Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cause I'd rot in Hell with you
If you'd just ask me to
I love the shitty things we do together
Live with me in this sin forever

Every time it was a little easier.

At least that’s what Colin told himself. The truth was that it was never difficult. Not the first time and not this time. But he was getting better at it.

Byron didn’t see him coming. There were no shouts, no scuffling to rouse the neighbors and no story for the cops to hear when they came sniffing around. Just a quick pop; one shot, clean through the temple.

The body slumped onto the faded red rug that used to belong to Mrs. Shelby.

Colin frowned, his grip tightening around the warm metal of the pistol. He always liked Mrs. Shelby’s shortbread. Sweet, buttery, always a little too soft in the middle. He’d probably never have it again. Not after this. Not after her boy ended up bleeding into the threads of her rug.

The house smelled of old cigarettes, cheap gin, and something sour beneath it all. Milk gone bad maybe, or last week’s trash fermenting under the sink. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the blood that had misted onto the striped green wallpaper, though he knew the stain would set regardless.

Tinny jazz still crackled from the radio on the counter, the trumpet’s sharp notes struggling against the static. It had covered his footsteps coming in, and now it filled the silence where Byron’s life had been.

Colin nudged the coffee table aside, its warped legs scraping against the scuffed floorboards, and rolled Byron onto the rug like he was folding laundry. The man was light, all bone and sinew. Easy to heft over his shoulder.

Outside, Queens was soaked in a steady drizzle that painted the pavement in slick ribbons.

Colin slipped out the back door, the weight of Byron slung across his back like a worn overcoat, and disappeared into the night.

He had the foresight to have the trunk of the Lincoln opened before going inside the house. Colin worked fast to fit Byron inside. Time was against him and soon he would be growing stiff.

He slammed the hatch before silently slipping into the driver’s seat.

Colin exhaled slowly. The streetlights buzzed faintly; their halos hazed by the mist. Somewhere a dog barked, far off, and the soft wail of a distant siren threaded through the damp air. He tried to settle his thoughts. Tried to slow the beating of his heart. The deep timbre of Vernon’s voice rumbled from the darkened backseat.

“Everything taken care of?”

Colin nodded, his eyes briefly flicking to the rearview mirror despite knowing that he couldn’t see the man in the low light.

“Yes, Mr. Tate,” Colin affirmed. The only reply was the man’s deep, approving hum.

Vernon ‘King’ Tate was not a patient man. Colin knew that he would have time to collect his thoughts later. To reconcile everything that took place on this night. Now though, he had to drive.

Byron found his way into the East River that night and Colin returned Vernon to his club in Harlem. He invited Colin in for a drink. On the house, of course. He didn’t expect Colin to pay the heavily marked up prices that plagued the nation. Colin politely refused.

Vernon chuckled as Colin held open the back door of the Lincoln for him.

“Go on and get home to Red.”

Colin smiled tightly and nodded. If Penelope wasn’t serving patrons in the speakeasy and Colin wasn’t required to be there for Vernon, then he was gone.

Colin parked the car, tossing the keys to the bouncer on the way out and headed home.

The walk to Washington Heights took an hour. It was a bit quicker at night when the crowds were thinner. The apartment was in a nice neighborhood. Colin didn’t worry about Penelope too much there. They were surrounded by families; mostly immigrants like themselves. Irish, German, Jewish. During the day the shouts of children filled the air, women gossiped and laughed in the halls, the melodies of half a dozen languages flowed through the streets. At night the neighbors laughed and joked together on the stoop.

They greeted Colin and invited him to join them. He replied good-naturedly but expressed his exhaustion. He only wanted to get inside, to Penelope. She was the only thing that could calm the storm raging inside of him.

The apartment was silent. It was the small hours of the morning and he knew she would have fallen asleep hours ago after her shift at the club ended. The dark burgundy fringe lamp cast a dull shadow on the walls.

Colin smiled at the thought of Penelope leaving the lamp on for him. He pulled the chain and darkness flooded the living room. He slunk down the hall, guided only by the street lights from outside that illuminated his path along the hardwood floors.

He could see her form beneath the blankets. The chill of the night settling in the drafty flat. The sound of her soft breathing accompanied by the slow rise and fall of her chest calmed him. He shed the layers of clothes, not caring where they landed, and slipped beneath the blankets to pull her to him.

Colin released a breath he had been holding through the entire evening as he felt her soft, plush body meld against his.

“Colin?” She hummed sleepily as he wrapped his arms around her waist and she settled her hands against his chest.

“I’m here, love,” he said, softly nuzzling her hair. They melted into each other and found sleep.

Colin was first and foremost, Vernon Tate’s driver. He did not gain the position through hard work, dedication or even his charm. All he had to do was speak to the man once and the job was his.

Fresh off the boat at Ellis Island, Colin and Penelope stayed in a vermin infested boarding house. Adjusting to a life across the pond from everything they had ever known was difficult. Penelope was the first to find work.

A girl at the boarding house knew of an open waitress position at the bar she worked at in Harlem. The Cat’s Meow. An upscale jazz club with a secret menu full of drinks now outlawed by congress.

The nuances of prohibition confused Colin and Penelope for some time. It seemed to be an open secret that many establishments sold bootlegged liquor at a high markup and the police didn’t seem to care most of the time. Raids did happen and establishments were sometimes closed, but New York City was bustling with bars as if the law never passed.

Vernon’s wife, Tallulah, took an instant liking to Penelope. Tallulah was a jazz singer who was the star of the club’s lineup on most evenings.

It wasn’t long before Penelope was able to get Colin a job at the bar. He worked in the kitchen: washing dishes, cleaning tables, and mopping the floor.

One evening, Colin was in the back alley sitting on an empty crate and smoking a cigarette while waiting for Penelope to finish her shift so they could walk back to their boarding house. The dull tones of the muffled piano filtered out through the back door as it opened and Vernon Tate stepped into the alley.

Declan Doyle followed close behind. He was Tate’s right-hand man and was always in the larger man’s shadow.

“Shot in Hell’s Kitchen,” Declan said as they poured into the alley. “The Irish bastard, Mickey O’Callaghan, no doubt.”

“Son of a bitch,” Vernon muttered as he wiped a hand down his face. “He was supposed to drive the boys down to Rum Row tonight. The boat is waiting and now we’ve got no driver for the model T.”

Colin sat still during this conversation. He had been hoping to simply fade into the background and that the two men would simply wander on. Penelope and he tried their best not to stand out. New York was a big city, but they were new here and still carried the fear that someone from their past lives might find them one day.

His luck ran out because it was that moment that Vernon noticed him sitting in the dark on that crate.

“Shit.” He startled a bit, his eyes growing large as he took Colin in. “You’re the new kitchen boy? Came with the redhead?”

Colin nodded slowly.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Vernon asked.

Colin shrugged. “I suppose I don’t have much to say.”

Vernon blanched a bit when Colin spoke in his posh, refined accent. But then a smile slowly crept up his face. “You’re a long way from home, son.”

Vernon motioned for Colin to stand, he did quickly and stomped out the cigarette butt beneath his heel. Tate looked him up and down and seemed pleased.

“You sound educated.”

“Dropped out of Oxford, sir.”

“And your girl?”

“Wife,” Colin corrected firmly.

“How long have you been married?”

“Just a few months, sir.”

Vernon smiled. Colin realized Tate liked that; he liked being called ‘sir’ by this aristocratic sounding London boy.

“Is she why you’re in America? Mom and Dad didn’t approve of your girl so you crossed the Atlantic to have her?”

Colin thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah.”

Vernon’s eyes narrowed as though he could sniff out the half-truth in Colin’s words.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Colin Ledger.” The name came out smoothly and quickly, Vernon didn’t catch that lie.

“Can you drive?”

Colin strode into the bar in the early hours of the afternoon. Roy was tuning the piano for Tallulah’s performance that evening. A few other men from Tate’s crew stood around the bar. Penelope spoke softly to the bartender and laughed at something the older man said.

She caught Colin’s gaze and winked before blushing. Colin joined the rest of the men at the bar and Penelope passed him a tumbler of whiskey.

The men nodded to Colin and continued their conversation. “Fred was telling me there’s a basement bar in the Lower East Side that’s selling bathtub gin,” Ricky Sullivan said.

Moe Lieberman joined in, “They’re gonna kill someone. Then the police will have no choice but to raid them. Then they’ll start lookin’ in on all of us.”

Colin drank his whiskey silently and watched Penelope leave the bar and saunter over to the tables. The customers liked her. She was sweet, funny, and beautiful. Driving Vernon brought Colin enough money that Penelope didn’t need to waitress anymore. That wasn’t even including the bonuses he got for extra jobs. But she liked it and Colin wasn’t one to stand in her way.

