Page 41 of Crave

The words slid under my skin. She meant someone like us. Someone who could sit through charity dinners without wanting to scream. Someone polite, polished, palatable. Whilst she knew there was no hope of me marrying a woman, and it wasn’t a major issue of hers, or even father’s, they still expected heirs.

And heirs came through marriage.

Mother tightened her hold, drawing me back into her orbit. “You don’t have to prove anything to him, you know.” She meant my father. “You could… come home. Or go to Grandfather’s cottage. That’s secluded enough for you to rest. Write. Breathe.”

“Is it empty? Are you not renting it?”

“Not anymore. Too many things need fixing. But if you want to go there, we could look into getting it done up again. You could swim in the lake. You used to like that.”

“I’ll think about it.”

A Range Rover idled at the curb, engine purring. The driver spotted us and stepped out to open the door. I hesitated, caught by our reflection in the tinted glass. Mother serene and radiant, me a half-step behind, an echo dressed in better tailoring. Then Amelia came bounding across the pavement, ponytail swinging, a cluster of glossy shopping bags cutting into her wrists. She dropped them into the boot with a thud.

“Tristan.” Mother tapped the leather seat. “If you can’t manage lunch, at least come home. Marcus will be there. It’s polite to say hello when you’re in the area.”

Amelia slipped in beside her, eyes bright from the spoils of Knightsbridge. “Oh, come on, Tris.” She gave me a playful shove. “Keep me company with all the boring old farts. Until I get dropped back at school later.”

I sighed. There was never really a choice, so I slid into the car, and the door shut with the quiet finality of good manners.

The city rolled by in reflections: marble façades, glass towers, the blur of umbrellas. Mother scrolled through her phone while Amelia chattered about riding gear and an upcoming competition. I watched the city change skin outside the window, from the shine of Knightsbridge to the muted sandstone of Mayfair. And by the time we turned onto our road, the conversation had shifted to logistics. Dinner guests, charity luncheons, Father’s schedule. The driver eased the car to a stop before the townhouse. Mother disappeared upstairs to change. Amelia dumped her bags in the drawing room, humming to herself.

Mrs Linton appeared, quiet as habit. “Marcus is in the study, sir.” She took my coat. “With your father.”

Of course he was.

My brother. The golden heir. Always there to remind me what success was supposed to look like. Married to Eloise Kingsley, the High Court judge’s daughter turned charity patron who hosted fundraising galas and graced Tatler spreads, Marcus Hale-Fitzroy had walked the family line without missing a step: Eton, Oxford, the law without the theatre, Home Office. A life mapped out and executed like a brief.

Those same footprints I was trampling a significant amount of dirt over.

Father had dispatched me to Harrow instead of Eton, though, muddying that path for me years earlier. He’d said I needed “more pastoral support.” Which was his polite way of saying I wasn’t built for rugby or cruelty, and certainly not for being Marcus. Because I was gay. And as I made my way down the corridor, shoes whispering over marble, my chest tightened at facing what the perfect son looked like when I was scraping my feet in the gutter. I usually avoided him unless there was a party of people I could hide behind. Or Ollie was there to pull me away when it got a little ugly.

But he wasn’t around anymore.

So I had to learn to face these things by myself.

The study door stood ajar, filtering out the low, precise timbre of men discussing lives they were determined to dismantle. Father sat behind his desk, immaculate as always, a confidential file open before him. Opposite him sat Marcus. Tie strategically loosened, sleeves rolled to the forearm. The picture of studied ease coming from total, unearnt control. Even on a Sunday, Marcus wore the armour of a man heading to the office.

Father looked up first. “Tristan,” he said evenly, as if I’d arrived on cue. “Good. You might learn something.”

Marcus turned in his chair to greet me. “Afternoon, Tris. Took you long enough to surface.”

“Mother’s doing.”

“As always.” Marcus smiled, all beautiful teeth and chiselled jaw. “How was the massage?”

“A lot less happy an ending than I’d prefer.”

Marcus held my gaze. Ruffled his lips. Then immediately looked back at the file. “We’re reviewing a Home Office brief. Organised crime. You remember the case Father’s prosecuting?”

So that was our banter finished.

I dropped to the chair next to him. “Vaguely.”

Marcus gestured to the file. “Intelligence suggests their distribution chain reaches into East London. We’ve got an informant ready to testify, if he doesn’t get himself killed first.”

I blinked. East. Wonderful. Now I had to sit here thinking about that place again. London really wasn’t as big as people made out.

Father leant back, steepling his fingers. “The prosecution’s shaping up. If it holds, we’ll bring down the entire operation.”