Grace was gone.
Just like that.
No letter. No goodbye. Only an echo where her voice used to be, and a storm in Tommy's eyes that wouldn't pass.
The family moved on—at least, they pretended to. Business carried forward, races were won, enemies were buried. But underneath the routine, cracks had begun to spread.
And James felt every single one.
He stood alone more now. At the edge of rooftops. In alleys thick with coal smoke. In silence
.
Polly noticed first.
"You've gone quiet," she said one morning as they drank tea by candlelight.
James didn't respond.
She reached for his hand. It was cold. "It's not just Grace that's left a hole. Something else is shifting."
James met her eyes. "He's making his move."
Campbell had, indeed, begun to unravel.
What had started as a righteous crusade against crime had become personal—a venomous obsession. He had lost control of Grace. Lost Billy Kimber. Lost favor with Parliament.
But he hadn't lost sight of James Shelby.
That... thing wearing a man's skin.
That anomaly that defied order.
So he turned to history.
To legend.
To old blood and older sins.
In the archives of London's special division, Campbell found what he needed.
The Kalderash tribe.
Roaming mystics, thieves, healers—called many things by those who didn't understand them. But in one forgotten intelligence file, he read the name of a woman:
Isidora.
James's mother.
And a location:
Northumberland Hills.
Campbell rode north with a dozen black cars.
He didn't knock.
He invaded.
And he set fire to the place that had once raised the boy who became James Shelby.
James felt it before the letter arrived.
Felt the way wind shifted in Small Heath.
Felt it in the way his blood pulled toward the hills, like a wolf hearing a dying howl.
Then came the message.
Written in Romani.
Charred on the edges.
"They came in the night. Burned the wagons. Took who they could. We hid the children."
No signature.
Just a mark—a spiral sun inked in red.
James's jaw tightened.
His hands trembled.
Not from fear.
But fury.
Pure and ancient.
Tommy tried to stop him. "You ride off now, we're exposed. We've got Sabini sniffing around, and bloody Solomons next."
James looked at his brother, eyes burning.
"They're family."
Tommy hesitated.
Then nodded once.
"Take Isaiah and Curly. You've got one night."
James was already moving.
The hills were black with smoke.
Ash clung to the trees.
Charred bones of wagons lay scattered in the grass like broken spines.
James walked the ground in silence.
Boots crunching over glass and scorched earth.
An old man approached—half-blind, leaning on a carved cane.
He touched James's face and whispered, "We told them nothing."
James pulled him close. "Where are the ones they took?"
The old man's eyes filled with water.
"South. To the mines."
James mounted his horse.
Told Isaiah and Curly to wait.
This wasn't a mission.
This was vengeance.
Campbell's men never saw him coming.
Three guards posted at the entrance to the abandoned coal mine.
Gone in seconds—snapped necks and slit throats.
James moved through the tunnels like a shadow with breath.
Until he found them.
Three survivors.
Two women.
One boy.
Tied.
Beaten.
But alive.
James untied them, whispered soft promises in Romani.
But as they turned to leave—
A voice echoed in the dark.
"Well done."
Campbell stepped from the shadows, alone, revolver raised.
"You're faster than I thought," he said. "And angrier."
James stepped in front of the boy, teeth bared. "Let them go."
"Oh, I will," Campbell said, smiling. "But not without one last lesson."
He fired.
Not at James.
But at the ground above them.
The supports shattered.
Rocks groaned.
The ceiling of the tunnel began to collapse.
James grabbed all three survivors in his arms—one in each—shielding them with his own body as the mine came down.
Pain.
Crushing weight.
Darkness.
And then—
Silence.
James didn't die.
He held the weight of the mountain on his back—his body refusing to break.
His lungs screamed.
His bones cracked.
But he rose.
Lifted the beams.
Shoved the rocks aside.
And pulled all three survivors out into the moonlight.
Campbell was gone.
But his message had been delivered:
No past was safe.
No blood untouched.
Back in Small Heath, Polly met James at the door of the betting shop.
She saw the blood.
The soot.
The stone in his eyes.
She said nothing.
Just pulled him inside.
Tommy asked no questions.
He only poured a drink.
And said, "We hit back."
James nodded, slowly.
But inside him—
Something older had awakened.
Not just fury.
Not just strength.
Something mythic.
Something even Campbell had not accounted for.