Chapter 15
October 1920 — London
The city smelled different from Birmingham.
More perfume, more sewage, more fear hiding behind polished shoes and gaslights.
James Shelby stepped off the evening train at Euston Station with nothing but the clothes on his back, a slim satchel over one shoulder, and two customized Colt 1911s tucked beneath his coat.
No announcement.
No backup.
No mercy.
He didn't book a room at a hotel.
He didn't take a carriage or call for a driver.
He walked.
Through narrow alleys dripping with mist.
Past gentlemen smoking cigars outside exclusive clubs.
Past whores flashing crooked teeth under broken streetlamps.
London didn't notice him.
Not yet.
But it would.
Three Days of Silence
James didn't rush.
Predators that rushed went hungry.
He mapped the Sabini network first — quiet, methodical.
Day One:
He shadowed the runners — young men with sharp suits and sharper knives, moving betting slips between brothels and backrooms.
Day Two:
He found the lieutenants — older men with broken noses and callused fists, laughing too loudly over rigged dice games.
Day Three:
He marked the core — Sabini's inner circle.
The men who ran the books, the brothels, the blackmail rings.
James learned where they lived.
Where they drank.
Where they slept.
And most importantly —
where their families slept too.
Because this wasn't just a message.
This was an extermination.
The List
He sat in a boarded-up flat overlooking the Thames, a stolen bottle of cheap whiskey at his side.
The list was short and brutal:
Vittorio "Vito" Sabini — Enforcer. Lives above a brothel on Field Street.
Marco DeLucci — Money man. Private home in Bethnal Green.
Franco Sabini — Brother to Charles Sabini. Owns a casino front near Soho.
Charles "Charlie" Sabini — The king himself.
All of them surrounded by wives, sons, cousins, bodyguards.
All of them believing London was untouchable.
All of them wrong.
James cleaned both Colts carefully, methodically —
checked the silencers, wiped down the magazines, laid out spare rounds.
Each bullet like a prayer.
Each prayer ending in silence.
He slid a small hunting knife into a sheath at the back of his belt.
Coated the blade in lamp oil to stop it sticking.
Death would come quiet.
Personal.
He finished his preparations as the sun began to drown itself in the filthy grey of the Thames.
London's lamps flickered to life.
Shadows stretched long across the cobblestones.
The city braced itself for another night of sin and survival.
It didn't know it was already dead.
James rolled his shoulders, cracked his knuckles, and pulled his coat tighter.
No rituals.
No good luck charms.
No prayers.
Only a wolf sharpening its teeth before the hunt.
> Tonight, the streets of London would run red.
And no one would hear a thing until it was too late.
9:00 PM — Sabini Manor, South London
The rain fell in thin, icy sheets.
The kind of rain that hid sins.
The kind of rain that washed blood away before it could stain.
James Shelby stood at the gates of the Sabini estate, the heavy steel bars looming high above him.
Beyond the gates:
Light.
Laughter.
Music.
The Sabinis were celebrating.
A private dinner.
Family only.
Wives.
Children.
Brothers.
Cousins.
The whole rotten bloodline under one roof.
Perfect.
James pulled the scarf higher over his mouth, tugged his cap low.
His gloved hand slid to the silenced Colt tucked beneath his coat.
Time to end it.
The breach was silent.
First guard at the back wall —
knife between the ribs, dragged into the bushes, throat opened to the rain.
Second guard on the balcony —
a single silenced shot, body toppling backward into the flowerbeds.
Kitchen door —
unlocked, foolish, inviting.
James slipped inside like a shadow.
The smell hit him first.
Roast lamb.
Brandy.
Perfume.
And underneath it all —
the stink of arrogance.
The stink of men who thought they were untouchable.
They would choke on it before dawn.
He moved through the servant halls fast, boots silent on the stone floors.
One maid spotted him, mouth opening to scream.
He shot her in the face without hesitation.
> Phut.
She crumpled at his feet, the tray clattering beside her.
No witnesses.
The Dining Room
He found them all seated at a long, lavish table.
Candles burning low.
Crystal glasses clinking.
Laughter echoing off the high, carved ceilings.
Twenty people.
Gangsters in tailored suits.
Wives dripping jewelry bought with blood.
Children — old enough to carry knives themselves — grinning like wolves in training.
James stepped into the room.
No announcement.
No words.
Just death.
The first bullet tore through Carlo Sabini's throat mid-laugh.
> Phut.
He gurgled and collapsed into his soup, blood bubbling across the white linen.
Screams erupted.
James moved forward steadily, twin Colts flashing.
Rosa DeLucci — shot clean through the heart as she scrambled over a chair.
Marco Sabini — two in the chest, one in the head.
Lucia Franco — a bullet ripping her spine apart as she ran for the door.
A teenage boy lunged at him with a carving knife, eyes wide with terror.
James shot him once, point-blank in the mouth.
The boy's body flipped backward over the table, smashing dishes and candles to the floor.
