Page 93 of Crave

I waited.

He took a breath. “My father took me to court once.” He got comfy, as if ready to tell me a bedtime story. One I might not like. “Said I should see justice in action. There was a boy. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Up for robbery. He’d stolen phones. My father tore him apart on the stand. Made him small, humiliated him. The boy cried when the sentence came down. Four years. He turned to look for someone, but there was no one.”

I went to speak but he didn’t let me.

“Everyone called it a good day in court. My father said the system worked. I just remember thinking it didn’t feel like winning. Not for anyone. That boy…he stole those phones because he was hungry. Because life gave him no other option. But no one asked why. No one asked how to stop it happening again. They just stamped thief on him and threw him away.” I drew a breath, the memory still sharp after all these years. “It wasn’t the first time I saw the cracks in my father’s system, but it was the one that stuck. The one that made me want to fight from the other side. To see if the law could mean something... more than punishment.”

I drifted my eyes shut, hating I would ruin his rose-tinted world view. “Sometimes, it is our fault. And we know it. And we deserve what’s coming.”

He wriggled up, planting his hands either side of my face. “There are ways out. But no one tells you what they are. Because if they did, people like my father wouldn’t get rich.”

I gave a short, bitter laugh. “Money makes the world go round.”

He didn’t argue. Didn’t deny it. And he stayed there, close enough I could feel the warmth of him, the ripple stirring between us that I didn’t want. Couldn’t afford to have no matter how much gear I pushed.

And I realised something ugly and sharp:

He believed there was a way out. And I…

I wasn’t sure I wanted one.

Because men like me don’t get exits. We get graves. Or we get gone.

And lying there, bruised and stupid and ridiculously falling under the spell of this man who should’ve run from me the second he’d learnt what I was…

I couldn’t tell which fate I was walking toward.

Chapter nineteen

Tristan

What I’d meant was that Razor had a chance to clear himself.

But as the words replayed in my head, I realised what I’d done.

I’d given him insider information.

Information that could let him obstruct an active police operation, conceal evidence, and walk free while others went down. I’d told him how to outmanoeuvre the law. Every principle I’d ever studied, every lecture on ethics, every courtroom I’d observed, had just gone up in smoke. I could dress it up as moral nuance, tell myself I was helping a man escape a corrupt system, that I’d given him the chance to start again. But I knew the truth.

I’d done it because I wanted to save him.

Because I wanted him to stay.

Here. With me.

My father’s chambers would never tolerate this version of me. The one who slipped into East London alleys and kissed danger until I tasted blood. If I didn’t follow the family path, would the path disappear completely? The Hale-Fitzroys didn’t fund rebellions. And I’d been dancing with danger even before this moment. The realisation hit as he pushed himself out of bed then doubled over with a sharp groan.

“Fuck.”

I leapt up, throwing my arm around him before I could think. “You shouldn’t move.”

“I need to get my shit together.” He winced, clutching his ribs. “Need to sort this.”

I nodded, though every instinct screamed to stop him. To keep him here.

“Where’s my gear?”

I pointed to the corner where his clothes, bloodstained and torn sat in a heap, then to my desk where I’d left his phones and other nefarious bits and pieces. He limped over, checked both burners. Tossed one. Kept the other. Then glanced at me over his shoulder.