Zac Brettler was born in 2000 to Rachelle and Matthew Brettler, a London couple who both had fathers who were Holocaust survivors. Matthew was a finance professional who had entered the industry during the 1980s “Big Bang,” a period of deregulation that transformed London into a global financial hub. Rachelle came from a cosmopolitan family, her father being Hugo Gryn, a celebrated rabbi and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcaster.

As a child, Zac was known for his quick wit and remarkable memory, which he used to catalog details about luxury cars and electronics. His life took a significant turn when, unlike his older brother, he was rejected twice from the prestigious University College School (UCS). This failure deeply affected him, and he was subsequently enrolled at Mill Hill, a less esteemed private school.

At Mill Hill, Zac became captivated by the immense wealth of his classmates, particularly the children of Russian oligarchs. His personality began to shift as he grew obsessed with money, status, and the performance of a high-flying lifestyle glorified in films like The Wolf of Wall Street. He started small business schemes and once hired a chauffeured limousine because he “wanted to see what it would feel like” (26). By 17, his relationship with his family had become strained. He had transformed into a self-serious young man who wore suits, spoke admiringly of figures like Vladimir Putin, and seemed singularly focused on power and wealth, leaving his family bewildered and concerned.

As Zac’s obsession with wealth grew, his parents struggled with how to respond, fearing that direct intervention would only push their rebellious son further away. Zac’s ambition led to another painful rejection when he unsuccessfully applied to Harrow, one of the UK’s most elite schools. The family’s strain reached a crisis point one night when, during an argument, a teenage Zac put his hands around Rachelle’s throat. Deeply shaken, his parents insisted he see a psychiatrist, Dr. Roger Howells, who noted Zac’s narcissistic traits and “a potentially dangerous lack of insight and skewed norms of behavior” (34). However, Zac and Matthew refused to participate in ongoing family therapy.

After enrolling in a new school, Ashbourne College, Zac seemed to improve. He interned at a chauffeur service and started a company called Omega Stratton, a name in which “Omega” was presumably a reference to the Swiss watch brand favored by James Bond while “Stratton” saluted the fraudulent firm in The Wolf of Wall Street. He also began to cultivate a new, secret life. He spent much of his time with Akbar Shamji, a charismatic and wealthy businessman in his forties, who lived in the exclusive Mayfair district. Zac impressed his family with claims of high-level connections and had even received a finder’s fee after alerting Marina Granovskaia, the chief executive of Chelsea Football Club, to an available unit at One Hyde Park, an ultra-luxury apartment building. He was often seen walking Akbar’s dog and was even taken to Annabel’s, a legendary private nightclub, immersing himself in a world far removed from his family’s.

On the night of November 28, 2019, Zac told Rachelle, that he felt unwell and would be staying with a friend, an affluent man in his 50s named Verinder Sharma, at the Riverwalk apartment building. He sent a final email to her at 2:03 am before falling silent, leaving his keys and credit cards behind. The next morning, a stranger arrived at the family home looking for Zac, and a voice on his speakerphone insisted Zac’s mother was “in Dubai,” heightening Rachelle’s panic.

After Matthew returned from a trip to the United States, the couple met with Akbar, who revealed the central deception of Zac’s life: Akbar knew him not as Zac Brettler, but as Zac Ismailov, the son of a powerful and recently deceased Russian oligarch. Akbar explained that he had been introduced to “Ismailov” by a Chelsea FC executive as a potential investor. To maintain this persona, Zac had pretended to live at One Hyde Park and claimed to be in line for a £200 million inheritance.

Akbar recounted that Zac claimed his mother had kicked him out, so he had introduced him to his friend Verinder, who offered Zac a room at his Riverwalk apartment. Just before his disappearance, Zac had told Akbar and Verinder that he was addicted to heroin, a story his parents did not believe. In a phone call with the Brettlers, Verinder confirmed Akbar’s account. He expressed shock at Zac’s lies but also a strong affection for the young man. Akbar proclaimed Verinder was “the top dog” who could protect Zac from any powerful people he may have angered, a phrase that brought Rachelle comfort although the Brettlers remained anxious about the legality of Verinder’s mysterious business ventures.