“Hey, Colin,” Moe said quietly as though he were testing the man’s temperament. “So…Byron Shelby?”

Colin turned away from ogling his wife. “What about him?”

“He was working with Tony Lucetti,” Ricky added. “So King had him done in?”

Colin nodded. The conversation didn’t seem like it needed commentary. The boys had it figured out.

Moe leaned on the bar and turned towards Colin. “But why you?” he asked. Ricky tried to shush him, but Moe continued, “I mean no offence, but why the driver? Me and Rick here are just as good at takin’ out traitors.”

Colin shrugged. The truth was he had no idea why Vernon chose him for certain jobs and not the men he hired for that specific purpose.

“Maybe it was because you all grew up together,” Colin said. There was a time in his life when he had been charming. He would have been able to win over these men with smiles and smooth lines. But at some point, over the years that version of Colin had faded away. He didn’t have patience.

“Then he doesn’t trust our loyalty,” Moe muttered.

“You’ll have to ask King,” Colin said with a sigh. He turned and hoped that this conversation would end when a tall, lithe blonde sidled up to him. Her dress was pale green and long, the cut was fashionable, adorned with fringe and beads. Her dainty fingers twisted around her cigarette holder and she smiled at him. Colin tried to politely return the smile but it came out as a grimace. 

“Well, hello,” she purred. “I haven’t seen you around here.”

She made a move to rub her hand down the lapel on Colin’s pinstripe suit but he stepped back quickly.

“Lizette,” Ricky said. “This is Colin Ledger, King’s driver. He’s usually working on nights you come in. Colin, this is Lizette Campbell. She’s a singer. Gonna headline tonight.”

There was humor in the man’s voice. He likely knew how uncomfortable this made Colin. Colin nodded and took a step back. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” It wouldn’t do to offend the acts for the club.

“Maybe after my set you can join me for a night cap?” Lizette asked. Colin’s eyes grew wide at her boldness. He held up his hand displaying his wedding ring.

“Happily married, Miss Campbell.”

“And you don’t want to piss off the wife,” Moe muttered beneath his breath. He and Ricky seemed to be enjoying this. Lizette didn’t hear. She pouted her perfectly red lips.

“All the cute ones are married,” she moaned prettily. “Where’s your gal? Home with the kids?”

A throat cleared behind the bar. Penelope stood there gripping the edge, her knuckles white. Ricky and Moe attempted and failed to stifle their laughter.

“Your dressing room is ready, Miss Campbell.” Her voice was sweet but her glare was lethal. Colin smiled warmly at her, glad to be rescued.

Lizette sighed and rolled her eyes. “Did Tallulah tell you to have my gin ready? It’s in my contract.”

“Of course, Miss Campbell.” Penelope smiled sweetly. “Fresh bottle on the dressing table.”

Lizette winked at Colin before slinking away to the back of the club to get ready for her set. He released a breath he didn’t realize he was holding when she left. Penelope stood still, her grip on the edge of the bar still tight. She glared at Lizette until she was out of sight.

Colin gently removed her hand from the wood and brought it to his lips. Penelope’s wide eyes met his, a slight blush covered her cheeks. She smiled at him as he kissed her hand. The ire inside of her melting away.

Roy had joined the men at the bar just behind them.

“You always warn the new boys away from Penelope, but you forget to tell the broads to avoid Colin.”

The men laughed, but Colin and Penelope paid them no mind. Already lost in their own thoughts.

“Where are you taking King tonight?” Penelope asked him softly.

“Meeting with the Irish,” Colin replied. “Hell’s Kitchen.”

Penelope frowned. “Be careful.” Her voice was soft and full of concern. Her blue eyes glistened in the low light of the chandeliers.

Colin leaned across the bar easily, their lips meeting for a soft, quick kiss. “Nothing will keep me from you.”

Colin leaned on the car as he waited for King to finish his meeting. The air was cool, but he grew tired of waiting in the Lincoln.

Only Vernon and Declan were in the meeting with Mickey O’Callaghan. The Irish gang boss was once an enemy but Colin overheard whispers that they wanted to join forces to keep the Italian mob from taking too much territory.

Hell’s Kitchen didn’t sleep. Men in flat caps leaned against brick walls, smoking cheap cigarettes, eyes always watching. Delivery trucks rumbled by, some legitimate, others heavy with contraband liquor tucked beneath crates of vegetables or bolts of fabric. On corners, newsboys hollered late editions while bootleggers, gamblers, and small-time gangsters slipped through the night, blending into the crowd of dock workers, shopkeepers, and drifters. Colin watched the door of Mickey’s bar, dubbed Charming Mickey’s.

It was a far cry from how he grew up, Colin mused. The quiet, dainty streets of Mayfair seemed like an entirely different world to him now. Who would have guessed that the son of an aristocrat born with a silver spoon in his mouth would end up as the driver for a Harlem club owner? Colin laughed to himself. Unaware that he had an audience.

“Something funny, boy?” It was Declan Doyle. Over the years, Colin gathered the distinct impression that Declan didn’t like him. The Irishman claimed it was a cultural difference, but Colin knew it must stretch beyond that. Vernon Tate liked Colin and Declan saw him as a threat.

“No, Mr. Doyle.” Colin was always overly proper when it came to Vernon and Declan. Vernon liked it. Declan detested it.

Declan put a cigarette to his lips and lit it with a flick of his match. “How long’ve you been in this country now?”

“Three years,” Colin replied.

“Three years — and you still sound like you’ve got a crown up your arse?”

Colin grinned. “Have to keep something from my homeland.”

“Aye, and you don’t talk much about it either, do you?”

Colin shook his head. If he talked about home, there was too much of a chance that he would slip up and say something that might put them in danger.

Declan took a long drag, exhaled slow. “But King knows why you’re here, eh? He knows how some soft little lordling ended up moppin’ floors in a Harlem speakeasy?”

Colin nodded. Vernon knew some of the story. He didn’t know Colin’s real name. He only knew enough to trust Colin.

Before the men could talk anymore, before Declan could try and pry more of his story out of Colin, Vernon Tate joined them on the street. His deep boisterous laugh rang out in the night air as he smacked the back of Mickey O’Callaghan. The men looked like old friends. It was hard to believe that Mickey gunned down Vernon’s last driver in the middle of the street over fucking his daughter.

Another reason why Colin was a good choice in Vernon’s eyes. He wasn’t interested in anyone’s wives, daughters or sisters. 

On the drive back to Harlem, Tate sat in the back with Declan while they spoke of the meeting.

“Lucetti is trying to muscle in on their territory too,” Vernon said while looking out the window. The lights of the city flashed past. Flashing neon signs made the night brighter than the day.

“O’Callaghan had to take out one of his own men as well.”

“Ain’t just Shelby, then,” Declan said. “He might’ve someone else workin’ with him.”

There was silence. Colin kept his eyes on the road but he could feel Declan’s gaze boring in the back of his head.

“He wants to form an alliance,” Vernon continued.

“You considerin’ it?” Declan asked nervously.

Vernon was silent.

Back at the bar, Declan and Vernon took their conversation to Vernon’s office. Colin was left to park the car. He wasn’t in the ‘inner circle’, wasn’t around when decisions were being made. He was fine with that. Colin had no aspirations of achieving anything. He wasn’t even sure how long he would be Tate’s driver. The money was good. The bonuses were good. But Colin always assumed that someday someone from London would show up, recognize him or Penelope and they would have to start all over again.

It was nearing midnight and the bar was bustling. Tallulah was on stage singing in her deep, soulful tunes, patrons were drinking and laughing. Penelope giggled and flirted while she handed out tumblers of contraband brandy. The gentleman she laughed with slid her a few extra bills and she made a show of pressing them beneath her neckline. The man winked at her but then looked around nervously.

Colin smiled as he made his way to a table occupied by Ricky and Moe. Not every patron knew that Colin was Penelope’s husband, but he had broken enough noses that word got around not to flirt too heavily with the redhead at King’s bar. Penelope never took it further than a few smiles and winks and as long as the men didn’t touch her, Colin didn’t have a problem.

“Tallulah’s pissed,” Moe said as Colin joined them to wait for Penelope to finish her shift.

“Why?” he asked.

Ricky smiled. “Lizette got sick. Couldn’t do her set. Tallulah is having to cover the entire night.”

“Sick, huh?” Colin said absently, watching Penelope pour wine for a couple of older women in the back of the bar. 

“Yeah,” Moe added giddily. “Gotta be careful where you get your gin these days.”

Penelope leaned heavily on Colin during their walk home. He draped his coat over her shoulders, the warm afternoon had deceptively made her believe she didn’t need one that day. Colin was fine in his linen shirt and suspenders. Penelope yawned loudly.

