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evita-shelby · 9 months ago

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Love your gifs dude.

Yeah the Rileys with such a huge ass family and their scrooge mcduck levels of money would keep rockewood hall for ages lol, weirdly the size is only a little bigger than Arley Hall/Arrow House? So like i guess Tommy got real estate advice from them.

Olivia has opinions on every man eva marries, only Jack gets a pass this time dnjdjd

Tommy tried to break up with Grace but Grace (who doesn't believe in witchcraft nor respect Tommy's culture) kinda forced his hand by ruining her reputation for him leaving with no other choice than to marry her. This doesn't end well fro Grace who’s family cuts ties with her completely to avoid being called in the shitstorm

National Anthem

Chapter 10

Cw: mentions of sex (duh) period typical misogyny, some racism and technically a curse

Tag list: @thegreatdragonfruta @zablife @cljordan-imperium @call-sign-shark

Easter 1923

Ever since he was a kid, Jack’s dreamed of owning the world.

His apartment had been good, modern and spacious and perfect for a bachelor. When his ambition decided he needed a wife to complete his success, he looked for a perfect starter house.

One that would be seen as the beginning of his rise, one that would become the steppingstone for his future.

He’d carried Eva over the threshold just as he’d done when he took her to the townhouse he shared with Carrie for Gina’s sake. He had fucked her in every surface of the house, built a marriage that would have everyone doubt this had been an arrangement made in the span of a week.

Their current home was great, perfect for a growing family with a long veranda for the children, a garage that was every middle-class car aficionado’s dream and yet it won’t be long before they leave it too.

Jack never dreams small; he hadn’t known exactly what this dream home would be until he saw Rockwood Hall.

J.D. Rockefeller had made the second largest mansion in all of America, so grand that his own descendants had to sell it after his death. So grand only the Rileys could afford it now that they gained government contracts through his connections.

“We should get one of these.” He says as he takes Rosie in his arms and the boys run off to play with the other children.

Little Jack turns back long enough to hug his mother goodbye and Little Joey is already yelling at the boys he met at the last family gathering. They gather with her family for the big holidays after that fiasco during the first thanksgiving when the twins were born.

They’d spend Easter here, the 4th of July at home, come here for September 16th before the boys start their first day of school –of which he’s taking the day off work because Eva said so--- and miss Florida because Eva was due in November.

Katherine Drusilla Nelson, Duchess of Devonshire and conceived in the most coveted bed in the world on Valentine’s Day. Named for his late elder sister who died of consumption along with Gina and their mother, and for Eva’s aunt, the formidable Olivia Drusilla Riley de Souza.

Livia doesn’t like him, told him to his face and repeated it that first Thanksgiving they hosted in 1919. Thought he was beneath them and unworthy of her favorite niece. But she practically raised Eva because her mother got the baby blues and so he put up with her…enough to have her share his daughter’s name.

“I like the one we rented in Hyannis Port for July 4th last year, Malcom Cottage, was it? Although I am partial to the villa in Florida.” Eva mentions acting as if they had to choose between one. She grew up in several houses, always moving about with the parents or relatives caring for her when she wasn’t in school.

“Why settle for one, when we can have it all?” It’s like when she asked if they could keep the tradition of middle names for their children because the two of them also had middle names, she didn’t even need to ask to know the answer is always yes.

Besides his witch of a wife has never been wrong before, never will be if you ask him.

“About fucking time, I hate telling people you live in the suburbs, that’s so middle class.” Gina said making her dear uncle reprimand her for swearing in front of the children.

“Language, Gina.”

While Rosie struggled with talking, she’d picked up swearing with ease. She learned to say shit from hearing Jack hurt himself in the garage one fucking time.

Their sweet little angel smiled impishly and muttered the word ‘fuck’ as she bit the gold crucifix they got her for Easter.

Well, they were never gonna make angels anyways.

Family gatherings were fine, for the most part. Sure, her aunt would make backhanded remarks towards Jack in her face, while also outright insulting him outright the moment her back was turned, it went well mostly.

It wasn’t because he was American, new money nor a gangster. It was simply because he wasn’t Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, the man Livia had picked out for her like he was a new dress she’d gifted her.

Vanderbilt seemed nice, but he was rather boring. Well, boring in comparison to Jack who then had desecrated a confessional with her and boldly taken her to his place where they planned their future after he made her scream herself hoarse in pleasure.

Had Jack not been so good in bed ---and out of it--- maybe Eva would have been Mrs. Vanderbilt and kept the rebellious Vanderbilt heir from being bankrupt and disinherited from his family.

“I just don’t see what you see in him.” Livia looked at the man as if he were something the cat dragged in as he roughhoused with the boys in the garden. “He’s too full of himself, he has no class, he’s too hairy, his features all look like his face is too big to hold them, what did he have that Cornelius didn’t besides a business degree and a gang?”

Eva always gets this question and she’d just shrug and answer with something equal parts vulgar and the usual ��I don’t really know’, this time she says the one thing that matters to someone who married for money and influence. “Because he will take us places we never even reached in Mexico, and that sweet little boy named after his father, will be the youngest president this country will have.”

