INHERITANCE OF SHADOW SERIES
TEMPERED IN SHADOW
He was built for patterns, not people, until a planted gun and a buried truth dragged him into a world that preys on children.
George has always been the man who can read numbers better than people. In London’s financial sector, working fraud prevention inside a hedge fund he learnt to keep his face steady, and his differences hidden and maintains his focus on the patterns in the data that don’t fit.
Then one evening on his way home police pull him over for no reason. What should be a routine traffic stop turns ugly fast and a search produces an illegal firearm he’s never seen before. George tells the truth, but no one listens, the paperwork doesn’t add up, the chain of custody should make it impossible for that gun to be in his car, yet the evidence gets buried and the police close ranks and George is sentenced to five years.
Prison’s a different kind of system. Politics and violence become the new normal.
George has never been built for making friends, so he survives the only way he knows how, by watching, cataloguing and obsessing over the details.
Because the stop wasn’t random. Witnesses vanish. Threads from his fraud investigation start tightening around something far worse, a child trafficking ring, missing kids, and a gun with a history that would make your skin crawl. To uncover the truth George must become someone darker, someone who can live in the shadows long enough to map them.
Book One of the Inheritance of Shadows series.
Complete, seeking a publishing deal.
George Merrick
I was a fraud analyst at an investment firm. I wore a suit, checked numbers, detected fraud and often went home late.
I never really fitted anywhere, but the spreadsheets didn’t complain. One ordinary night I got pulled over whilst driving home. Licence, insurance, the usual questions until they opened the boot, reached straight in, and came out holding a gun I'd never seen before.
Five years for possession of an illegal firearm. Here is the problem. Less than twenty-four hours earlier that same gun had been checked into police evidence by another officer. He agreed to testify but turned up dead and all the paperwork vanished, the police closed ranks and I went to prison. I did the five years, but my head didn’t serve them quietly. My mind hooks on details and won’t let go. So, I let it do its thing. Names, dates, transfers, rumours. The gun. The dead officer. I logged and obsessed over it all.
The gaps in the files. The way it all brushes against a child trafficking ring. Someone put that weapon in my car for a reason and when I walk out of here, I'm going to find out who did it, why they needed me out of the way, and what it has to do with those missing children.
And I'm not stopping until it all adds up.
Dave Wozniak aka Polish
Name’s Dave Wozniak but no one calls me that. Everyone says Polish, because I am, and it stuck almost as quick as my sentence did.
On paper I’m doing twenty years for attempted murder. Yeah, I know, it looks ugly, and it sounded worse in court the way they laid it all out but there’s a lot more to it than people think. I’m no saint, but I’m not the man people think I am when they hear my charge sheet.
What matters now is this, George saved my life. Properly saved it. In here you expect snakes, not someone who will stand in front of a blade for you. I never thought I’d meet a bloke like him, never mind share a cell with him. I owe him everything, and I’m not the kind of man who forgets a debt like that.
Natalia Saavedra Valencia
I used to be married, but that didn't work out once he decided to take all his problems out on me. One day I decided my daughter was not going to grow up thinking that was normal, and we left.
Now I run a handful of small shops in a struggling part of London's east end. I see a lot of people who have slipped through every crack, so I do what I can. Food packs, warm coats, It will not fix the world, but I need my daughter to see you don't walk past someone who is drowning and pretend you didn't notice. She's all movement and noise, my girl. Heart first, thinking later, ten thoughts in one breath. She didn't come with a handbook and I had to learn how to be the kind of mother she needed, how to be the calm in the room when her head is full of storms. Some days I do it well, other days I get it wrong, but I keep trying.
I wasn't looking for a man. Honestly, I was doing my best to scare them away. Then George walked into my life with those tired eyes and that lost angry bear cub look of his. I recognised that fight with a world that doesn't make sense to him, because I see it in my daughter. I should have turned my back. It would have been safer. But something in me wouldn't let me.
Adel Saavedra Valencia
Let us get one thing straight, I love my mum. A lot. It’s just saying it out loud feels impossible. I can’t get those kind of words out without being told I sound sarcastic, my brain just blocks that kind of emotional stuff from coming out my mouth. Something inside me just doesn’t let the words out, so I do it sideways instead.
I help with the businesses, make dinner and look after mum. It is my way of saying, “She means the world to me, and you’re my favourite human,” without actually choking on getting the words out and having them sound sincere.
I know I'm not an easy person to know at times. I get told I'm too loud, too fast, and my brain always feels like it’s doing twelve things at once and none of them are “sit still”. Teachers always label me disruptive, distracted, sassy and even rude. Its never my intention, I dunno, maybe they are right. All I know is it’s just who I am, I don’t mean to be.
Mum has her shops, the charity she helps at, and me, but it feels like she is holding her whole life at arm’s length so it can’t hit her again. Yeah, I know about that. I wasn’t blind. I knew what was going on, and now I’m older, I vowed to never let anyone ever hurt my mum again.
But I also want her properly happy, not just putting her life on hold, worried and keeping herself busy.
Then George turned up. Awkward, serious. He notices tiny things and misses obvious ones, is just a little weird at time, same as me. I watch him line up his food or go quiet when the room's too loud and it feels like looking at an older, more tired, much uglier version of me. I would never admit this to his face, obviously, but I like him, and I trust him. He makes my mum smile with her whole face and he looks at her like she's something impossible and brilliant.