Jazz poured out of every club they passed. Neon lights flooded the street and cars rumbled past quickly. They pushed their way past well dressed patrons pouring in and out of the bars. The occasional drunk running into them a bit too heavily.

Coming to New York from peaceful London had been a shock to them both in their first few months. There weren’t nearly as many automobiles in London, the occasional horse drawn carriage would still saunter down those ancient cobblestone streets. The streets of London were long and meandering while New York was a sensible grid.

In London, the aristocracy still clung to their power. But in New York, the only power was money. Anyone who had enough money could rise. The evidence of that was with Vernon Tate himself. Born on a plantation in Louisiana and now the owner of one of the classiest speakeasies in Harlem.

There were also more guns in New York. Colin had never used a gun until Vernon put one in his hand after he had already seen what Colin was capable of.

He could still remember the man’s face when he found Colin in the alley behind the bar, the bloody body of Emerick at his feet. Colin had expected anger, instead Vernon seemed…impressed.

Colin felt Penelope sigh in relief as their apartment building came into view.

“These shoes are killing me,” she muttered. Colin glanced down and saw that her feet were red and swollen around the tiny heels. Without a word he scooped her in his arms and she squealed.

“No!” She laughed as she wrapped an arm around his neck. “I’m too heavy!”

“Nonsense!” he said as he took off towards their stoop. “You’re as light as a feather.”

Their neighbors who sat on the stoop laughed and jeered at them as they walked past. Colin laughed and planted a kiss on her red lips. Her fingers made their way into his hair as he bounded up the stairs.

He was forced to set her down at the door so he could search his pocket for the keys. Penelope distracted him by wrapping her arms around his waist, trailing them down over his hardening cock.

“Penelope,” he said in a warning tone. She giggled.

Finally, he had the door opened and they tumbled inside giggling like a pair of drunks. The door was barely closed before she was on him. She kissed him as she unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled her to the bedroom without breaking their kiss, he wasn’t interested in a tumble on their sofa. He wanted her spread out beneath him. Wanted to see her red curls on their white pillows.

“Hated seeing that slag touch you.” She hissed between kisses as she ripped the buttons of his shirt.

“Is that why you gave her bad gin?” Colin laughed as he watched her furious fingers work.

Penelope barked a short laugh. “I only diluted her gin with the bad gin. If I gave her the whole bottle, she’d probably be blind.”

“Maybe if she’d stopped when you told her you were married.” Penelope was now unbuttoning his pants. She kneeled before him and Colin caught a breath in his throat. He would never get tired of seeing Penelope like this. She was on her knees before him, but she held him in her hands. Not only his cock, but his heart as well.

She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes, the tip of his now erect cock now so close to her perfect red lips.

“You’re mine,” she whispered before taking him completely in her mouth.

They couldn’t remember when they met. They were always a part of each other’s life. Always embedded in one another as if they were born that way.

They were so often inseparable that his mother often made small jokes about them marrying when they grew up. His brother would chuckle good humoredly but then simply say they would grow out of it. Eloise was often jealous and reminded Colin that Penelope was her friend. Benedict would tease Colin about his “little wife” hoping to get a rise out of the boy, but Colin only laughed, secretly delighted by the idea despite not knowing much about marriage and lifelong commitments.

They had always looked out for one another, always defended each other. They always knew that they were destined to be.

One July he returned home from Eton to find Penelope’s family at Aubrey Hall. His mother had arranged a small summer fete in the country with a few of the more noble, distinguished families of London society.

He searched the estate for her. He didn’t find her with Eloise and his siblings playing pall mall, he didn’t find her in the library where they would so often hide together, he didn’t find her in the drawing room with her mother and sisters.

He finally found her in the attic. The dark, dusty place had been a favorite of theirs as children playing a game of hide and seek. They often could abscond to the attic and ignore the game, simply free to bask in one another’s company uninterrupted.

She was crying. When he asked what was wrong, she tried to act less affected and said that her sister had simply mocked her appearance. The baby fat that clung to her body, the pock marks on her nose and chin. Her sisters and mother were cruel to her and he always detested them. Who knew how awful they were to her when he was gone and wasn’t there to defend her or encourage her?

He assured her that she was beautiful. Her body was soft and perfect, and the acne would fade as his own had. He was fifteen now, practically a man, despite the fact that his body had to catch up with his long arms and legs.

Penelope smiled at him. It was the sweet, grateful smile that she always bestowed upon him and it made him feel like he could conquer the world. Colin suddenly had the irrepressible desire to kiss her, so he did. It was quick, chaste. Simply a peck of lips pressing against each other. But it was all Colin needed to confirm that Penelope was the only one for him.

Sometimes he wondered if he was the only one of the two who felt this way. Did Penelope feel for him what he did for her? Did she have this same incurable obsession? Sometimes he would doubt himself, doubt if he was worthy of her or her feelings. But then Penelope would show how she cared. Her displays of affection were quieter than Colin’s, but still there.

Penelope knew that Colin lived in the shadow of his older brothers and longed for their approval. She knew that when he disappointed them simply being himself, he often folded in on himself.

It was on that same summer visit that Colin was being dressed down by his brothers one afternoon. He wasn’t rambunctious enough, wasn’t interested in women enough. He wasn’t like them and they didn’t understand it. They thought something was wrong with him. They threw a few playful insults towards him. They were nothing too harmful, it was simply within the realm of brotherly teasing but somehow Penelope’s name came up. They teased and jested. They said he would grow out of this childhood infatuation when he met a real woman and not a silly, pimply, plump girl.

Colin had been angry, but in his anger, tears came instead of shouts and that only encouraged his brothers’ teasing more. He stormed off in a huff.

The next day, the men were planning on hunting again. This time going further in search of a large stag that had been seen. Colin was deemed too young by his mother to go off with them, secretly he was glad of this. He was in no mood to see his elder brothers.

Instead, he spent a delightful day with his sisters, his younger brother and Penelope. Despite the heat, Penelope wore long gloves. Occasionally she would fidget with her fingers or her wrist.

When the men returned that evening, his brothers were completely disheveled. Their clothes were wet, rumpled, their gloves and cravats were missing. Their hair was completely unkempt, and any exposing skin was red. The other men laughed and jeered at them but Anthony and Benedict seemed completely irate.

His mother asked what happened and rushed towards them. The other men from the journey were happy to explain. At some point during the walk through the woods, Anthony and Benedict began to feel uneasy. Their pants, gloves and socks were quite irritating. The fabric became uncomfortable, the itching became so intense they couldn’t stand it. They ripped their gloves and cravats from their bodies and once the group reached the lake, his brothers practically threw themselves in its warm water for relief.

“It was one of you,” Benedict claimed as he pointed to the children.

“It was Colin,” Anthony accused. Colin was completely dumbfounded. How could he cause their clothes to be itchy?

“When would he have been able to do this?” Violet cried.

“Clearly last night!”

“He was with us at supper, he read in the sitting room while I embroidered until bed. He ate breakfast with the family. He would have had no time to sneak undetected in your rooms and tamper with your clothing! You simply must have come into contact with some sort of plant in the forest.”

Violet had spoken and that was the end of it. His brothers suspected he pulled the prank but they were never able to prove anything. It was weeks before they could return to their club without ridicule. For years to come the men of society would often bring up that story when Anthony’s name came up. They would laugh and remember the time the viscount’s pants were so itchy the man had to jump into a lake. Hardly a season could pass without someone retelling it.

That evening, Colin found Penelope after supper. They were alone in the garden and without a word he removed the long glove to reveal her hand, red from scratching and irritation.

“What did this?” he whispered.

“Rose hips,” Penelope replied. “They grow in your garden. The hairs along the leaves; you can crush them to make itching powder. I tried to be careful but still it got on my hands.”

He met her gaze then, questioning, “Why?”

Her expression was resolute, calm. She was suddenly not the nervous, shy teen but a capable woman. “I heard what they said to you. They upset you. They do not understand how good you are. You are kind and wonderful, but they only see that you are not like them.”

Colin felt something inside of him then. Something shifted completely within his body and now Penelope Featherington was completely embedded in his soul.

He kissed her again. It was still chaste but full of emotion and promise.

“You put it in their socks?” he asked, smiling devilishly. Penelope grinned.

“And their small clothes.”

“Pen?” Colin called out as he entered the home that evening. Penelope had the day off, but Colin had to work the morning, driving Vernon to Delmonico’s to have lunch with whatever congressman or senator was in his pocket. Colin didn’t know and he didn’t care. That’s what made him a great driver.

He locked the front door behind him. Penelope didn’t answer him but he heard her voice sing through the small apartment.

