INHERITANCE OF SHADOW SERIES
TEMPERED IN SHADOW
He was built for patterns, not people, and then 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 focus on the data that didn’t fit whilst keeping his face steady and his own differences hidden.
One evening on his way home from work what should have been a routine traffic stop turns ugly when 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 and the chain of custody made it impossible for that gun to have been in his car, yet the evidence gets buried and the police close ranks. George is sentenced to five years.
Prison’s a different kind of system. Politics and violence became the new norm. George has never been built for making friends, and at first he survives the only way he knows how, by watching, cataloguing and obsessing over details.
Because the traffic stop wasn’t random. Witnesses had vanished, and threads from his fraud investigation started 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, flagged fraud and often went home late.
I’ve never really fitted in anywhere, people always take what I say the wrong way, but the spreadsheets never complain.
One ordinary night I got pulled over whilst driving home. Licence, insurance, the usual questions until they opened the boot, reached in, and came out holding a gun I'd never seen before.
Five years for possession of an illegal firearm. Here’s the problem, less than twenty-four hours earlier that same gun had been checked into police evidence by another police officer. This meant the chain of custody made it impossible for that gun to have been in my car. The Officer agreed to testify but turned up dead before he could take the stand 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 onto details and doesn’t let go. So, I let it do its thing. I let it obsess. Names, dates, rumours, facts, the gun, the dead officer. I logged and obsessed over every detail.
I built my own files under the guise of writing a manuscript.
I knew it all brushed against a child trafficking ring, I just didn’t know how it connected to me. Someone put that gun in my car for a reason. 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 the maths all adds up.
Dave Wozniak aka Polish
Name’s Dave Wozniak, but no one calls me that. Everyone calls me Polish, and the nickname stuck almost as quick as my sentence did.
On paper, I’m doing twenty years for attempted murder. Yeah, I know how that sounds. Looks bad, sounds worse, especially when some bloke in a wig lays it all out like he knows the whole story. I ain’t no saint, never claimed to be, but I’m not the man people think I am when they hear my charge sheet.
Twenty years for trying to murder my own mother. Why I done it doesn’t change It, and I can’t take it back. That’s mine to carry.
What matters is this, George saved my life. Inside you expect snakes, not someone who’ll stand in front of a blade for you.
I owe him everything, and I don’t forget debts.
In here, everyone claims to be innocent and that it was all a set-up, it’s a running joke with us. But when George told me he was set up, about that gun, the cops, the dead witness and them missing kids and how it’s all tied to something proper rotten, I believed him. If there’s filthy bastards out there hurting kids and hiding behind suits and uniforms, then I’ll do whatever I can to help put a stop to it.
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 so we left.
I run a handful of small shops in a struggling part of London’s East End. It’s not much, but it’s ours.
I see a lot of people the system has let down, so I do what I can. We work at the local charity, help give out packs of food, warm coats, these sorta thing’s. Ya, I know it’s not going to fix the world, but I need my daughter to see you can’t walk past someone struggling and do nothing to help.
She's all movement and noise, my girl. Act first, think later. She has ten thoughts in one single breath. She didn't come with a handbook. I had to learn how to be the mother she needed and how to be the calm in the room when her head is full of storms. Some days I do it well, other days not so much, but ya know what? I keep trying.
I wasn't looking for a man. Honestly, I was doing my best to scare them away. Then George walked into our lives 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, because I see the same struggles when I look at my daughter. They’re like opposites of the same problem. One loud, the other quiet. Both don’t fit into what people consider ‘normal’.
Maybe I should have turned my back on George. I tried. It would have been safer. But something in me wouldn't let me. I’m just not built that way.
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’m being sarcastic, even when I’m not. My brain just blocks that kind of emotional stuff from coming out my mouth, so I like, do it sideways instead, I guess.
I help Mum with our businesses and, well, I just look after her. That’s how I say it without having to actually say it. Dinner’s made. Her tea’s done the way she likes it. Stock sorted. Whatever vendor is causing us issues that week has been dealt with. All the stuff that means, “I love you, Mum,” without me having to stand there like a complete idiot trying to make my mouth say it properly.
I know I’m not an easy person at times. I’m always being told I’m too loud, too fast, but my brain always feels like it’s doing a million things at once and none of them are “sit still”. My teachers say I’m easily distracted and call me disruptive. If I try to explain, or ask anything, they call me rude. It’s never my intention. I dunno, maybe they’re right. All I know is it’s just who I am and I don’t mean to be.
Mum has her shops, the charity we volunteer at, and me. But it feels like she’s holding her whole life at arm’s length so it can’t hit her again. Yeah, I know about that. Just because I was twelve doesn’t mean I was blind. I knew what was going on, and so, yeah, no one gets to hurt her again. That’s not happening.
But I also want her properly happy, not just putting her life on hold, worried and keeping busy.
Then George turned up. He notices tiny things and misses obvious ones. Honestly, he’s a little weird, but that’s the same as me. I watch him line up his food or go quiet when the room’s too loud. Sometimes, when I look at him, it feels like I’m looking at an older, more tired, much uglier version of myself. I’d never admit this to his face, obviously, but I like him. Something about having him around, it just feels right, like it’s meant to be, you know? And he makes my mum smile with her whole face. I see the way he looks at her with that intense look, and you know what, I notice how she looks at him too.
But I’m not stupid. I see George carries things. He goes still sometimes, like his head’s walked off somewhere darker and left the rest of him sitting there pretending he’s fine. There’s something he isn’t telling us, I just know there is. And yeah, I don’t trust that, because good things don’t turn up in our life without a catch. But I trust him. Not because he says the right things, because he doesn’t, but because he watches the door, checks Mum gets home safe, and looks at people like he’s already decided what part of them he’d break first if they laid a hand on me or Mum.
Whatever he’s hiding, I think he’s trying to do the right thing. I just hope doing the right thing doesn’t take him away from us.
