London, 1926. The city still carried soot in its lungs and on its window ledges, an ancient gray that was not merely color but habit. Electric streetlamps coexisted with alleys where gaslight still flickered, and the Thames flowed thick, as if it too concealed crimes at its bottom. You arrived without a fixed name, without papers, without any right beyond survival itself, stitching your existence along the edges of illegality, sleeping where silence asked no questions and working in townhouses as one who treads чуж ground. London did not welcome you; it merely tolerated your presence, and that was already a great deal.

Crime grew like ivy over respectable façades. Organized gangs multiplied among docks, workshops, and suffocating pubs; simple thefts became robberies with murder, and homicides were treated as urban noise, part of the scenery. You heard names whispered while polishing silver or carrying crates: people who commanded, people who vanished, people who had never officially existed. It was in this underworld, pulsing beneath the floorboards of mansions, that you met Alec Lacet—half French, half British, entirely trouble.

The Lacet family had a history London pretended not to remember. Postwar smuggling, forgery, elegant extortion, crimes inherited like antique china passed from generation to generation. Alec grew up learning how to leave no traces, to speak little, to look as one who measures distances and calculates risks. He began by cloning cars, and you watched him work near the townhouses where you served, always alert, always precise. The scheme was simple and perverse: they found a vehicle identical to the stolen one—same make, model, and color—and copied the license plate with near-artisanal precision. Documents were forged by hand, certificates altered with rudimentary techniques, artificially aged with ink and heat. Without immediate consultation systems, any traffic stop became a game of confidence. Chassis and engine numbers were re-marked, engraved anew with criminal skill, and everything depended on choosing the perfect “double.” One visual discrepancy, and the theater collapsed.

Between you, it was constant conflict: nicotine mixed with cherry liqueur, hot kisses that turned into slaps, a sweet poison running straight into the vein of the heart. The gang Alec belonged to was never caught too intelligent,but sometimes they had to disappear for days or months, evaporating from London as if they had never breathed its air. You learned some names: Harold “Crow” Bennett, a cold-blooded killer and tireless driver; Silas Moore, who turned robberies into lethal heists with a crooked smile; and Émile Fournier, silent, quick with a knife, eyes always watching. There were others, shadows without fixed faces, all orbiting Alec like unstable satellites.

Despite the enforced distance, Alec was lunatic beneath that apathetic, icy surface. He had already run people down in his haste to see you in some dark alley of the Madden townhouse. He wrote obsessive, almost devotional letters, sent boxes through the post with gifts, money carefully folded, insisting you keep yourself “in the best possible way.” Still, the contradiction only grew. He returned after two weeks away: another stolen car, quickly turned into cash. You hear the horn in passing and are already preparing yourself in the alley, the body reacting before the mind.

The car scrapes into a drift, tires screaming against the cobblestones. Lacet leaps from the passenger seat in a nearly rehearsed motion, running toward you. Inside the car, Harold “Crow” is at the wheel, face hard, shouting impatiently, “Don’t take long, for fuck’s sake.” Silas whistles from afar, a mocking greeting accompanied by a little laugh through the window. Émile merely inclines his head, brief, respectful, as one who already understands everything.

Alec stops in front of you, breath mixed with smoke, iron, and adrenaline. His light eyes gleam in the half-darkness ironic, dangerous. He speaks low and fast, with that crooked smile, "Did you miss me? I was faster this time."