“Judge, judge, hear me judge
 Send me to the electric chair”

Colin smiled and walked down the hall slowly. He didn’t want to disturb her singing along with the record. The Victrola was the best $25 he had ever spent. It was expensive and Penelope tried to refuse it, tried to tell him to take it back to the store. But Colin was uncompromising because she deserved it.

He paused in the hall as she tried to sing along with Bessie Smith. Penelope’s own voice cracking with the high notes and fading out in some places. She dropped an octave on notes she couldn’t possibly hit. Her own accent was unable to mimic that of the blues singer whose dulcet tones filtered in the apartment as the needle drug across the spinning disc.

“I cut him with my barlow
 I kicked him in the side
 I stood there laughing over him
 While he wallowed around and died”

Colin leaned against the door frame to the kitchen. Penelope’s back was turned to him as she was busy slicing meat on the counter. Her plump little bottom bouncing in harmony with her off key singing.

There was absolutely nothing that could make him regret that purchase.

“Oh judge, judge, lordy—Colin!” She jumped as she turned and saw him. “How long have you been standing there?”

Colin gave her a toothy grin. “Not long. Don’t stop on my behalf.”

Penelope rolled her eyes and smiled. She held up a plate.

“Cold sandwiches alright? The ham I baked yesterday was in the ice box.”

“Sandwiches are fine.” Colin nodded as he took a plate from her. He shrugged his jacket off and laid it over the back of the chair. They sat at the small table in the kitchen over the checkered linoleum floor. There were some spots on it that never seemed to get clean.

Penelope became an adept cook. She wasn’t shy about knowing so little and the neighboring women were more than happy to help her. She learned carbonara from Mrs. Aretusi across the hall, kolaches from Mr. Bartos’ daughter upstairs, peach cobbler from Miss Davis whose apartment shared a wall with their own.

While being a far cry from their upbringings in Mayfair, the Washington Heights apartment was leagues above the boarding house they were first shuffled to after a cramped visit to Ellis Island and a long ship journey across the Atlantic. They had been trying to make the little bit of money they had last, Colin hadn’t even been able to give Penelope a proper wedding ring yet.

Now she had a sensible emerald, they had their own place and a Victrola. Colin found himself proud of what they accomplished on their own. He almost wished he could write home and brag about what he had done completely alone and without the Bridgertons’ assistance, but that was completely out of the question.

Not only would he be putting them at risk for their ghosts from London to follow them to America, but he might have to admit that most of their funds came from Colin performing morally dubious tasks for a crime boss. Not that his conscience was plagued by his work. Colin’s only concern was Penelope’s happiness and their life together.

The song stopped and now only the song of the needle dragging over the smooth surface of the disc repeatedly filled the air. Penelope went to turn off the player. When she returned, Colin had already finished eating and watched her finish her meal.

He noticed that his wife was unusually quiet this evening.

“Is everything alright, Pen?”

Her blue gaze met his. She swallowed the bite in her mouth and nodded.

“Everything’s fine.” She didn’t meet his gaze.

“Pen,” he chided.

Penelope sighed. “I really like it here.”

Colin cocked an eyebrow. “You’re upset because you like it here?”

“I’m afraid to get too comfortable,” she said, throwing her hands up. “What if we get found out? What if we run into someone from London?”

“The city is huge, Penelope!”

“There was a man at the bar the other night,” she said, looking away. “He was from Yorkshire. He kept trying to make conversation and asked about England.”

She shrugged as she wrung her hands together. “I brushed him off and made up a story about my family, but it worried me. What if someone we know comes in?”

Colin sighed and reached across the table to take her hand.

“It’s a big country also,” he said softly, leaning down to make eye contact. “We can go to Chicago, California, Charleston. It’s been years since we fled England. We’re probably not even being searched for.”

Penelope’s shoulders relaxed a bit. “You’re right.”

He smiled smugly. “I’m always right.”

She rolled her eyes just as he turned on his heel and crossed the room.

“What are you doing?” she asked as he knelt beside the Victrola.

He only winked, lifting a new record from its sleeve. A soft hiss gave way to the bright, bouncing notes of King Porter Stomp, the piano playful and infectious.

Colin returned to her with an exaggerated bow. “May I have this dance?”

Penelope laughed delightedly and took his hand. “You may.”

They twirled from the kitchen into the living room, half-graceful, half-chaotic, feet bumping, shoulders knocking. The windows were flung open to the summer night, the city a living backdrop: honking cars, music from another apartment, voices rising from the street.

Someone from below banged on their ceiling. Penelope squealed with laughter, and they danced harder in defiance, arms flung around each other as the record crackled on.

Eventually, she drew close, her arms slipping around his neck, her cheek resting against his chest. The music slowed, faded, the evening stretching golden and still.

“I love you.” Her voice was wistful, her eyes closed.

Colin pressed a kiss into her fiery curls. “I love you.”

Colin didn’t share her worries over the permanence of their home.

Home wasn’t a place. It was a person. Hers, his, tangled together in love and blood.
And he’d bleed the world dry before he lost her.

Chapter Text

Hell and you
I know you want it too
I say, take the shot, see this chance
Feel the fire and let me have this
Dance with you

Silas Tate’s return from Howard University threatened their peace.

Colin entered the bar one day to find the man laughing with Ricky and Moe. The two men looked to Colin nervously, knowing that tension between the two would soon be palpable.

“Well, Well.” Silas drawled as he saw Colin. “If it isn’t old Limey! My dad still got you driving him around?”

Colin grimaced. “Seems like he does,” he replied simply.

Silas flashed his white teeth. “Where’s that woman of yours at? She’s a nice little armful of eye candy.”

He nudged Moe and Ricky playfully. The men laughed uncomfortably. They were trapped between angering their boss’s son or angering Colin, a man who held no power over their jobs but they both knew what he was capable of.

“She’s got the night off,” Colin said quickly, suddenly glad that Penelope was sick. She was helping the neighbors tend to their children with influenza and caught it herself. She was mostly on the mend, but not well enough to serve patrons.

Silas finished off the tumbler of brandy in his hand and laughed. “I’m surprised you came in.”

“Vernon requested his driver tonight,” Colin said flatly.

“Any idea where we’re driving ol’ Daddy?”

Colin fought back a groan. He did not want to spend the evening with Silas.

“He hasn’t told me yet,” Colin said. “And I don’t ask.”

Silas came around the table and slapped Colin on the back.

“Good man,” he said. “Keep up that attitude and one day you’ll be my driver.”

There’s no chance in Hell of that ever happening.

Silas and Vernon sat in the back. Declan sat in the front seat of the Lincoln with Colin as they drove to New Jersey. 

Colin didn’t like Declan being beside him. He liked having the front seat entirely to himself. It was his own private oasis away from the chaos of bootlegging.

Vernon’s men were to leave the New Jersey coastline and take the speedboat to Rum Row, a line of ships three miles out in the Atlantic. The ships were loaded with contraband booze from Canada and the British Empire.

In the beginning, Colin would drive the Model T Ford truck that brought the bootlegged liquor back to Harlem. But since then, Vernon had recruited Colin to be his personal driver. It had been some time since Colin made the drive to New Jersey. It was a long drive, and Declan Doyle’s hard stares didn’t make it any easier.

“Do you always go down to Jersey when the shipments come in?” Silas asked his father. Tate shook his head.

“No, but I think someone’s skimming the top. Best to show myself and make it known that I’m always watching.”

Colin pulled the car just past the docks, where the Ford was waiting to be loaded. The four men sat in silence in the car. Colin didn’t miss driving the truck. It was large, clunky and handled horribly.

The docks were silent, the only noise was from the ocean waves gently pushing against the hulls of ships. Cranes whirred lowly as they unloaded cargo from ships, lights from passing ships blinked slowly. Any patrols had been paid handsomely to avoid this area tonight.

Soon they heard the hum of the speedboat, filled with men and booze. Vernon and Silas got out of the car, Declan made to join them, but Vernon held up a hand to halt him.

“I’d like to show Silas the run of things tonight,” he said firmly. Declan nodded stiffly as he once again joined Colin in the car. Colin could feel the frustration radiating off of the man as he seethed beside him.

Declan disliked Silas as well, but for different reasons.

“He’s too stupid,” Declan said. “He’ll run the club into the ground. He doesn’t command the kind of respect that Vernon does.”

Colin said nothing. Declan looked at him, clearly annoyed.

“You planning to be a driver the rest of your life, then?”

Colin shook his head. “No.”

“But you don’t seem all that keen on movin’ up in Vernon’s ranks, either. You never ask for more work. You never push for anything beyond drivin’ the man around and the odd hit, here and there.”

“I’m not interested in moving up. More work. More responsibility.”

