The Side Project

James Kirby built TeamKeeper for the simplest of reasons: his son's under-7s football club needed a better way to organize practice schedules and collect subs. A side project. A few evenings of coding after the kids were in bed, his wife Claire on the sofa next to him.

Then Victor Lazarescu turned up. Charming, well-connected, offering investment that could turn a hobby into something real. James said no.

Victor's clients don't take no for an answer.

What begins as a quiet approach becomes a tightening vice. Phantom clubs appear on the platform. Real money flows through them, hundreds of thousands, from sources James doesn't want to name. A man watches his son's football practice from the stands. The message is clear: we know where your family is, and we are close.

James tells himself he can manage this. Limit the damage. Find a way out without anyone getting hurt. He tells himself the same thing his father always told him: handle it yourself.

He doesn't tell Claire.

The Side Project is a literary thriller about an ordinary man trapped between organized crime and the family he's trying to protect, and the devastating discovery that the instinct to shield the people you love can become the thing that destroys them.

If you liked the slow-building dread of The Fear Index or the moral trap of Disclaimer, this is your next read.