INHERITANCE OF SHADOW SERIES
SEALED IN SHADOW
He thought it was over until the politician he exposed kept campaigning, bankrolled by a trade in missing children.
George thought it was finished, and he’d given the authorities enough to bury a corrupt politician. Maxwell’s running one campaign in daylight and another in the dark, because children are still going missing and the money behind it knows how to hide. Walking away isn’t an option, even when George allowed himself to believe he can finally live a normal life with the only woman who ever truly saw him, not the mask, not the performance, the real him.
Then he turns on the news and the man who should be behind bars is still smiling, still campaigning.
And there’s something else George hasn’t fully faced. Adel’s not a kid anymore. She’s grown into something sharper, something far more capable than he ever imagined she would, and if he keeps trying to carry the world alone, he may realise too late that the ally he needs has been beside him all along. What he tried to shield her from and what his absence tempered her to become could be the very thing that finally brings it all down.
Book Three of the Inheritance of Shadows series.
Outlined, drafting next.
George Merrick
I didn't expect to still be here. For a while it looked like the cancer had made the final decision for me and I'd made my peace with that. Somehow it didn't. Somehow I am still breathing.
If you asked me how I got through it, I'd say it was Natalia. The version of her I carried with me throughout the dark time in Africa when I couldn't risk the real one in a place like that. That quiet, steady voice thats managed to steady me ever since I met her. I held on to that when everything else slipped. I think it saved me.
Once it became clear I wasn't going to die, the next part was simple. If I am alive, this is where I have to be. With her. With Adel. I couldn't stay away, not unless she asked me to. So I came home. As long as Natalia wants me here, here is where I'll stay.
Adel's grown up. I see it every time she walks into a room like she owns it. She's still as chaotic as ever, still firing off jokes at my expense whenever she gets the chance. I don't even mind being the target, I know it comes from a good place. That's how she shows she love. I understand that language and I love that kid more than she realises, and she's still freaking hilarious. I worry about her though, the same way her mum does. Everything she does, she does at full power. MMA, work, college, the boat, the gym. She stacks her life until there is no space left. I admire it. When she decides she is going to learn something, she just does it. No hesitation. No half measures. I'm good at a small number of things and I stay in those lanes, but Adel seems capable of anything she decides is worth her time. She collects skills the way I collect information. That constant drive is familiar. It is who we are, both of us, just pointed in different directions.
I wanted, briefly, to believe I could come back and live a simple life. Quiet. Normal. Then I found out it's not over. The trafficking ring I thought I'd tore apart still has one head left, and he's not forgotten me.
Now the choice is very clear. If I walk away and try to pretend it's finished, I'm not just betraying the children still in danger and I'm putting Natalia and Adel at risk. He knows who I am. If he finds out I'm alive, he'll come for me. For them. That's a risk I can't accept. So there are only two options. I leave, disappear from their lives and hope distance keeps them safe. Or I finish this properly and remove the threat. If ending it means thousands of children are safer and the two people I love most can finally sleep without looking over their shoulders, then I know what I have to do.
One more time into the dark. One last job. Then, if there is anything left of me, maybe I can come home and live the happy life to a ripe old age with my two favorite people.
Natalia Saavedra Valencia
Having George home feels a little bit like breathing properly for the first time in years. I still have my shops, my routine, my lists on the fridge, but now there is his coat on the back of a chair and his mug in the sink, and something in the apartment has settled.
I still trust him. People think he is unreadable because he keeps his face flat, but his eyes give him away every time. I can see what he is thinking before he opens his mouth. He doesn't realise how much he shows. Fear, guilt, that stubborn determination that has dragged him through things most men would not survive. It is all there, if you know how to look.
I know he hurt Adel when he left. He hurt both of us, but I can handle it. I'm used to patching myself up and carrying on but Adel is different. She feels everything at full volume, all at once. When he went, she didn't cry she just added more things to her day until there was no space left to think. Gym, work, climbing, courses, any excuse to keep moving so nothing could catch up.
He did something beautiful for her, bringing her father’s boat back for her eighteenth birthday. I still dont know how he did it and I know he won't admit it was him. Watching her sail again, seeing that pure joy on her face, but it's also another place for her to disappear into. Another way to outrun what she does not want to sit with. That is the thing with my girl. She does too much, always has.
I ask her to take a class or two a week because I want her to have choices later, something solid to stand on if her body is tired or the fights have to stop. She's clever, but she doesn't always see when she is burning herself out. Punching her way through a problem can't be the answer every time, no matter how satisfying she says it is. The world doesn't need her more dangerous, not when she already struggles to see the line when she is angry, and would happily tear it all down if she thought it was the right thing to do.
Now George is back, I hope she can settle a little. I know she's built for movement, that her brain and body run at a million miles an hour, but maybe now she'll not feel like she has to carry everything alone. Maybe she will remember it is not just her and me against the world.
I hope he can rest too. He's carried so much for so long that he doesn't know how to put things down. He deserves a quiet morning, a safe kitchen, laughter that is not edged with fear. He deserves to feel loved without thinking about the cost. I do not want to lose him again.There will always be a place for him here, in this home and in my heart. Whatever comes for us next, it will not just be him standing there on his own. It will be all of us. Me, Adel, and George. Our little pack. And if anything tries to come between us, it will have to deal with the three of us together.
Adel Saavedra Valencia
So, here is the thing. I know why George left. He didn’t walk out because he was bored of us or wanted a new life in the sun. He went to hunt down people who hurt kids, properly hurt them, and he did it because someone had to. I get that. I even agree with it.
It still smashed my mum to pieces. And it hurt me too, not that I would ever say that to his face. For a year after he went, the police would knock on our door, ask the same questions, make Mum relive it over and over. Then we were told he was dead. Case closed. Move on. Sure. Right.
Now he is back, and nobody can know. Secret resurrection. Classic George. I do not mind keeping it quiet. I know what he did out there and how many kids will grow up because of it. Part of me hopes I can live up to that one day, because he sacrificed everything for what was right. Another part of me is still angry he broke my mum’s heart in the process. Both things can be true.
What he doesn’t seem to have noticed is that I’m not sixteen year’s old any more. It’s been three years. I am not the jumpy little kid hanging off a climbing wall pretending everything is fine. I still move at one hundred per cent or not at all, that has not changed, but I have levelled up. I found the gym, swapped gymnastics for MMA, picked up shifts behind the counter, kept climbing, took a couple of college courses because Mum insisted, and helped her run the shops. I do not have an off switch, so I turned it into work.
And the boat. He sorted that. He will never tell me it was him, but somehow he got my dad’s old boat back, only it is not really my dad’s any more. It is better. I have made my own upgrades, taken her out round the Isle of Wight whenever Mum lets me, mostly solo because I do not trust anyone else on deck. I pretend it is just for fun, but really I want him to see it and think, “Yeah. She did alright.” I do not know why his opinion matters this much, but it does.
What I want now is simple. I want Mum and George to have a shot at being happy, properly happy, not just surviving. They both spent enough years being broken by other people’s choices. If anything tries to get between them this time, it will have me to deal with first.