Her aunt is impressed, she had been disappointed thinking Eva was like her mother who married because she saw true love with her father even if he had nothing but a stolen watch to his name.

Eva was not like her mother, she could never be happy with a man who didn’t want more, Jack had ambition and lucky for her, would only ever be hers.

“I suppose I can see something about him now. If he is taking us further than we ever could’ve done at home, I could even call him my nephew. After all people marry into our family, they never marry out of here.” Her red-haired aunt changed her tune exactly like the witch had known it would happen.

Jack is wary of Livia’s sudden acceptance for the rest of the day, utterly stumped at why she’d stop being such a bitch to him. But he enjoys it, loves pushing her buttons to see how long this kindness lasts.

“What did you tell her when you were out on the balcony with her?” he asks when they are finally alone in their luxurious suite complete with a nursery. The boys were having a sleepover with her cousin Francisco’s son across the wing and Rosie had claimed the princess bed in her own room.

Last time they were here, the Nelsons hadn’t been able to enjoy the bed as they had hoped and now wanted to make up for it. And they had since they put the children to bed.

“She asked why I chose you that day and I answered honestly for once.” Eva answered teasing him, toying with the curly hairs on his chest knowing he would guess wrong.

“You told your aunt we defiled a church for our first date?” he asks, taken aback by it. Everyone knew they had obviously fucked while on the maybe ten dates they had. Once they’d been so insatiable for each other they’d snuck off at dinner to fuck in a broom closet.

“God, no, she would’ve killed the two of us.” Eva shook her head. “I told her little Jack Nelson Junior’s going to be president of the united fucking states of America. If she still doesn’t like you after that, Junior might remember it when he’s living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Threatening your auntie for me, Evie. How sweet of you. You deserve a reward.” He is so proud of her and touched by what she did that he adds a spontaneous, “I love you.”

He is not fond of saying it in public, but oh he is as sweet as honey the moment the doors close. Usually, it is her who says it first these days.

“I love you too.” Eva kissed him hoping to show her love in a much more passionate way, but the second Jack gently moved her underneath him they hear Gina’s girlish scream followed by crying and slurs from the blonde girl’s own mouth.

“I told you we shouldn’t have brought her.” Jack groaned and both rushed to find their clothes. “I’m putting her on the next train to Manhattan, let her mother deal with her for the rest of Easter.”

It is uncharitable to say, but if one of the girls hit nineteen-year-old Gina, she likely deserved it. Her time at university had actually made her worse, the only people to blame are the sorority she joined and herself. Unfortunately, she was expelled for her shitty behavior and won’t be going back next week.

They are in New York when they see Shelby again.

He is here to ensure the custody of his son whom the world will believe was Clive’s because Grace wanted to keep her dignity. Jack was here for business matters relating to the will since little Charlie would inherit a portion of Jack’s companies.

“She is cursed, you know.” Eva speaks quietly in rromani so Grace nor Jack know what is being said as she tries to argue for her son’s inheritance. “Even my husband can smell the death on her skin like perfume.”

“If I don’t marry her my son will not be mine.” He admits. There was regret in his voice, a look that said that the Grace he loved was not the woman he is getting to know.

The real Grace wants to be accepted by the class that hates people like Eva, Tommy and even Jack. The real Grace feels no guilt because her happiness is what comes first always. The real Grace is not the persona she crafted in 1919 to get his attention.

But it was too late now.

“She won’t live to see his third birthday, if you marry her, you will go mad with her death knowing Polly Gray’s curse came true because of you.” The witch warns him, as much as she hates Grace for breathing she doesn’t want the blonde dead.

“Your husband wants her gone from America even if it kills her.” he points out.

Jack wants her dead for what she did to Clive, for what she did to their IRA contacts and because she is just as phony as the rest of her ilk.

“If a woman drove your friend to suicide for a man in love with a mirage of her, you would hate her too.” Eva replied honestly making Shelby wince.

“You witches think you know everything, don’t you?” he deflects thinking he can fool her like he fools Grace.

“That’s because we do. Come February of next year and you will be burying her as Mrs. Shelby and yourself as the fool who killed her. If you let her and the boy go, she will hate you but live to raise her son and see her grandchildren. Do you love her enough to let her go once and for all?”

Grace leaves the lawyer’s offices with the threat of having Charlie MacMillan’s true paternity exposed on every tabloid here and across the pond if she marries Tommy Shelby because even Jack doesn’t want her blood on his hands. She can have respectability and life, or death and infamy attached to the Caron and Burgess names the second she becomes Mrs. Shelby.

And yet that same summer they receive an invitation from Grace for their wedding in January of 1924 at Arrow House, the estate she doesn’t know he bought with May in mind. Her family will not even stick around for the funeral out of the shame she brought them.

In the end, Grace dies because she refused to move on from Thomas Shelby no matter how hard he tried to drive her away.

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