He sat in his Porsche in the pitch black layby with the lights off, waiting. He was in the country, somewhere equidistant between his home and London. A quiet, meandering country road; a layby almost hidden between drystone walls. Exactly where Popov had told him to meet him. It was now roughly ten past eleven, and Mikhail was late. Just another power play – fashionable lateness as a display of dominance. Well, Wayne hadn’t been lying; he was patient. And he wouldn’t be spooked by Popov’s lateness.

As he sat there in that dreadful silence and darkness, Wayne thought about his dad.

For the first time he began to ask questions of himself. He began to pick apart the long-held truths that were the cornerstone of his young life. For years, David Carter had been not just a hero but a god. And when the gods were toppled from their celestial thrones, what was left? Wayne was beginning to question everything, all the way back. He thought about his mum for the first time in years. The woman who had given him up – who had surrendered him to this life. He had only ever thought of it in passing before, but what if his accepted version of events was not the way things had really played out? What if she hadn’t actually abanndoned him? What if there was more to it?

He thought of that infamous confrontation in the kitchen all those years ago, when his mum had brandished a knife in David's face. David was not a man who liked to lose face in a confrontation. Not a man to be made a fool of. Had he really just stood there and taken such a fierce bollocking without cooking up some kind of revenge? No, David was not a man to take a knock to his pride lying down. He would lash out.

Wayne felt a sudden, all-consuming fear, as he remembered his father holding the gun to his security officer’s head. He knew instantly that his mum was dead. She would never have been allowed to walk out of his life like that. How had Wayne failed to see it before? Of course he knew David Carter was capable of violence. But never before had he considered the notion that those violent instincts could be trained on his own family.

But now, Wayne had seen for himself what David was willing to do – or allow to be done – to a member of his own family. If he was capable of that, what else was he capable of?

Wayne thought of his poor mum, who, after all, had only had his best interests at heart. Most likely David had had her driven out to the middle of nowhere; somewhere very similar to this country lane; then executed point blank and buried in a shallow grave. No one would ever find her. All these years, David had been guarding that secret. The bastard. And he'd played Wayne for a sucker.

Wayne realised he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were bone-white. He took a deep breath. He needed to be calm. Professional. Cool. He knew he was playing a dangerous game, but the sheer magnitude of it had not fully dawned on him until he was sitting there, alone in the darkness, his heart leaping at the slightest sound from the nearby road. A few cars passed – not many, but with each throb of a moving engine, Wayne's anxiety increased. How could he be sure that this meeting was truly secret? Because if David found out about it, there would be hell to pay.

No. Wayne could not let himself be cowed by fear of his father. There came a time when a man had to stand up for himself, to make his own decisions. For Wayne, it had taken until he was a 22-year-old ex-footballer with a dodgy leg and an echoing, empty manor house in the country. Now was his time to emerge from the shadows.

But there was danger here. It would mean stepping away from the comfortable existence he had established for himself. Stepping away from his father. It wasn’t just his father’s vengeance that scared him: it was the idea of facing the world alone. But then, he already was alone.

A sleek black limousine coasted to a halt beside the Porsche, and for a moment nothing happened. Wayne’s heart gave a quick jolt as he watched the limousine. The only comparable emotion was the feeling he got before a big game. Stepping out in front of all those people; people who were watching and waiting for him to fail.

Somewhat laboriously, Mikhail Popov climbed out of the back seat of the limousine. He did not look like the killer that Wayne knew him to be. He was shorter in person; in fact, as Wayne stepped out of his own car, he towered over the Russian. The two men shook hands, as though this were all perfectly normal. As though neither of them had anything better to be doing with their evening than stand here in the countryside, in the dark, taking in the chilly night air.

Wayne’s breath hitched in his throat. He swallowed. He had never felt pressure like this before. Throughout his life, every challenge had been viewed through the lens of his father. He’d never really understood just how momentous a presence David Carter was until now.

Mikhail broke the silence. "I think, before we enter into any kind of agreement, it is important for you to understand the nature of both my operation and your father's."

And so it began. Wayne did his best to sound imperious. David would have been proud. "I understand well enough."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"You think you do, but you don't. I'm sure you comprehend the practicalities, such as the frequent flights to and from South America, and the Mile End players shipped to the UK with a few crates of powder. But what you don't understand is the philosophy. This is not so much a clash of wills as it is a clash of philosophy. Shakespeare wrote that some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them. Your father fits neatly into the second category. He is of what I believe you would call 'working-class stock.' As such, all of his business achievements are hard-earned. That makes him fiercely protective of them. My situation is different. I am not the product of a class system as you would understand it. My business was given to me by my father. My greatness, if you like, was thrust upon me. But I was also instilled with a fierce, animalistic urge to protect. To guard what is mine. My family and my property are everything to me. That is where your father and I differ."

