Page 87 of Corrupt

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you calling Lord Wolfe an enemy?”

A bit rich, considering Father had practically shoved me into Wolfe’s path a few weeks ago.

“No.” He coughed, reaching for a tissue, and I saw the blood spots. I pretended I didn’t. The same way I pretended I hadn’t hoped that message might have been from Razor. “Men in his position rarely make distinctions. They simply decide who is… useful. I’d like you to recognise the difference.”

A nurse swept in, checked the machines, removed the bloodstained tissue, and offered me a polite smile I didn’t feel I deserved.

Father continued once she’d gone. “In our line of work, Tristan, it’s never a bad thing when the people who could destroy you are also the ones shaking your hand.”

How poignant.

How strategic.

And how absurdly close to the bone. Because the people who could destroy me weren’t just shaking my hand. They were kissing me. Touching me. Fucking me.

But I didn’t say that.

Father closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “Tell Adrian you’ll meet him Monday for breakfast. Then come tell me what he said.”

I huffed a laugh, because of course this was orchestrated. A Hale-Fitzroy family alliance in miniature. A political manoeuvre disguised as fatherly concern. But I wanted, stupidly, pathetically, to be a dutiful son for once. A trusted son. So I replied to Wolfe with an affirmative. Then I sat through the rest of Father’s treatment silently, making a quiet promise to myself: I will not slip back under. I will not let Razor consume me again. I will drag myself out of whatever this is.

Father left with Mother afterward, ushered into a car with the same brittle dignity he wielded in court. Spine straight, jaw set, pretending the weakness belonged to the illness and not to him. Mother grabbed my face before getting in the car herself, looking me over.

“Get to the spa, darling. You look positively atrocious.” She kissed my cheeks. “And you’ll come to the fundraiser next month, won’t you? Eloise has worked ever so hard. You must support your sister-in-law. I believe your Zara is involved, too.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She smiled, then got in the car with Father, and they were gone.

And I was alone again.

I went home, sat in front of the television with a carton of something aggressively not Greek, trying to spoon normalcy into myself alongside cold noodles on a Friday night. Case notes spread over the sofa. An evening I’d used to consider productive. Except every time I blinked, I saw last weekend instead. Razor’s hands, Razor’s mouth, Razor pinning me to sheets smelling of him.

I didn’t sleep. Even after I shoved his shirt, the one he’d given me to wear after the night at the restaurant, that had been under my pillow since, to the bottom of my wardrobe.

So early Saturday morning, before the sun was even up, I went for a run.

Classic avoidance strategy.

I got in my gear, shoved my AirPods in and ran as if distance could cauterise feeling. Down the Thames Path to Hammersmith Bridge. On to Barnes. Through Putney, where the rowers skimmed the water with an ease I envied. Further still, until Richmond rose around me in sharp green and river glare. I ran until my lungs burnt and my legs shook and my thoughts finally blurred into silence. And on the long loop home, sweaty and breathless and half convinced I could outrun myself, I made a decision. A real one.

I was done.

Absolutely, resolutely done.

I would move on.

I would file the last few months of insanity under lapse in judgment. A brief seduction by danger I would not allow myself again. I would forget the man I should never have touched, never have let in, never have kissed in daylight.

I repeated it like a mantra with every stamp of my feet across the pavement.

Done.

Done.

Done.

My resolve lasted exactly three seconds.