or like she was tormenting someone. She sounded genuine. Tommy thought that if the moonlight that seeped from the sky had a sound, it would be her voice.

"It made me feel weak. For the first time since the war, I didn't feel alone. My head was at ease." He stared at the amber liquid in his glass.

Suddenly, he felt a warmth against his skin as Cecilia placed her hand over his. She didn't say anything. Tommy tensed under her touch. "What about you?" He cleared his throat.

"I wouldn't have a clue." Cecilia withdrew her hand. "I want to feel it someday. That's if it even exists."

"It exists." Tommy confirmed. "Love is a dangerous thing. It blinds you. It consumes you."

"Then i'm not sure I ever want to feel it." Cecilia spoke truthfully. "I can do just fine without a man." She said. "I have done for the past twenty four years. Why would I need one now?"

Tommy found her way of thinking to be fascinating. She didn't speak like she was thinking about it. She spoke like she had planned out her words moments prior to the conversation. Tommy truly had met his match. In many ways. She was competition but not in a business way. It was a competition to see whose wall would fall first.

Cecilia believed she wasn't capable of love. Nobody had ever loved her. Not in that way. And almost every man she spoke to ended up meeting the end of her gun.

Cecilia felt the need to protect herself from love without even realising. She believed it would make her seem less strong and that was exactly what she didn't want. She was one of a kind. Confident and unafraid. It wasn't often you came across a woman like that. Except, Cecilia wasn't a woman. No, deep down she was still a girl.

A girl clinging onto her older brother's sleeve when she was seventeen, begging that he would find a way to avoid the war. A girl sitting at the bottom of the stairs as her mother scolded her for nothing. A girl longing for comfort but never finding it. A girl longing to know what it was like to feel.

And that was what made her and Tommy so similar. They both longed for something that made them feel alive again.

Truly alive.

Not the type of alive that Cecilia felt when she was up on that stage or luring some bastard down an alleyway. Not the type of alive that Tommy felt when fixing a horse race and having the horse win or coming out of a gang fight alive.

No, not that type of feeling alive. But instead the type when you sit, staring into the eyes of somebody who makes you feel good. The type of alive when you lay in each other's arms during the night, not afraid of a single thing.

Tommy wished to feel that again.

Cecilia wished to experience it for the first time.

"Now, Cecilia." Tommy cleared his throat and attempted to change the subject. "Do you trust me now?" He asked. Cecilia tilted her head to the side. "Well, that depends. Do you trust me?"

Tommy frowned, not understanding on how that would affect if she trusted him.

"You haven't given me a reason not to trust you so, yes. I'd say that I trust you." He told her. "That's your first mistake. You shouldn't trust me—" she joked, flashing him a smile. "Next i'll have a gun pointed to your head."

Tommy had concern written all over her face and Cecilia burst out laughing.

"I'm kidding." She assured him. Tommy's face relaxed and he nodded slowly. "You'd get on with my Aunt Polly." He grunted.

"A respectable woman, i'm told."

"Indeed." Tommy confirmed with a nod. "Respectful but frightening. There's not a day that goes by where I don't think she's going to try and kill me."

Cecilia noticed the way he had a slight smile on his face as he spoke about his family. "Family is important to you, isn't it?" She interrupted him. Tommy thought for a moment as he nodded. "You have a brother, no?"

"Yes. It's just him and I. No other siblings. You on the other hand—" She raised her eyebrows.

Tommy chuckled and tilted his head back. "Does your father know where you are tonight?"

Cecilia shook her head. "No. And if he did i'm sure he wouldn't be too pleased." She said honestly. "He hardly likes me working at Esmerelda's. He thinks even that is too much for a girl like me."

"A girl like you?"

"His words." She sighed.

"It's just occurred to me that I haven't asked you about your job. You work there but that's not all you do is it?" He asked curiously.

"Oh, I do bad things. Just like you." Cecilia lifted her glass to her lips.

—

Tommy watched Cecilia get out of the car and go into her home. Once the door was closed and she was safely inside, he drove off.

Cecilia walked up to her bedroom and to her surprise, Reggie lay there on the bed, barely asleep with the door ajar. She frowned and took off her heels. "Reg?" She asked quietly, sitting beside him. He had the sheets gripped tightly in his hands.

Reggie felt the bed dip beside him and he grunted.

"What're you doin' in here?" She asked with a whispered. Reggie kept his eyes closed and just mumbled something that she couldn't understand. She moved his hair from his forehead and noticed his dampened face.

Cecilia bit the inside of her cheek and put a hand on his back. "It gets better." She whispered, more to herself considering he was too tired to understand anything.

Standing, Cecilia lifted the blanket and draped it over his frame. "Goodnight brother," she said to him, lingering at the door for a moment.

She felt sorry for him. He was sensitive. Emotional. Which wasn't a bad thing, of course. But neither Cecilia or her father were any of those things and that fact made Reggie feel worse. He felt like some sort of disappointment. Especially now that their mother had died. He, as the eldest child, took blame for what happened to her.

He didn't know why he blamed himself but he did.

When Cecilia got to her own bed, she began thinking about her night with Thomas and how he wasn't at all what she thought he was. A night that was supposed to be about building trust turned into a night that built a friendship — without either sides knowing they had built a friendship.

Of course, they weren't aware of their so called friendship yet. But oh how they'd come to realise....

After Midnight
Chapter 005
[gracessecretshelby]

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