The Payment Books in Order

The Payment is another four-part ebook serial set in the same East End landscape, this time centred on Ava Gold, a cab driver and former driver for nightclub owner Chris Street. Where Honeytrap leans on a private eye, The Payment follows an ordinary woman whose life brushes too close to gangland power.

Ava is used to long, lonely shifts on the road and the occasional dicey fare. One bad night she picks up Holly, a young woman too drunk and vulnerable to leave on the pavement, and breaks her own rules by letting the girl sleep on her sofa.

By morning Holly is gone. Soon afterward her coat turns up stained with what might be blood, and the police are asking questions Ava cannot fully answer. Guilt drives her to start looking for Holly herself, even as an unseen watcher narrates his growing fascination with Ava and quietly makes plans.

As the parts unfold, Ava’s search links Holly to other missing women and to the shadowy side of Chris Street’s empire. Old faces from Streetwise reappear, but the focus stays tight on Ava, who is torn between trusting dangerous allies and keeping the authorities at arm’s length to protect her own secrets.

The serial format lets the tension ratchet up quickly. Each section ends on a reveal or fresh threat, from anonymous notes and menacing strangers to the unsettling sense that Ava’s flat, her cab and even her friendships are being used against her.

Underneath the twists, The Payment is about control: who has it, who pretends to have it and what happens when someone decides another person’s life is theirs to shape. Read The Payment: Part 1 through Part 4 in sequence to follow Ava from one impulsive act of kindness to a reckoning she never saw coming.