Declan raised a brow. “More chains, is it? Holding you down?”

He gave Colin a look; sharp, weighing.

“One of your own wandered into the club the other night. Made your girl real twitchy.”

Colin didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Declan kept going anyway.

“Has me thinkin’ the two of you are runnin’ from something. Somethin’ you’d rather not have catchin’ up.”

Colin shrugged. Let the man spin whatever story he wanted.

Declan leaned in slightly, voice low. “You took to Vernon’s side work easy enough. No tremble in the hand. No restless nights. None of the usual moral reckonin’ most fellas get.”

He smiled, but there was nothing friendly in it.

“Makes me think Emerick wasn’t your first.”

“You’d be right,” Colin said, finally locking eyes with him. He was tired of the games. Tired of the man thinking he could shake him. Colin had done far worse on American soil than he ever had back home.
“What’s your point?”

Declan blinked as if he hadn’t expected Colin to admit it.

“You going to turn me in?” Colin asked. “You’ve got your own ghosts.”

Declan didn’t answer. He turned, eyes shifting to the loading dock outside, where Vernon and Silas stood watching the crates of liquor get stacked into the truck.

“I told you,” Colin said, gaze still forward. “I’m not looking to climb the ladder. I don’t want your job, or anyone else’s. I’ve no interest in getting into Tate’s good graces beyond earning a wage. The only thing I care about is my wife. Keeping her safe. Keeping our life.”

A stretch of silence sat heavy between them.

“Emerick had a name,” Declan said at last. “None of the girls liked him.”

He gave a bitter little laugh. “Guess he put his hands on the wrong one that day.”

He pulled out a cigarette case, shook one loose, and passed it to Colin. Colin took it. Lit it. Inhaled deep.

“That he did,” he said quietly.

When it happened, Colin had been driving for Tate for one year. Every week he drove the Ford down to New Jersey with the boys to load up the cargo.

Emerick was one of Vernon’s boys. The kind of bastard that never heard the word “No,” despite it being screamed in his face.

He was handsy with all the waitresses. Caused two of them to quit, but despite Tallulah’s arguments, Tate wouldn’t fire him. He was the son of an old friend, and Tate was sentimental. Silas and Emerick were friends, but while Silas was flirty and annoying, he had been raised to keep his hands to himself.

Penelope didn’t like Emerick. She kept him at bay most of the time, but there was one day that she couldn’t.

The bastard thought Colin was out, thought there was no one there to help her. He cornered her in the kitchen. Colin heard her scream. He rushed to the kitchen in time to see Penelope claw Emerick’s face with her nails and for him to backhand her.

Colin saw red at that moment and remembered her tear stained, bruised face on their last night in Mayfair.

Colin didn’t remember pulling Emerick off her. He wasn’t sure how he summoned the strength to drag the man into the alley behind the bar.

His fists pounded into the man’s skull repeatedly until he was unrecognizable. He buried his switchblade deep in the man’s neck; holding it there as blood pooled around him, his heartbeat growing fainter with every drop.

It was only then that he noticed Vernon in that alley. He wasn’t sure how much of the assault the man saw but when it was over, he seemed impressed. Vernon wasn’t sad that his old friend’s son was dead, he was practically giddy that he had a madman like Colin on his side.

It was the next day that he asked Colin to be his personal driver.

And one week later he put a gun in Colin’s hand and asked him to take out a cop that had been asking for too much of a bribe.

Colin had never been good at looking ahead. Penelope had known that about him from the beginning.

They were twelve and fourteen when it first became obvious—Hyde Park, a muddy spring day, her in a hideous yellow gown. An older boy had shoved Penelope, and she'd landed in the muck. It was embarrassing, yes, but the mud wasn’t deep, and she’d only suffered a few stains. She was content to shove the boy back and be done with it.

But Colin wasn’t.

He’d thrown himself at the boy and pummeled him until the other child cried out. His older brother had to drag him off. After that, their families kept them apart, convinced the two of them were somehow corrupting one another.

Later, Penelope tried to explain that he didn’t have to hurt the boy like that. He needed to think about what came after.

It hadn’t made a difference.

Colin could never see more than a step or two ahead.
Which meant Penelope had to.

Penelope knew that their time in New York was limited. She made sure their money was on hand, safe and somewhere easy to grab. They didn’t trust the banks; they didn’t want to leave a trail with their names on it. Even their fake names.

The man who came into the club claiming that he hailed from Yorkshire but having a London accent watched her too closely. His questions were too specific. Someone was looking for them.

She didn’t know how the British Empire might go about having their criminals arrested in the States and then sent home, but she didn’t want to find out first hand. So, they had to be ready.

Colin often told her that with his job driving Tate and the bonus work he got from the man that she didn’t need to continue waitressing. But Penelope wanted the money. She wanted to ensure that when the time came for them to flee, that they could do so easily. She didn’t want an experience similar to their arrival to New York when they had to stay in an overcrowded boarding house.

But back then they were still trying to survive on the remnants of the money they stole from her uncle’s safe and what they got from selling her mother’s jewels.

It was late one evening. Or early. Penelope finished cleaning up the last of the remnants of the highball and wine glasses. She was waiting for Colin who had left to run an errand for King. He was expected back soon. Vernon and Tallulah went home hours ago. As had the bartender and the rest of the waitresses.

Penelope was alone in the dark and empty club. It seemed so odd to see a place that was normally so loud and full of life to be quiet. The ghosts of laughter and jazz still lingered. The smell of cigarette smoke would likely never fade away.

Penelope sat alone at the bar, idly flipping through an issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She glanced at the adverts for hosiery and silk undergarments, admired the new line of Rosemary Dresses that would debut in the spring.

She heard the kitchen’s back door slam shut.

Penelope jumped down from the bar, heart lifting. Colin must be back. She rushed through the kitchen door, only to find Silas Tate standing there.

She froze. Her smile vanished.

Silas grinned, and it was the wrong kind of smile. Too slow, too knowing.

Penelope had never been blind to the way Silas looked at her. She hadn’t needed to worry while he’d been away at Howard University. And most men who looked at her like that didn’t look that way for long. Colin saw to that. A few broken noses, a fractured wrist or two—he had a way of making sure men understood where the line was.

Everyone at the club knew not to touch Penelope. It was never said aloud, but they all knew what happened to Emerick. And they all knew Colin had been behind it.

But Silas? Silas was Vernon Tate’s son. He got away with more than most.

Penelope always kept her distance from him, not out of fear of what Silas might do, but out of fear of what Colin would.

He wouldn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t think.
He would strike.

“Well, well, Red,” Silas drawled, creeping closer like she might bolt. “Never caught you all alone before.”

Penelope didn’t move. She stayed in the doorway, spine straight, eyes sharp.

“I’ve always thought we should get better acquainted,” he went on, his glossy shoes clicking across the cheap linoleum. “But your man always seems to be in the way.”

“I’m not interested in getting acquainted,” she said, her voice flat.

Silas pouted mockingly. “Aww. I think you will be.”

He stepped behind her, his voice brushing close to her ear. “See, I’ve got some very interesting information.”

Her fists tightened at her sides. Slowly, calmly, she slid her hands into the pockets of the short coat over her dress.

“My father had a visitor the other day. Said he was a federal marshal. Came asking questions—not about the liquor, surprisingly. No, he was looking for a couple of fugitives. British ones.”

Penelope’s jaw clenched.

“Seems they’re wanted back in England. Something about the murder of a lord and his sister. Pretty high-profile stuff. The kind of case that gets fast-tracked through international channels. Extradition orders already signed and waiting. All they need now is a location.”

He paused, letting the words linger.

“Said he got a tip. A private investigator from London. Funny thing—he described the fugitives in detail. A Mr. Colin Bridgerton and Miss Penelope Featherington.”
Another pause. “Sound familiar?”

Penelope didn’t answer. Her fingers curled around cold metal in her pocket.

“Of course, my father told the marshal we’d never heard of them. Just a coincidence, right? After all, we only have a Colin and Penelope Ledger working here. From England, too. Small world.”

He moved in front of her now. Too close.

“Now, I don’t think you want that marshal getting another tip. Not when I could make sure he doesn’t find you. Not when I could make sure your names stay buried.”

His eyes dropped to her lips.

“All you have to do is be sweet to me. Real sweet. And I keep my mouth shut. You scratch my back—”

The switchblade flashed before he could finish.

It drove into his neck with a wet, decisive thunk.

Blood sprayed across his white suit. Silas staggered back, choking on his breath, eyes wide with disbelief. He clawed at the handle, managed to pull it out, but the wound gushed as he pressed his hand against it.

Shit. Penelope thought. She hadn’t driven it deep enough.

