Birmingham greeted them with fog and furnace breath, like a beast freshly stirred from slumber. Coal dust hung in the air. The sky was the same color as a battlefield morning. No cheers, no bands. Just steel wheels grinding on the tracks and the quiet, exhausted shuffle of men too scarred to celebrate.
James stepped off the train beside Arthur, boots caked in Flanders mud, duffel slung over his shoulder. He looked up—not at the buildings, not at the smog, but at the sky. Clouded. Heavy. Ominous.
Arthur lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. "Welcome to paradise, eh?"
James didn't answer. He already felt it—pulling at him. This place. These streets. It wasn't home. Not quite. But something in his bones... remembered.
A black motorcar coasted up the road and stopped with mechanical elegance. The door creaked open. And out stepped a woman dressed like war hadn't touched her—sharp black coat, gloves, a wide-brimmed hat angled like a queen's blade.
Polly Gray.
Arthur exhaled smoke. "Pol."
She didn't even glance at him.
Her eyes were fixed on James.
She walked toward him slowly, like someone approaching a dream they weren't sure was real. Her gaze didn't waver, not once. Then, without asking permission, she reached up and touched his face—cheek to jaw. Cold fingers. Steady hands.
"I knew it," she whispered. "You've got her eyes."
James blinked. "Her?"
Polly's voice was tight, but certain. "Your mother. She was Romani. A gypsy woman. Dark hair, soft voice. Beautiful in the wild way. He met her at a camp outside Manchester. Didn't stay long. Never does."
Arthur frowned. "Pol, what the hell are you—"
"Arthur Senior left her," Polly said, still staring at James. "Vanished the moment she told him she was pregnant. But she didn't give up. She wrote him a letter. Said she had his son."
James swallowed hard. "He never answered."
Polly nodded. "I found the letter after he ran out on us too. He'd hidden it in his coat. Your name was scrawled on the back. Just James. No last name. But I never forgot it."
Arthur looked stunned, like the ground had shifted under him. "So you're saying...?"
James turned to him. "Half-brothers. Through blood. I didn't know for sure until I heard your full name in the trenches."
Arthur sat on a bench, mouth slack. "Christ."
Polly's hand dropped from James' face. Her eyes didn't soften, but her voice did. "Your mother was family. Even if we never met her."
"She died when I was ten," James said quietly. "Consumption. She told me about him before she passed. That he had fire in him. And that I might too."
Polly nodded slowly. "You do. But yours burns colder."
She turned toward the car. "Come. You're home now. And your brother will want to meet you."
The Shelby house was both fortress and mausoleum. The walls were lined with power—coats, ledgers, guns—and ghosts. James walked through the halls like someone reentering a dream long forgotten. His senses drank everything in. Conversations through walls. Heartbeats upstairs. A gas leak near the kitchen.
Arthur sat nursing a whiskey, still dazed.
"So my dad leaves us for a gypsy woman, disappears, and twenty-something years later, his bloody secret bastard comes back from the trenches with a jaw like granite and a thousand-yard stare."
James smirked. "You're taking it well."
"I'm drunk. Helps."
Polly returned with a new bottle and three glasses. She handed James one without a word.
"To blood," she said.
James raised his. "To truth."
They drank.
Arthur muttered, "Tommy's gonna lose his f**king mind."
Polly laughed quietly. "He won't. He'll measure you first. Like he does everyone. And if you pass his test, you'll have the devil on your side."
Later that night, James stood alone in the garden, moonlight slicing through the fog. His coat hung off him like a shadow. His mind wasn't on Tommy. Not yet.
He was thinking of her.
His mother. Her voice. Her fire. The way she used to sing in Romani when she cooked. How she believed, fiercely, in omens and fate. She would have told him this was destiny. That Arthur Senior may have been a coward, but the bloodline was never just his to define.
He was a Shelby.
And he had finally come home.