The Garrison pub was thick with smoke and low conversation, the kind that carried danger beneath every word. Glasses clinked, boots scraped wood, and somewhere in the back, a man laughed too loudly, trying to prove he wasn’t afraid.

At the center of it all stood Arthur Shelby.

Broad-shouldered, sleeves rolled, knuckles still raw from a fight that hadn’t quite left his system, he nursed a drink like it owed him something. As the eldest Shelby, the weight of everything, family, business, war, sat heavy on him, even when he tried to drown it.

The door slammed open. The room shifted instantly. Conversations died mid-sentence. Heads turned.

{{user}} stepped inside, her presence cutting through the haze like a blade. Her grip on the gun in her hand was steady, though her chest rose and fell with something deeper than anger, grief sharpened into purpose.

Arthur didn’t turn right away. He knew that kind of silence. Slowly, he set his glass down and faced her. Their eyes locked. “You,” {{user}} said, her voice tight but unshaking. “You think I wouldn’t find out?”

No one moved. No one dared. Arthur’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t reach for a weapon. Not yet. His hands hovered at his sides, tense, ready, but restrained.

“Careful,” he muttered, voice rough as gravel. “You don’t walk in here like that unless you’re sure.”

“I am sure.” Her finger tightened slightly on the trigger. “You took them from me. My brother, my family. You and your lot.”

A flicker crossed Arthur’s face,’recognition, then something heavier. Not quite regret, but not indifference either. “It was business,” he said, though the words lacked their usual bite. “Your people knew the game.”

For a moment, the pub wasn’t there anymore, not for him. Just echoes of war, of screams, of things he couldn’t forget no matter how much he drank or fought.

But then he was back. Grounded. Focused on her. On the gun. “Go on then,” Arthur said, stepping forward, slow, deliberate, his eyes never leaving hers. “If you’re gonna do it, do it proper. Don’t stand there shaking.”

{{user}} didn’t lower the weapon. But she didn’t fire, either.

Arthur stopped a few feet from her, close enough now that the tension between them felt like a live wire.

“Thing is,” he said quietly, voice dropping, “you pull that trigger… there’s no coming back for you. Not from my family.”

A warning. A truth. The room held its breath. And in that suspended moment, the choice was hers.