Page 64 of Corrupt

It was practical. Self-preservation.

He’d asked me to stay because it suited him. Because it made things easier. Safer.

That was all.

And I held onto that explanation as if it was solid and wouldn’t slip the moment I stopped watching it too closely.

Once dressed, I glanced at the flat. The open space. It was one vast, uninterrupted space. No door separating the bedroom from anything else. A single sweep of room with its life laid bare. Bed to sofa to kitchen to balcony, all visible from everywhere, nothing hidden. Warehouse bones ran through it: exposed brick in deep rust tones, steel beams crossing the high ceiling, pipework tracing the walls like a map of the place he came from. Sun spilt in from one enormous industrial window, pooling in squares across the floor. And the air smelt faintly of Razor’s smoke, Razor’s skin, an intoxicating mix clinging to the open room as if carved into its walls.

From the bed, I could see everything.

Where he slept.

Where he lived.

Where he thought.

Where he would break me apart if I let him.

I then drifted towards the kitchen. It was oddly grounding. Utilitarian, sparse. No ornamental clutter. No chaos. Everything here existed because it did a job. Kettle. Knife block. A fruit bowl holding nothing but lemons and one slightly alarming banana.

I opened cupboards I had no right to open. Mugs. Plates. Mismatched cutlery thrown in without care or attention. Protein bars shoved to the back of a shelf like an afterthought rather than a treat. A half-empty bottle of olive oil sat beside something aggressively labelled MCT. All caps, black plastic, designed to turn food into fuel and nothing more. Of course he drank oil on purpose. Of course he stripped eating down to function. Strength. Control. Efficiency.

Nutrition without pleasure.

I leant against the counter, familiar ache settling low in my chest as the picture filled itself in without my permission. Razor was a man who didn’t eat because it was good, or comforting, or shared, but because he had to. Hunger was an inconvenience. Staying sharp mattered more than indulgence. Indulgence was a luxury.

For me, food had always existed in excess. Small plates delivered in endless succession. Always available. Always exquisite. Pleasure as a baseline, abundance disguised as refinement. But for Razor, it had been different. Food hadn’t been a given. Not regular. Certainly not good. Hunger, for him, hadn’t been a concept but a condition. Something endured, managed, controlled.

Another thing he’d learnt to master before it could master him.

Standing in Razor’s kitchen now, cupboards open, habits exposed without him ever having to say a word, that difference hit harder than any confession he’d ever offered me in the quiet that existed between us. The realisation that while I’d idly abandoned half-eaten meals without a second thought, there might have been a time when Richie had gone to bed hungry.

And somehow, that hurt more than all the violence he’d ever admitted to.

To curb my guilt, I found the fridge next. Beer. Milk. A takeaway box I did not trust. A bottle of orange juice with a date that made me grimace. On the door, a magnet shaped like a boxing glove held up a folded piece of paper. I hesitated before pulling it free. But I read it. Of course I did. It was a schedule. Handwritten. Blocks of time pencilled in. Deliveries. Meetings. Names I didn’t recognise.

One I did.

So I folded the paper back exactly as I’d found it and replaced the magnet. No point borrowing trouble I wasn’t ready to face.

The quiet pressed in again, and I found my phone in my trouser pocket. I checked it. No messages. No missed calls. Not even from Marcus.

I needed to do something before I started pacing.

So I made tea.

It felt absurdly domestic. Boiling water in Razor’s kitchen. Using Razor’s chipped black mug. The kettle clicking off like punctuation. The small ritual steadied me, giving my hands something to do while my thoughts tore themselves into tighter and tighter loops.

Dad.

Why hadn’t he told me? Why was I always the last to know? Always reading the footnotes of my own family? How bad was it? Did he have years? Months? Was there even such a thing as optimism with lung cancer, or was that what people said to soften the word terminal? No amount of Mayfair money could buy breath back into damaged lungs. Prestige didn’t cure cells.

But beneath all of that, coiled and ugly, I felt the damage of the question I hated myself for thinking: Would I never get to show him what I could do? Who I could be without his shadow cast over every success? Would I never get my day across a courtroom from him? Equal, opposing, undeniable?

The kettle steamed. My hands shook.

I stared at the mug and realised, distantly, that I was being selfish in a moment that didn’t belong to me at all.