CHAPTER 7: JAMESON

Hours after receiving Ian Johnstone-Jameson’s card, Jameson slips out of the London flat without Nash, Xander, or the security team noticing. He goes alone to 9 King’s Gate Terrace, telling himself that he is not seeking a father but a challenge to keep his mind occupied.

At Ian’s luxurious flat, Jameson is struck by both the wealth on display and Ian’s unsettling resemblance to him. Ian proposes a game-like exchange: Jameson may ask three questions, and Ian will then ask one of his own. Jameson uses his first questions to probe what Ian wants and what winning means to him, learning that Ian is a professional poker player who values pleasure, challenge, and victory.

Jameson realizes that Ian’s family does not know about him, and Ian admits he discovered Jameson’s existence only years later and chose not to act. Rather than using his final question for leverage, Jameson asks whether Ian sleepwalks, revealing that Jameson did as a child. The personal question briefly unsettles Ian, but Jameson quickly returns the conversation to Ian’s promised request.

Ian explains that he needs a player because he has been banned from a secret, elite London gambling club called the Devil’s Mercy. The club is old, powerful, and dangerous to even name, serving aristocrats, politicians, and the extremely wealthy through secrecy, access, and games. Ian lost Vantage, his mother’s ancestral home, at the club’s tables and cannot win it back himself.

Ian asks Jameson to regain Vantage for him, not because Jameson is a Hawthorne but because Jameson is his son and has the exact traits needed: intelligence, ruthlessness, odds calculation, bluffing, and hunger. Ian closes by identifying Jameson’s weakness with precision: Jameson loves challenge, play, winning, and always needing more.