One of the elder Sabinis —
grey-haired, once a feared enforcer —
tried to pull a revolver from his coat.
James fired three times in rapid bursts.
> Chest.
Throat.
Skull.
The man collapsed against the wall, leaving a smear of red that dripped slowly down the fine wallpaper.
The women screamed.
The children sobbed.
It didn't matter.
James didn't pause.
He moved through the carnage like a storm, boots splashing through spilled wine and blood.
One woman — maybe a wife, maybe a sister — begged in broken Italian, crawling toward him on her hands and knees.
He shot her through the forehead without slowing.
> No survivors.
No witnesses.
That was the rule.
That was the cost.
The last to die was Charles Sabini himself.
The king.
The coward.
He stumbled backward over a chair, bleeding from a gut wound, gasping for air.
James stalked toward him, pistols lowered.
He wanted this one to see it coming.
To know.
To understand.
Charles wheezed out a plea, one hand lifting in desperate defense.
James shot him once in the knee.
The old man howled, clutching the ruined joint.
James knelt down beside him, pulling the scarf from his face so Charles could see exactly who ended him.
He leaned in close, voice a low rasp:
> "Birmingham sends its regards."
Then he pressed the barrel of the Colt against Charles Sabini's temple and pulled the trigger.
> Phut.
Silence.
Final and absolute.
10:30 PM — Exiting the Manor
James stood alone in the wreckage of the Sabini bloodline.
Bodies slumped over chairs.
Collapsed against walls.
Sprawled across the marble floor.
Candles guttered low, their light flickering over pools of red that spread wider by the second.
No one left to scream.
No one left to mourn.
No one left to rise.
He reloaded calmly, ejected the spent magazines, slipped fresh ones into the Colts.
Then he walked back through the manor the way he came —
past the dead maid in the hall,
past the crumpled guards in the garden,
past the dripping hedges.
Out into the cold, black rain.
Gone before the city could even start to wake.
By the time the first servant stumbled onto the scene, half-mad with terror, it was well past midnight.
By the time the police arrived —
two hours later —
there was nothing left but blood and silence.
London was broken.
The Sabinis were nothing more than corpses cooling in the dark.
And James Shelby?
He wasn't a man anymore.
He was a story.
A ghost.
A warning.
> "There's death in London now," they would whisper.
"And it wears a flat cap."
Dawn — London's East End
The city woke to sirens.
Not the polite clatter of constables chasing pickpockets.
Not the drunken howls of Saturday night brawlers.
Real sirens.
Urgent.
Screaming.
Pulling men from beds, freezing women mid-prayer.
By mid-morning, word had spread:
> The Sabinis were dead.
All of them.
Not just Charles Sabini, not just his brothers.
Wives.
Sons.
Nephews.
Bodyguards.
Slaughtered.
Erased.
As if death had come to dinner and pulled up a chair.
The newspapers scrambled to print by noon.
HEADLINES:
> "SLAUGHTER AT SABINI ESTATE — ENTIRE FAMILY FOUND DEAD."
"UNDERWORLD MASSACRE — POLICE BAFFLED."
"WHO KILLED LONDON'S CRIMINAL KINGS?"
No witnesses.
No leads.
No mercy.
The police were useless — scared half to death themselves.
The other gangs?
They packed up what they could carry and disappeared into the countryside like rats before a flood.
London's streets were quieter that morning than they had been in twenty years.
Meanwhile — Train Back to Birmingham
James sat alone in a third-class carriage, coat pulled tight, cap low over his brow.
The landscape rolled past outside —
grey skies, dying fields, tired little towns too poor for news.
His boots were clean.
His coat was dry.
There was no blood on him.
None you could see, anyway.
The pistol weighed heavy against his ribs.
Not from guilt.
From memory.
From inevitability.
He lit a cigarette and leaned his head back against the wall of the carriage, eyes half-shut.
Behind his eyelids, he could still see it:
Charles Sabini's broken body.
Children screaming.
Blood pooling under golden chandeliers.
He didn't feel regret.
He didn't feel pride.
He just felt...
quiet.
Colder than before.
Sharper.
More himself.
> This is who I am now.
Not a man.
A shadow.
A crown made of bones.
Birmingham — Shelby Company Limited
By the time James pushed open the heavy office door, the family was already gathered.
Polly looked up first —
eyes sharp, mouth tight.
Arthur stood pacing like a caged dog, fists flexing.
John sat perched on the edge of Tommy's desk, chewing the end of a cigarette he hadn't lit.
And Tommy —
Tommy sat behind the desk, chair tilted back, a glass of whiskey untouched in front of him.
The room smelled like smoke, gun oil, and waiting.
James stepped inside.
Tossed a folded London newspaper onto the table.
Front page:
The Sabinis.
Dead.
All of them.
No one spoke for a moment.
Just the ticking of the clock on the wall.
Just the weight of what they all understood