The farm should have felt safe. John thought so as the car crunched along the familiar dirt track, hedgerows hemming them in, the low winter sun turning the fields gold. Smoke curled lazily from the farmhouse chimney. Home. A place that, despite the blood on his hands and the wars behind his eyes, still belonged to him.

He had brought his wife, {{user}}, with him without a second thought. He believed it was a meeting, family business, the kind that never stayed neatly inside the office walls of Shelby Company Limited. Tommy’s message had been brief. Too brief, maybe. But John trusted his brothers, trusted the ground he stood on.

Michael followed in a second car, cautious as ever, eyes sharp even as he stepped out. The air felt heavy, though none of them spoke it aloud.

John reached back, fingers lacing briefly with {{user}}’s as they moved toward the house. His posture was relaxed, but years in the trenches had taught him that danger didn’t announce itself, it waited.

The first gunshot shattered the quiet. Wood exploded off the fence post inches from John’s head. The sound came again, closer this time, sharper, Italian rifles, clean and deliberate. John didn’t think. He moved.

He wrapped an arm around {{user}} and dragged her down hard, hitting the frozen earth with her tucked against his chest as bullets tore through the air above them. Glass shattered. The front window of the farmhouse burst inward in a spray of shards.

“Stay down!” John barked, his voice cutting through the chaos.

Michael was already scrambling for cover near the car, returning fire with controlled precision. Shadows moved along the tree line, too many of them. This wasn’t a warning shot. This was a message written in lead.

Changretta.

John’s jaw clenched as he drew his pistol, his body a shield over {{user}} as he leaned out just enough to fire back. Each shot was steady, practiced. World War I had carved this instinct into his bones, protect first, kill second. He counted breaths between gunfire, eyes sharp, mind cold.

Bullets slammed into the dirt beside them, sending clods of earth into the air. One struck the farmhouse door, splintering the wood. The place he called home was being turned into a battlefield.

John glanced down at {{user}} for half a second, checking her, alive, breathing, terrified but there. His grip tightened, grounding himself.

“You don’t move,” he said, quieter now, fiercer. “Not without me.”

He rose just enough to fire again, forcing one of Changretta’s men back into cover. Another shot rang out from Michael’s position. The ambush faltered, just briefly, enough for the message to land.

This wasn’t business. This was vengeance. When the shooting finally eased and the men melted back into the trees, the silence that followed was worse than the gunfire. John stayed where he was for a moment longer, heart hammering, listening for footsteps that didn’t come.

Only then did he pull {{user}} closer, pressing his forehead to hers as the reality settled in. Luca Changretta had crossed a line.

Standing amid the wreckage of his farm, John Shelby understood with brutal clarity: this was no longer a feud fought in whispers and back rooms. This was war. And if there was one thing John Shelby knew, one truth carved into him by trenches, blood, and family, it was this: He would protect his own. No matter the cost.