Silas stumbled, gasping. She looked around, wild for something, anything, to finish it.

Then the back door burst open.

Colin.

He froze in the doorway, taking it in: Silas bleeding, Penelope blood-spattered and shaking, her eyes screaming a thousand things at once.

Colin didn’t hesitate.

He pulled the pistol from his coat, leveled it, and shot Silas Tate in the head.

The man crumpled on the floor without a sound as Penelope rushed into her beloved’s arms.

“They cannot keep me from you,” Colin said ardently. “I know we cannot marry now, but soon. When I have returned from Oxford, you will be old enough.”

His voice trailed off, “I mean…If—if you will have me.”

Her slow smile was brilliant and lit up her face. She twined her arms around his neck and they kissed again.

“I will wait for you,” she whispered against his lips.

Colin’s older brother had sought to keep them apart. He thought their connection was strange and odd. After Eton, his brothers tried to drag him to a brothel. They told the leggy blonde that he was a shy virgin who needed a good fuck to loosen him up. When Colin refused and rushed out into the night, Anthony Bridgerton concluded that Penelope was the reason for his deficiency.

When her father died, the new Lord Featherington took over. He was a cruel old man who had banished his own son to America. He tossed her and Portia onto the street and they were forced to seek shelter with her uncle. Her mother’s older brother: Earl Chambers.

Penelope did not like her uncle. The memory of him caused nightmares that followed her to New York. She was afraid to tell Colin at first. Afraid that he would think less of her, that he would hate her. She should have known better. Once she did manage to send him a letter, he immediately came for her.

He stole the Oxford dean’s Bentley and drove to London. In the middle of the night, he snuck into her room and saw the bruises on her face.

“It was him,” he said lowly, his voice low and filled with an emotion she barely knew before. Penelope nodded and looked away.

“Did you tell your mother?”

Fresh tears sprung to her eyes. “She says we mustn’t anger him. That we are charity and he’ll eventually lose interest.”

“We’re leaving,” he said tersely. “Now.”

Penelope packed quickly, just as eager to be away from this dreaded place as he was. She dressed and donned a coat and they tried to sneak down the stairs, past the bedrooms where the other occupants of the house lay. They were in the kitchen now. It was devoid of servants and they were almost to the door when a voice rang out behind them. Penelope froze beside him; he could feel her entire body tremble at the voice.

The man was shouting, spitting vitriol at them both, so consumed by his rage that he didn’t even notice when Portia entered the room.

She did not raise her voice.

She simply said, “Penelope, go to your room.”

The earl continued his tirade, barking threats now. He’d ring for the police, he said. Colin would spend the night in jail, if not longer.

Colin said nothing. There was nothing left in him but wrath; cold and bottomless.

These people were meant to protect her.

His Penelope.

And instead, they had hurt her. The earl had abused her. Portia had allowed it.

He didn’t remember moving.

He didn’t remember reaching for the knife on the kitchen table. All he remembered was the earl’s stunned expression as the blade sank into his chest. The way his body crumpled. The blood, dark, thick soaking his suit, then the floor. Colin stood motionless, watching the life drain from the man’s face with morbid fascination.

He didn’t even hear Portia’s scream, nor register the sudden, wet crack that silenced it.

When he finally looked up, Penelope stood over Portia’s collapsed form, an iron pan in her trembling hands. Blood streaked across its base.

She stared down at the woman’s body with no remorse in her eyes, only a strange calm.
Then her shoulders slumped, and the pan clattered to the floor.

Colin looked at her.

She looked at him.

And for a moment, the world stopped.

She smiled. That same beautiful, bright smile that had always pulled him back from his worst places.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t ask what they would do. She already knew.

Penelope had always been the planner. The counterweight to Colin’s fire. She knew the combination to the safe in her uncle’s study. She knew where Portia kept the heirloom jewels.
She knew what to take and how fast to run.

When they arrived at the docks that night, they could hear the sound of police sirens in the distance.

They were in the Lincoln sometime later. Penelope wondered if Tate would ever know that his son’s body was in his trunk for some time. Colin didn’t ask questions. He checked her for wounds, kissed her soundly and they cleaned up the mess. 

They wrapped Silas’ head in wax paper from the kitchen to keep it from bleeding in the interior of the trunk. Colin parked the car at the familiar bridge over the East River. It was where he took all the bodies. The current would take Silas into the Atlantic, never to be seen again.

They were silent as they worked. It wasn’t until they heard the splash in the deep, dark water that Penelope spoke.

“I don’t want to run again.” They leaned against the side of the car, listening to the river’s quiet roar drown out the sounds of the city.

“We might not have a choice, love,” Colin said, taking a long drag of the cigarette that he only just lit. “Extradition. Federal marshals.” He exhaled a small cloud of smoke. “We should have changed our first names as well.”

“Vernon likes you,” Penelope said. “It sounds like he was protecting us.”

“He won’t like me anymore,” Colin said. It was simply a fact, there was no sadness or regret behind the words. “He can pay off local police but I don’t think he has the power to persuade the feds.”

Penelope was quiet for a moment. Her mind working fast.

“If we leave tonight. He’ll know it was us,” she said finally. Colin looked at her. He still had the blood on his coat. “No one was at the club. No one saw him or knew he was there with us.”

Colin shook his head. “We should leave now.”

“No. Listen,” Penelope said. “If we leave now, Vernon will know we did something to Silas. He’s not stupid, neither is Declan. But if we act normal, it simply looks like Silas disappeared. He’s gone off before and shacked up with some hussy before he came home broke and tired. If we leave now, we’ll have Vernon and the federal marshals after us. If we wait, we can use the extradition as a ruse for why we have to leave. We will leave long before they start to realize Silas isn’t coming back.”

Colin sighed and turned towards her. “Fine,” he said. “But if I think they’re getting too close, then we go.”

Penelope nodded. Happy to make the compromise with him. She looked at him now and smiled. Colin felt her gaze upon his profile and turned his head, smiling slightly when he caught her staring.

“I’m proud of you,” he said, his voice full of reverence. “You almost had him taken care of. You didn’t really need me at all.”

Penelope closed the distance between them, her hands sliding over his blood-stained lapels.
“I’ll always need you,” she whispered, sultry and soft.

Colin groaned, dragging her in for a bruising kiss, his hand locking tight around the back of her neck like he couldn't bear the thought of letting her go. Penelope’s fingers fisted in his hair, yanking hard. He groaned again, the sharp pain lighting him up, making him harder.

She moaned into his mouth and the sound undid him. He pressed her against the car, every inch of him claiming hers, like the city could watch and he wouldn’t care. His hands roamed greedily, mapping the curves he’d memorized, touching everywhere he needed to prove she was still his.

He shoved her skirts up, exposing her thighs to the night air, and to him. She shivered, but it wasn’t from cold. The city hummed around them, the dull roar of engines and horns in the distance, but all he heard was her breathing, sharp, desperate, his.

With both hands gripping her ass, he hoisted her up onto the hood of the Lincoln. The metal was warm from the drive, but not as hot as her skin.

He kissed down her throat, then lower, his teeth grazing the delicate slope of her breasts. She arched into him, helpless, wordless, needing more.

“Mine,” he muttered against her skin, voice ragged. “You’re mine, Penelope.”

And when she moaned in response. It was desperate, wrecked and he knew she felt it too.

Colin pulled her sleeves down, exposing her shoulders, then her breasts. He took a pebbled peak into his mouth, sucking hard and then laving with the flat of his tongue.

“Tell me,” he growled against her skin, his hands moving up her abundant thighs and into the heat between her legs. “Tell me no one else can have you.”

Only yours, Colin,” she gasped, her breath catching. Their eyes locked, dark and wild. She pulled his shirt free, unfastening the buttons of his pants with shaking fingers.

“I need you.” Her hand gripped his cock and Colin’s eyes closed at the sensation. His mouth fell open in undisguised pleasure. She moved her hand up and down his thick, hard shaft. “Only you.”

“You have me,” he said hoarsely, kissing her again. This one softer, deeper, like it meant everything.

“It’s just us,” he said, wrenching her legs further apart so he could slot himself at her hips. Penelope moved her hips closer to the edge of the car hood. Colin rested his forehead against her own and thrust into her with one hard, claiming stroke.

“Nothing else matters,” he murmured, voice breaking as she took him in. “Just you and me.”
He buried his face in her neck, breathing her in as she adjusted to the stretch. Her fingers gripped his back, digging into muscle. She rocked her hips, a silent command—and Colin obeyed, thrusting again, deeper.

Penelope locked her legs around his waist, keeping him close, refusing to let him pull away. Every stroke pulled a gasp from her lips—those sweet, high-pitched sounds he craved.
She was close, so close, and he knew every trembling breath, every arch of her body like a map. She pulled his face up and kissed him, biting his lip on the way out.

