Page 113 of Corrupt

Marcus stood nearby, watchful as ever. Eloise to his right. She wasn’t drinking. The flute in her hand remained untouched, fingers curled protectively around the stem. Her cheeks were flushed, her smile softer than usual, and every so often she drifted her hand, almost unconsciously, to her abdomen. It hadn’t been announced. Not yet. But it didn’t need to be. Everyone knew how long it had taken them to conceive.

Good for them.

I adjusted my cufflinks and resisted the urge to fidget.

This was where I belonged. Where I had always belonged. Where my name made sense on embossed card and my presence required no explanation. And yet, standing there beneath the banners and the soft spill of candlelight, I felt oddly displaced. As if I were playing a role I’d rehearsed too well, waiting for a cue that never quite came.

I lifted my glass, took a polite sip, and reminded myself to smile.

Henry drifted up beside me, just as immaculate as everyone else in the room, though his discomfort showed in ways mine didn’t. He kept shifting his weight, eyes scanning the crowd as if half-expecting a crash call to come through at any moment.

“Hen.” I lifted my glass and nudged his. “Here we are again.”

“Two stags.” He slipped a hand into his pocket, gazing instinctively across the room.

I knew who he was looking for.

“You could always hire a date.” I nudged his elbow. “Save people starting rumours we’re… waiting for each other.”

He huffed. “Perhaps we should lean into it.”

“Is this you coming out?”

“Perhaps I should. I imagine your mother and my father would be thrilled at the efficiency of our pairing.”

“A shame, then, that you’re not actually gay.”

He glanced at me. “Though I could try?”

I tilted my head. “Hen. If you were gay, you’d be a bottom. And that would be of absolutely no use to me.”

He considered this with mock seriousness. “One of life’s many inconveniences.”

“Isn’t it just?”

We clinked glasses and drank.

After a beat, he glanced down at his very polished shoes. “Have you… er… heard anything?”

I looked away, swallowed champagne I’d barely tasted. “No.”

“I rather think that is quite fortunate for you.” Henry took a sip himself.

“Hm.”

It was as much as either of us could offer.

After Razor had walked into Henry’s A&E, I’d had to tell him something. Especially given it was the second time Henry had been confronted with Razor attached to injuries belonging firmly outside the realm of unfortunate accidents. At some point, professional disbelief gives way to personal concern.

I hadn’t told him everything. Certainly not that I’d met Razor months earlier in a Hackney alley, back when he’d been operating at street level. Nor that he’d since demonstrated a frankly alarming aptitude for promotion, rising through the ranks of organised drug trafficking with the sort of efficiency and work ethic most chambers would kill for. In another life, I supposed, that kind of entrepreneurial instinct might have been applauded. Just not in that particular industry.

So I’d edited. Smoothed. Reframed.

I’d said he worked in high-end clubs. That he handled logistics. Supply. The sort of discreet necessities for private parties Zara’s family had historically built their wealth on. Which wasn’t untrue. It just omitted the consequences. Enough for Henry to understand why it was vital, absolutely essential, that no one knew who I was seeing. Or what kind of life that man actually inhabited.

Some truths didn’t need airing.

They needed containing.