Chapter 1 Update

 I am a genealogist, or — if one prefers the gentler, less academic phrasing — a family historian. My introduction may wait; the tale itself insists upon beginning, and it begins not with clarity, but with the soft blur of half‑remembered sensation.

It is October. London. Rain‑washed, restless, holding its breath — the kind of morning that feels suspended between worlds, as though the city itself is listening for something.

Before waking, I felt the faintest touch: a hand brushing my brow, a woman’s whisper threading through the dark like a strand of silk. “Everything will be OK.” The words drifted into the space between sleep and consciousness, tender yet unsettling, as though spoken by someone who knew me intimately — or someone who wanted me to believe she did.

When my eyes opened, there was no woman. Only the muted scrape of a branch against a curtained window, and the steady patter of rain upon glass. The room around me was dim, unfamiliar, and possessed that peculiar stillness belonging only to a hotel suite — immaculate, impersonal, waiting for someone who is not me.

The alarm chimed at seven. Three notes, custom set. I silenced them.

A slow realisation unfurled: this was not my bedroom, not my modest Swansea abode, not any place my memory could claim. I rose, feeling the breadth of a king‑sized mattress behind me — I had occupied only a narrow strip of it, a small island upon an ocean of comfort.

My clothes were gone.

In their place lay a three‑piece Italian suit, tailored precisely to my measurements. The label confirmed it. Had I worn this last night? Had someone dressed me? The fog of confusion thickened, spreading like mist across the mind.

The suite was spacious, luxurious, almost theatrical in its arrangement — the sort of room meant for someone accustomed to being observed. As I moved toward the ensuite, a woman’s voice drifted through the air, faint yet unmistakably present:

“Hello… hello… can you hear me? Yes, he’s awake — the alarm sounded. Okay, see you soon.”

I stepped inside.

A blonde woman in her thirties stood before me — average height, average build, clad in a little black dress that clearly belonged to the night before. She toyed with the room key, turning as though startled by my presence, though her eyes betrayed no true surprise.

“You’re awake?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And very confused. Where am I? How did I get here? Where are my things? Were you the one stroking my face earlier?”

She tilted her head, studying me with a mixture of curiosity and calculation. “Don’t you remember anything? You’re Dave…” Her phone rang before she could finish. “Okay… here in five minutes,” she said into it, her tone shifting into something brisk, businesslike.

Five minutes — for what?

Time stretched thin, taut as wire.

A heavy knock detonated against the door. Cockney voices barked through the wood: “Open the door — the game’s up.”

What game?

I scrambled into the suit trousers as the knocking intensified, each blow against the door vibrating through the floorboards.

The woman emerged from the ensuite. Not startled, not uncertain, but with a predatory calm that chilled the air. She crossed the room without hesitation, her movements smooth and deliberate, the kind of grace belonging to someone who has already decided what happens next.

She picked up my phone.

Not with curiosity. With ownership.

As though she had been waiting for the moment I would be awake enough to notice.

She did not look at me. She studied the device instead, her thumb gliding across the screen. A faint glow. A flicker of recognition — something she had expected — before she tilted the phone away from my line of sight.

“Still locked,” she murmured, though her tone suggested she knew the contents anyway. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

Her fingers traced the casing, the edges, the SIM tray, tapping lightly — a rhythm that felt coded, intentional, as though she were listening for a signal only she could hear.

Then she smiled.

Not kindly. Not reassuringly. But with the thin, satisfied curl of someone who has just confirmed a suspicion.

My stomach tightened.

She did not hand the phone back. She did not even pretend to.

Instead, she slipped the device into her clutch bag — the gesture swift, practised, final — and snapped the clasp shut with a metallic click that echoed through the suite like a verdict.

“That’s safer with me,” she said. “For now.”

Her eyes lifted to mine, and for the first time I saw something cold behind them — not fear, not confusion, but calculation. She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the faint trace of last night’s perfume clinging to her skin.

“You’re going to make this very difficult,” she whispered. “And they don’t like difficult.”

Footsteps approached outside — heavy, purposeful — the kind that belong to men who do not knock twice.

Her expression did not change.

She had been expecting them. She had been waiting for them. And she had my phone.

A shadow passed beneath the door. A pause. Then—

The door burst open.

“There you are, Susie,” the first man snapped. “You’re coming with us as well. Come on — let’s go.”

Susie folded her arms. “He says he’s not Dave.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but there’s been a terrible mistake. I’m not Dave. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t—”

“We don’t care,” the thug snarled. “Mr. Anderson wants his stuff. Show us the stuff.”

“I don’t know what ‘stuff’ you’re talking about.”

“I’ve had enough,” he barked. “Roger — check his clothes.”

Roger moved toward me. Susie stepped forward.

“I checked his things,” she said. “There’s nothing.”

“Stop right there, Susie,” the first thug snapped. “We’ve heard enough about you — what you’re like, what you’ll do to satisfy your own means. Stop.”

Roger rummaged through the suit. Susie edged closer.

“STOP, Susie,” he barked.

She stepped closer still.

Roger flinched — then struck her across the face.

I lunged forward.

“Stop, Dave,” the first thug shouted. “Before it’s too late. Just st—”

A blow crashed against my skull.

Darkness swallowed everything.