He groaned and moved faster, harder, his pace relentless now. Her bare skin squeaked against the hood, hot metal and hot bodies colliding in rhythm.

Mine, he whispered against her lips.

Mine, she called out as she came hard and fast.

Colin wasn’t far behind, he groaned and shuddered and she felt the warmth of his release fill her channel. His arms wrapped around her like armor, like she was the only safe place he’d ever known. She sighed languidly as she always did after their couplings.

Colin pulled away just enough to kiss her. It was a claim, a promise. He looked at her then, love carved raw and fierce into every line of his face.

“As long as I’ve got you,” he whispered, voice shaking, “the rest can burn.”

“Colin!” Tallulah yelled across the bar to him. He smiled and approached the stage. The bar had yet to open for the night and she was practicing for her set. She leaned down when he approached, her aging eyes reminded him of his own mother. He used to feel a pang of sadness when he thought about his mother, but it happened less and less as time moved forward.

“Where have you been the last few nights?” she asked suspiciously.

“Driving Vernon down to New Jersey,” he replied. It was the truth. He wondered why she didn’t ask her husband. Colin was always in Vernon’s presence.

“Has Silas been down there with the boys?” she asked. Colin shook his head.

“Haven’t seen him in days.” Lies came easily. Especially when one knew the consequence of the truth. Tallulah hummed a response. Her lips turned down.

“Probably done shacked up with that girl again,” she muttered to herself as she walked back to Roy and the piano.

It was amazing how easy it was to pretend nothing was wrong. Penelope was an expert at remaining calm in a tense situation. It was likely due to her tumultuous upbringing, Colin thought with a pang of sadness. He had always resented the way she was treated by her mother. Her cruel barbs could reduce his sweet Pen to tears and it always brought out a rage in him. He couldn’t bear to see her sad. His body reacted physically, violently. They were as interconnected as twisted vines of ivy.

The drive that night wasn’t to New Jersey. Instead, Colin drove Declan and Vernon back to Hell’s Kitchen. They were once again meeting with Mickey O’Callaghan.

But this time was different. This time Vernon asked Colin to join them. This was a new development. Colin had never been asked to sit in on the meetings with the other gang bosses of New York.

Colin stood behind Declan and Vernon, who were seated across from Mickey and his men.

“Lucetti wants in on our patch,” O’Callaghan said grimly. “He’s tossin’ threats like confetti, and he’s tight with some feckin’ state senator. We’re caught by the bollocks, so we are.”

“Who’s the senator?” Vernon asked.

“Joseph Clements,” O’Callaghan said.

Vernon nodded. “I’ve got contacts that can find dirt on him. Whether he killed a man or shorted his housekeeper, we’ll find something.”

“We should have somethin’ else,” Declan added. “Somethin’ else that we can hit him with.”

The men at the table thought for a moment. Then Vernon turned to Colin.

“Ledger,” he said. Colin nodded towards his boss. “You have any ideas on how to slow Lucetti down?”

Declan shot Vernon a look. He didn’t like him asking Colin’s opinion. Colin thought for a moment before speaking.

“His trucks,” he said finally. “They’re vulnerable during their dock loads. Lucetti’s men are cocky. They don’t leave anyone to guard the truck when they’re going out to Rum Row.”

O’Callaghan nodded. “Aye, that’s not half-bad, so it’s not.”

The men continued to talk, seemingly pleased with their directions. Colin noticed the way they used power, the way they bluffed. They tested the alliances of each other. They didn’t trust. It reminded him of the lords back home. The viscounts, dukes, and earls. How they bargained and bartered for their lands and territories. The more Colin considered it, the more he noticed there was little difference. Only these men gained their power through violence and money and not from the names of their fathers.

A few nights later they enacted Colin’s idea. He kissed Penelope goodbye at the club and drove the Lincoln down to the docks in New Jersey. He followed close behind Vernon’s boys in the Model T and Mickey’s men in their truck.

“I want you to oversee the operation,” Vernon said at his desk earlier that evening. Colin frowned but said nothing. Vernon took his silence for affirmation.

“This is your chance to prove yourself, Colin,” he said. “I want to see what you can do. How you handle yourself. Maybe you can move up higher. You don’t want to be a driver forever. You should thank Declan. This was his idea.”

Colin had no ambitions, but couldn’t exactly tell Vernon this. Declan entered the office quickly. Colin glared at the man.

“You hear from Silas?” Declan asked. A shadow crossed Vernon’s face.

“He hasn’t stayed gone this long before,” Vernon said quietly. “None of his friends have seen him either.”

Colin said nothing. He wasn’t expected to speak. He merely watched the two men talk. Vernon shook his head and sighed.

“I’ll send out some of the men to look for him tomorrow.”

So now Colin was to oversee the ambush and sabotage of Lucetti’s trucks in an effort to prove himself to Vernon, which he didn’t want to do. Colin sighed as he turned down the dark alley that led to Lucetti’s drop. Maybe he could talk Penelope into leaving sooner rather than later. Vernon was getting closer to finding out that Silas wasn’t coming home. He was trying to put more work on Colin. None of this would lead to anywhere good.

He followed the trucks into the narrow passageways along the docks. Stacks of crates loomed on either side, casting jagged silhouettes in the flickering lamplight. Just ahead sat an empty truck—Lucetti’s. Colin recognized it instantly. He used to drive Vernon’s Model T and had memorized every rival vehicle worth noting.

But something was off.

The briny sting of saltwater and diesel drifted through the open window. In the distance, the city hummed steady, oblivious. Colin’s fingers brushed the revolver in his coat pocket. The weight of it was steadying. Familiar.

Men in overcoats lingered in the shadows. They weren’t dockworkers.

Mickey’s crew climbed down from their truck, posturing with loud threats, thinking they had the upper hand. Colin stayed in the Lincoln. Something crawled up his spine, a cold electric prickle. He’d felt it before; once in London, the night everything went sideways. And again, when he saw Emerick leering over Penelope.

A match flared in the dark, just off to his left.

Then he saw them. At least six men, waiting in silence. A black Packard slid out of the fog behind him, lights off, its engine barely a whisper.

“Fuck,” Colin muttered.

The first tommy gun burst split the air. Muzzle flashes lit up the alley as several of Vernon’s men went down in a spray of bullets. Screams followed, then the chaos of gunfire crackling between the crates.

Colin threw the Lincoln into gear. The tires shrieked across the oil-slick pavement as he peeled out, ducking low behind the wheel. Behind him, the Packard’s headlights flared on sharp and blinding before the car surged forward in pursuit.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

He tore out of the docks, leaving the ambush, the Model T, and Vernon’s boys behind.

The Lincoln bucked as he yanked the wheel left, tires shrieking on wet bricks. The chassis groaned in protest. He clipped a stack of crates leaving wood and straw exploding across the street behind him.

In the mirror, the Packard was still there, closing fast. Its headlights bounced wildly as it roared over the same trolley tracks he’d just crossed.

Colin swore and jammed the gearshift, his knuckles white against the wheel. He shot down a side street, fenders scraping against the tight alley walls. The Lincoln’s engine rattled, shuddering with every jolt, like it might tear loose from the hood.

He made for the Holland Tunnel.

Engines thundered inside the narrow passage, the sound deafening. The Packard stayed close, trying again and again to overtake him. Each time, Colin swerved, blocking their advance. Gunshots rang out. A bullet cracked his side mirror.

The Packard’s headlights bore down behind him like twin flames.

He burst out of the tunnel into open road. The lights of the city hit him like a flood. He swerved through traffic, past trolleys and startled pedestrians. Horns blared. A streetcar loomed—he cut hard, slipping by with inches to spare. The Packard hesitated, braking just long enough to fall back.

Colin floored the accelerator.

The engine screamed. A shot rang out behind him. The rear windshield cracked. His pulse thundered in his ears.

Up ahead: the railyard. Tracks crisscrossed like a spider’s web. He knew this place. He saw the locomotive coming fast.

Gunning the engine, he didn’t let himself blink.

The Lincoln flew across the tracks just as the train barreled through, cutting the Packard off with a roar of iron and steam. Colin slammed the brakes and pulled into the loading dock. He killed the engine and breathed deep.

The train was long. By the time the Packard made it across, Colin would be gone. He slipped the Lincoln into a dark corner of the yard, a place he’d used before. Quiet, forgotten, and waiting for when he needed it again. He vanished into the darkness of the city on foot. One thing that Vernon said rings out in his mind.

You should thank Declan. This was his idea.

Colin was late.