Frustrated by the slow initial police response, Matthew and Rachelle hired Clive Strong, a private investigator. Strong went to the Riverwalk apartment building on December 3 to obtain security footage from the night Zac disappeared. There, he met Verinder, who Strong noted projected an air of dominance and menace. Verinder repeated the story he had told the Brettlers, portraying himself as a compassionate figure who had taken in the supposedly unhoused son of an oligarch.

Soon after, two police officers, Gemma Scott and Judith McCabe, arrived to conduct their own investigation. While Strong stepped aside, the officers accompanied Verinder up to his fifth-floor apartment. While surveying the scene, Officer Scott made a critical discovery: Zac’s broken, high-security Punkt phone was hidden in the track of the sliding balcony door. The moment the phone was found, Verinder became uncooperative, refusing to answer further questions without a lawyer present.

Downstairs, the building staff delivered a final, chilling piece of information to Strong. After reviewing hours of footage from multiple cameras, they had printed stills of Zac and Akbar arriving and of Akbar and Verinder’s daughter Dominique leaving but could confirm conclusively that there was no footage of Zac exiting Riverwalk. As Strong processed this, he saw Akbar standing alone by the river wall, staring down into the Thames.

On the morning of Friday, November 29, 2019, the day Zac disappeared, a man named Baxter Willis was walking across Vauxhall Bridge when he spotted a body on the muddy riverbank below. The body belonged to a young, shirtless man who had a severe, traumatic injury to his face. Police arrived and, assuming the man had died by suicide and that his body had washed in from elsewhere, failed to connect him to the Riverwalk building directly overhead. For four days, the body remained a John Doe in the city mortuary.

On December 3, officers Scott and McCabe visited Riverwalk, spoke to Verinder, and put the pieces together, connecting the unidentified body to Zac Brettler. The news was delivered to Rachelle and Matthew, who began the painful process of informing their family and Zac’s friends. At Zac’s funeral, held at Hoop Lane Cemetery, hundreds of mourners gathered in a state of confusion, as the circumstances of his death remained a mystery. Notably, neither Akbar nor Verinder attended the service. The uncertainty and the violent nature of Zac’s death led to widespread disbelief that he had died by suicide. The chapter concludes with Matthew’s father, Benny Brettler, a man who had survived the Holocaust, stating his firm belief to his son: “I think he was murdered” (83).

On December 5, police interviewed Akbar and Verinder separately. Akbar portrayed Zac as a “disturbed” young man and repeated the story of being introduced to “Zac Ismailov” by a Chelsea FC contact. He claimed that on the night of Zac’s death, his wife had locked him out, forcing him to sleep in his car. In his interview, Verinder gave a prepared statement asserting that Zac had jumped from his balcony, but then invoked his right to silence, answering “No comment” to nearly 200 subsequent questions.

The police knew Akbar was lying because they had obtained the complete CCTV footage from Riverwalk. The footage showed that at 1:25 am. Akbar left apartment 504 with Dominique and descended to the garage, where Dominique drove aboveground and dropped Akbar and his dog at his Mercedes at 1:46 am. He then drove away. A camera from the MI6 building across the river recorded Zac jumping from the balcony at 2:23 am.

The most damning evidence came from the Riverwalk cameras, which showed Akbar’s red Mercedes returning to the building before Zac jumped. The footage captured Akbar going back up to Verinder’s apartment before 2:23 am. At 2:48 am, approximately 25 minutes after Zac entered the water, Akbar was recorded leaving the apartment, walking to the river wall, and peering down into the exact spot where Zac had landed before driving away for the last time. This placed him at the scene during the critical moments of Zac’s death, contradicting his entire story.