Wayne reflected bitterly that what Popov was saying was true. David Carter cared about one thing and one thing only: the business.

"Our methods are the same, but our reasoning is different. I take my business very personally, but at the end of the day, it is family that defines me. Your father's personality is defined by his business. You see the distinction?"

Wayne nodded, but he did not understand. He just wanted to get it over with. To sign on the dotted line.

"There's something else I want to ask you about,” Wayne said after a moment. “Another favour."

"Indeed? It seems that I am very generous this evening."

"It's a personal thing."

"And the rest – these other tasks – they are not personal?"

"This is different. It's just something I need to know."

"You had better tell me."

"I want to know what happened to my mother."

There was a silence, during which Wayne tried to make out Mikhail Popov's expression in the darkness. Finally, Mikhail said: "Very well. Leave it with me. I will see what I can do. Now, is what can you tell me about Silvertown?"

[STUFF HERE ABOUT THE SILVERTOWN DEAL, OR LEAVE IT AMBIGUOUS WHAT HE SAYS UNTIL LATER]

"No. That's everything."

"Good. Thank you, Wayne. I think, like the man in the film says, this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, no?"

"If you like."

Mikhail grinned, and Wayne saw for the first time how sharp the Russian's teeth were. They sparkled like pearls in the moonlight.

*

And as he drove away from the meeting point in the middle of nowhere, Wayne’s thoughts drifted back in time, to his childhood. There weren’t many happy memories, especially if his father was part of them, but there were some.

When he was a kid, he had lived with his parents in a fairly prosperous part of London. Fitting in with the posh knobs was never going to be easy for a lad like him, but there was one kid he had always got on with – Rob Linley, Max's son. They were the same age and used to play footy on the communal green. Wayne was always the better player. Even in those days he knew how to worm his way past a keeper and then pelt the ball right square into the back of the net. Rob was bigger and slower. Wayne was no stringbean himself, but Rob had a kind of cumbersome quality to him that meant he would never be a great athlete. He lacked the dexterity for the beautiful game.

Of course, that didn't matter. In many ways, Wayne thought, Rob had more in common with David than he himself did. It was as if Rob were David's son, and Wayne just an accident of birth. A changeling. At school, Rob was the clever one. Not clever in an obvious way (he failed just about every exam he ever took, same as Wayne) but he had a kind of instinct that told everyone – even the teachers who dished out the detentions – that he was destined for great things. And they weren't wrong. Rob was now a powerful businessman in David’s empire, while Wayne was a broken, retired footballer with no prospects.

While Wayne Carter managed to cut himself off from the real world by dedicating all his efforts to enhancing his football skills, constantly learning and refining, Rob Linley was more outgoing. Not that Wayne was shy or anything like that, but Rob had a way with people. Silver-tongued devil. More often than not, Wayne had found himself in his friend's shadow. Not that there was ever any bitterness between them. Wayne was used to being in his father's shadow. Throughout most of his adolescence, he had been accustomed to being the "sidekick." The butt of Rob's jokes. Because Wayne had his football – that was the one thing that he was good at while Rob was unequivocally not.

In some ways, they were like brothers. They bickered like brothers, anyway. Wayne had his big sister, too, but he and her were never that close, especially since she married that twat that worked for his father, Jason Keller. But perhaps it was really because she was her mother's daughter, while Wayne was – in spite of his best efforts – his father's son. They just had nothing in common. So most of Wayne's free time, whenever he was not on the football pitch, was spent with Rob Linley.

Only later did Wayne realise that even this friendship had, to some degree, been choreographed by his dad. Max Linley was David's confidant, after all. It was only natural for the two men's sons to become best friends.

Over time, the relationship between the two young men had cooled and, eventually, soured. Predictably enough, there was a woman at the bottom of it all.

But nothing so transient as romance could come between Max and David. In the world of football, Max Linley was widely known as the power behind David Carter's throne. David was the figurehead, but Max was his confidant and his most trusted advisor. And while David had forced Wayne into a career as a professional sportsman, Max seemed to have groomed his son to take over the much-vaunted position as the éminence grise in Carter's criminal empire.

During the days after his meeting with Mikhail Popov, Wayne spent a lot of time on his own, thinking. Brooding. Thinking about all the people who had done him wrong over the years. David Carter's name was at the top of the list, that was for sure. But Rob Linley was up there too.