He had told her not to wait at the club for him to return, but Penelope had wanted to. Every moment apart was torture. But it was close to midnight and he had yet to return. Vernon had gone home. Declan shot Penelope an odd look as he left. Almost pity. She wondered what it meant.

Perhaps Colin had returned the Lincoln and left without going inside the club to see that she was still working. He might have assumed that Penelope was already home. She hoped that was the case. She bid the other waitresses goodnight and went home.

Drunk clubgoers leered at her on her walk back to Washington Heights. She didn’t deign to make eye contact with them, it might encourage them. Her fingers nestled calmingly around the switchblade in her pocket. Let them try.

But they didn’t. It was almost as if they could sense their impending deaths if they tried to touch Penelope.

She walked up the stairs to their apartment, smiling at their neighbors who always caroused in the common stairs and halls and into her and Colin’s small home. Their sanctuary away from the world, the type of thing they dreamed of when they were kept separate in London.

“Colin?” she called out into the darkness. There was no answer. She sighed in disappointment and worry. Penelope sunk down on the floral upholstered sofa, staring out the window into the neon lights of New York and wondering where her husband was.

In her mind, he was safe. She couldn’t imagine the worst case scenario. The thought that something had happened to him filled her with a dread she couldn’t name. She didn’t want to think about the person she could so easily become without him. Penelope didn’t let her thoughts drift to the ruin she could unleash if this world so carelessly took him from her.

Penelope had always known there was a darkness inside of her. Colin’s presence was the only thing that kept it at bay. He was the only peace in her world, he had been for as long as she could remember. It was why she would always defend him. Why she could easily kill anyone who stood between them.

She wanted to kill his brothers all those years ago in London when they so callously tormented him. But she had been so young at the time and didn’t realize that she was capable of it. It wasn’t until the heavy iron pan hit her mother’s head that she knew she could and that it was simple. So, so simple.

If Vernon Tate caused her one true love’s death, she would kill that man. As easily as she had taken his son, she would carve into the club owner. She would kill Tallulah, Declan, Moe, Roy. She would burn the club to the ground.

Penelope dozed off on the couch and was awoken later when Colin shuffled through the door looking thoroughly ragged. His jacket torn, his shoes covered in mud, his hair disheveled.

“Colin! What happened?” she said as she stood abruptly. Colin crossed the room to her.

“Lucetti’s men knew we would be there,” he said, sinking into the sofa in exhaustion. “I assume Vernon’s men are dead. I fled in the Lincoln.”

“Who tipped them off?” she said. He pulled her against him. She easily sank into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Declan,” he said easily. Penelope nodded. She never trusted the man. To be fair, she trusted few.

“I ditched the car at the railway and came home on foot.”

Penelope nodded; her voice low. “I suppose we should go. While they’re distracted. Especially if they think you’re dead.”

Colin didn’t answer at first. He lay still, his eyes narrowed, thinking, plotting. His hand drifted lazily up and down her spine, then slipped lower, brushing along the curve of the plump thigh exposed from where her dress was hiked up.

Penelope shivered at the touch. He wasn’t trying to arouse her, at least not yet. But his fingers moved like he couldn’t help it, like touching her was a reflex, a habit written into muscle and bone. His hand ghosted higher, fingers skimming through the soft, coarse hair between her legs. Slow. Deliberate. Maddening.

Her breath caught, her thighs parting instinctively.

“I was content to simply leave before,” he said absently, still lost in thought, his fingers continuing their torturous strokes. “Happy to let them believe we disappeared.”

Then his fingers dipped into her. Penelope moaned, body arching toward him. Colin’s eyes flicked down at her, distracted but still smiling faintly at the wet heat now coating his fingers.

“But now,” he murmured, voice darkening, “they know too much.”

He curled two fingers inside her and began to thrust slow and deep, then faster. His thumb circled her clit with practiced precision.

Penelope gasped, clutching at his shoulders, her body caught between pleasure and the undercurrent of violence in his voice.

“They don’t walk away from this,” he whispered against her lips before finally kissing her deep, claiming, relentless.

She sighed into his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck, clinging to him as his fingers fucked her harder. Her hips rocked in time with him, chasing the edge.

“They don’t know what happens,” Colin growled between kisses, “when someone tries to separate us. When they try to take me from you.” His mouth moved to her throat, tongue dragging across her pulse point, teeth grazing skin. “But they’ll learn,” he said, voice low and vengeful. “They all will.”

Her climax hit fast and hard. Penelope cried out, her body shaking violently in his arms as he held her through it, never stopping, never letting her go. She trembled, legs slack, every muscle spent.

Colin’s fingers finally stilled, still buried deep inside her.

She opened her eyes, breathless, a slow, dangerous smile curling her lips.

“We’ll end them,” she whispered.

Colin grinned, and then—finally he pulled his fingers out, slowly, deliberately, raising them to his lips. He tasted her like a man tasting his own power.

“Damn right we will.”

Penelope walked into the club the next afternoon distraught. She left her hair undone, her dress a bit wrinkled, her face free of rouge and eyeliner.

She burst into Vernon’s office unannounced in a fit. “Where is Colin?” she said. It was easy to make the tears stream down her cheeks. Vernon and Declan exchanged a look. Vernon looked unsettled; Declan looked as if he were trying to appear so. He wasn’t as good of an actor as Penelope.

“He never came home,” she said.

The men placate her. They try to keep her calm. They know about her. They call her a ‘crazy broad’ when they think she’s not nearby. They lie to her. They try and tell her that everything is fine, that Colin is just laying low because of Lucetti’s ambush. They tell her to go home, to wait and everything will be fine.

But while Penelope is effortlessly distracting Vernon and Declan, Colin is in Hell’s Kitchen talking to Mickey O’Callaghan. Colin has learned from his brief run ins with the man that nothing irks him quite so much as kin betraying their own. While Declan Doyle’s heritage means little to himself, it means everything to O’Callaghan.

He doesn’t take the news of the betrayal to Lucetti well. He pats Colin on the back and asks if he wants a job. Colin declines. He and his wife will soon be leaving New York. He doesn’t say where they will be going, truthfully the couple has not yet decided it themselves.

“Heard you had a fed after you,” he says through his thick brogue. “But he got his pocket lined, didn’t he?”

That was news to Colin, of course. Did Vernon pay off the man? He might have felt a small pang of remorse a week prior, but no longer. The man made his bed.

Colin leaves Hell’s Kitchen and returns to Harlem. He waits in the shadows for O’Callaghan to send for Vernon. The man already has a new driver and a new car. He watched Declan and Vernon drive away from the bar for the last time. Do they know they will not return? Colin shrugs and makes his way into the club.

The Cat’s Meow has not yet opened for the evening and is quiet. Usually, the bartender has already begun his work for the evening but the bar is empty, the kitchen is silent, there are no waitresses, the piano player is not yet warming up for the night.

Colin heard the gunshot in the back dressing rooms. He had given Penelope his gun. The gun Vernon gave Colin years ago was now the one that killed his wife. Was that irony? Poetic justice? Colin didn’t know. Penelope sauntered out with a grin on her face. Colin returned the smile as he walked behind the bar. He took a swig of whiskey before smashing the bottle on the bartop, the sticky liquid flowing out, spilling over the top and dripping onto the floor.

Penelope laughed and joined in. They giddily smashed bottle after bottle, liquor now so precious and forbidden pouring freely over the speakeasy floor. Penelope tipped a bottle of gin over the piano, watching it run between the keys like a ghost of music.

“That should be enough,” Colin said. They couldn’t waste too much time in case O’Callaghan failed to get the job done. In the rare occurrence that Vernon and Declan walked away from Mickey, they wouldn’t be coming back to a bar.

Colin dropped a lit match on a pile of oil-soaked cloths in the kitchen, flames licking up eagerly as he turned and walked back to her.

“It was fun,” she said, wistful eyes sweeping the room. Smoke and heat rolled in from the back in thick, pulsing waves. Colin didn’t look away from her. She was beautiful, her face flushed, a sprinkle of Tallulah’s blood on her dress, a beaming smile that was only ever for him.

“The next thing will be just as fun,” he said as he pulled her into his arms. “As long as you’re with me.”

They were older now. Smarter. They would change their names again. First and last. Whatever names they wore, he was hers and she was his. They had their money, clothes, and the Victrola stashed in the Lincoln hidden just around the block. They’d ditch it a few states down, take what they needed, and remove anyone who tried to stop them.

The flames were growing, fire engine sirens screamed in the distance.

Colin kissed her as the bar burned, the smoke curled around them, the heat slicked the back of his neck with sweat.

“I love you,” he said softly.

Penelope smiled and kissed him back. “I love you.”

They left the bar, hand in hand, before the fire engine roared up to the club. It was the happiest ending they ever had — and the beginning of something worse.