Page 4 of Corrupt

“Twenty-five,” he countered, quick. Habit. “For the scale I bring—”

“You bring venues,” I mocked. “I bring safety. Door’s that way if you think you can buy that cheaper.” I watched him flinch at the word cheaper. “Your investors can go shopping with the Telegram cowboys. Roll the dice on purity. See how the brand holds up when somebody’s kid drops dead in the VIP.”

Doyle had drifted away to light a cigarette somewhere. Now that was trust.

So I went in again.

“Thirty-two and you get peace of mind. Routes the Met won’t sniff at. Me on your side instead of bored and selling to your competition. That’s the fee.”

He held my gaze, blank and cold. I watched the gears behind his eyes. Cost versus risk. Ego versus survival. The same arithmetic keeping men alive in rooms like this. He’d learnt when to fold a little. I’d learnt when to bite.

The server returned with two plates of steak.

“I’ll let you think about it while you get your chops around that.” I jabbed my knife at his plate as if I could carve him open from here, then sat up straighter, scanning through the glass, catching Tyler’s brief nod.

Yeah, I had my second here, too. And he stood by the glass partition, a wall in a black shirt with a coiled temper tucked under the collar, watching the restaurant filling up for the evening. Tyler knew my rhythms. When to move, when to disappear, when to hit hard and when to stare until someone rethought their life. And as he’d been with me since the beginning, when we were both feral and hungry and one wrong night off a cell or a grave, I kept him close, not just because I trusted him, but because Cormac trusted him too. Also made him dangerous, though. If Tyler ever flipped, half my world would go down with him.

So I fed him loyalty. Kept him busy. Made sure he never had a reason to look elsewhere by giving him something close enough to a career he could tell his mum about without choking. He ran the day-to-day drops and pickups, coordinated the door, made sure no one touched what was mine. Still had his temper. Cheated on his girl more than was decent. But the women were on the payroll now, not junkies clearing debts, and he never skimmed a note that wasn’t his.

Not clean. Never claimed clean. But he was loyal.

Loyal counted more than confession. And he stood there, waiting for my instructions, which would comprise either removing this man from the place if he didn’t play nice or fetching me the pen to sign.

I watched him lean in as a server whispered something in his ear, his hand brushing a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. The oldest trick in his book. Then his gaze dipped, hungry and predictable, down to the gap of her blouse. They’d fuck before the night was out. Probably down the L-bend corridor near the staff lockers where it was dark, quiet, the one stretch where the CCTV didn’t reach if he’d bothered to map the angles the way I had. I almost envied it. The simplicity of it. No thought, no ghosts, no aftermath. Just want. Met and spent.

Not that I was short on offers. Far from it. But turning them down was getting trickier. Too much refusal raised questions, and questions drew the wrong attention. I hadn’t gone the paid route since… well, since then. Lately, I’d been living in what I called forced celibacy, which sounded better than what it was, which was punishment dressed up as discipline. So yeah, watching my second get his quick and dirty while he had nice and easy waiting at home grated more than I’d admit.

But the world must have heard me and come full circle, cause when Tyler shifted his body to turn and face his temporary bit for the evening, it created a gap through the glass, a clean line of sight to where a couple was being shown to a table in the VIP section. Two men. The older one tapped the server on the back like old friends as he took his coat, the younger one had his back to me. But when the blond turned to put his blazer over the chair, I got sight of the whole package. Lips and all.

My heart slammed against my ribs as if someone had kicked it. I looked away, tried to steady my hands, then watched Trentham dunk a forkful of sirloin in peppercorn and chew with that slow, entitled pleasure that made my teeth ache. I lifted my whisky in a tight shot and swallowed it in a rush. Then I looked back.

Fuck.

Even the back of his head hit me like an aftershock. Recognition sharp enough to steal my breath. How could I know someone that well, that deeply, from only a handful of nights? Stupidity. That’s what it was. Stupid to let anyone under my skin when I was supposed to be sitting here making a deal, climbing higher, proving I’d left the gutter behind. Not staring through glass at the ghost of everything I’d promised I’d outgrow.

Tricky.

Here. On what looked a fucking lot like a date.

Heat crawled up my neck, into my chest, my mouth. My pulse hammered behind my teeth. The rage came dirty. Not pure or righteous. No, it tangled up with fear. Because when the older bloke with him — sugar daddy type, if Tricky weren’t already sitting on more money than sense — passed the wine list to the server and smiled a patronising, wallet-heavy smile, I saw it for something else. A challenge. A warning. A threat aimed right at the only thing in my life that wasn’t already poisoned. The one thing that still felt real. And there he was, sitting across from some rich bastard with wine and smiles while I sat here choking on the taste of everything I’d tried to clean out of myself.

Trentham was talking. I wasn’t listening.

I drank instead, eyes fixed on that table. I couldn’t function with that in my line of sight. Too much noise under my ribs. So I stood.

“One sec.” I cut Trentham off mid-sentence. He paused with a forkful of steak halfway to his mouth, watching as I walked off.

The serving girl flirting with Tyler straightened up the second she clocked me and vanished before I even reached them.

Tyler turned, read my face. “Razor.”

I leant in, keeping my voice low. “See that table?” I jerked my chin towards Tricky and his grey-haired date. “Get rid.”

“There a problem?”

“Yeah. So get it done.”

“You want it loud or quiet?”