Page 1 of Corrupt

Chapter One

Razor

“Money don’t change what you are.” I leant back in my chair, hooking my ankle over my knee, leather jacket creaking down my spine as I held this bloke there with my eyes. “It just gives you better cover.”

Alistair Trentham, forties, silver threaded through his temples, bought and paid for under the word distinguished, laughed. “An interesting perspective.”

I grinned. Not friendly. More cat-about-to-strike.

Because no matter what polish he’d slapped on himself, I hated this man on sight.

I tilted my head. “Where you from?”

He straightened, smoothing a crease that wasn’t there in his five-grand suit. “Originally? A village outside Chelmsford. Nothing remarkable.” He lifted his chin. “I’m in Hampstead now. Better schools. Better neighbours. Better… everything.”

Of course it was.

Chelmsford boy makes money, claws his way up a postcode at a time, lands in Hampstead and thinks the air’s cleaner because the rot gets moved downstream.

“Right,” I drawled, letting the word drag. “So you ran from where you’re from. I climbed out of mine.”

He offered a thin smile. “Some of us aim higher.”

“Some of us survive,” I shot back, tapping my glass. “Different skill set.”

His jaw clicked. Tiny. Elegant. An anger meant for when a server scuffs his loafers. And now that I had him pegged, everything slotted neatly into place. Gleaming silver hair. Skin that saw a facial before it saw sunlight. Suit that cost more than the car I used to sleep in. Every inch of him said: I’m not like you.

But his shit stank the same as mine.

He just had better plumbing.

Granted, this bloke wasn’t my usual clientele. Different tax bracket. Different planet. But this was my job now. To make nice with him.

It didn’t matter anymore that where I came from rot climbed the walls of the tower blocks, baked itself into the brickwork, and the lift piss never got cleaned away. Or that my childhood stank of sweat, fried chicken, and black mould damaging little lungs. Not now I was here. Where the loos came with hand cream. Soho might have the same stench underneath it all, but the people here drowned it in perfume, called it success, and charged a membership fee to sit in it.

That’s where I was now.

Opposite this prick.

And The Velvet Room dressed their shit like art.

Members only. Discretion mandatory. A restaurant on the top floor, a club in the basement, both pretending not to know what the other did after midnight. It was all white linen, mirrored walls, candles flickering in crystal like confession lights. Money breathed differently here. Perfumed expensively enough to disguise the rot underneath.

Far cry from the tower block, eh?

Eight months ago, I ran the drugs line in Hackney for my hard as fuck boss, Cormac O’Rourke. Babysitting teenage dealers with knives they didn’t know how to use and counting cash never quite stacking clean. Now I sat in the heart of Soho, borough lieutenant, my territory, my debt to him. Promotion, Cormac had called it. I called it a gilded leash. Cause that Irish bastard still owned every breath I took. My pretty wage came wrapped in threats and debt dressed up as gratitude. A favour here, a missing grand there, until walking away cost more than staying. He called it structure.

I called it leverage.

Still, it came with perks. Tables opened themselves, servers bowed without looking at my hands, and a title sounding legitimate enough to print on a menu if anyone ever asked. I’d traded cracked pavements for polished floors. Baggies for ledgers. Fists for fountain pens dragging wrong across my hand. All so my sister could sleep in a terrace in the Wick without some chancer banging on her door at three a.m. and my mum could breathe without checking the window at every screaming siren. Cormac’d said I’d “earned my stripes.” What he’d meant was: I’d done enough of his dirty work and outlived enough boys worse than me to be worth moving up the board.

“What can I get for you, sirs?” the server floated in.

See, I had people calling me sir now.

Weird.

Trentham ordered first. He had to stake the territory; prove he knew what he wanted. Which I doubted would be a spicy boneless bucket of hot wings with fries, washed down with a Stella.