Page 120 of Claim

I set the keys down and ran a hand over the worktop of the tiny bedsit in a converted housing block. Laminate. Cheap. Unpretentious. Mine, I supposed. I’d been rehoused because it was safer. Starting again only works if you actually leave the place that keeps pulling you back. And this bedsit, courtesy of the rehabilitation programme, came with a leaflet, a phone number, and a gentle suggestion that I might consider retraining.

I binned the number. Kept the leaflet.

“You good?” Lennon turned to face me.

“Yeah.” I meant it. The truth of it surprised me. “I’m good.”

He looked at me for a moment. I’d seen that look on him before. Quiet, careful, hopeful. One day he’d give it to those boys when they packed up for university. Because they would. He’d make sure of it. We both would.

Education doesn’t fix everything.

But it was a road out. One we’d never had.

“Your new life, Rich.” Lennon clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You can finally breathe.”

I nodded. I’d heard it already, variations of it. From Mercer, Imogen, people who spoke as if outcomes were things archived and moved on from. But it landed differently, standing there with nothing hanging over me. No clock ticking. No conditions. A fresh start I didn’t yet know how to inhabit.

And a pitiful emptiness that had gone nowhere.

Still, it was over.

For me, at least.

For Cormac and Doyle, though, their sentence had only just started.

They never left custody. They tried, of course. Lawyers were briefed. Money shifted hands. Favours were hinted at, then quietly declined. But the warehouse froze everything in place. Guns, blood, phones, timelines refusing to bend no matter how hard anyone leant on them. And, of course, the witness testimonies.

Doyle went first.

He couldn’t hold silence. Couldn’t sit in it without clawing for air. For a man who’d said very little on the outside, he sure knew how to use his voice on the inside. His story slipped, then unravelled. He pleaded on some counts, talked on others. Not enough to save himself, but enough to close doors behind him. Enough to make sure there was no way back.

Cormac fought it.

Silence was his armour. Posture his power. He carried himself as if someone higher up would intervene, sweep the mess away before their own names surfaced. As if they’d risk exposure rather than admit they’d been doing business with a man like him.

No one came.

Strangely not even his old pal Lord Wolfe.

And as such, he was remanded at every hearing. Eventually sent up to the Crown Court with charges stacking high and heavy. Organised crime, conspiracy, violence. Words that, at last, meant what they were supposed to mean. And for the first time, his reputation didn’t shield him. It buried him. Men the CPS had been circling for years came forward. Men who’d lived under his threats, his boot, his shadow. They cashed in. Not in the money sense but in the sense that the streets were finally clear of his reign. Not for justice.

For closure.

Of course someone would take his place. Someone always does. Maybe one the men who’d chucked him under the bus. Maybe whoever had been grooming Ghost. Maybe someone had already stepped in the moment the space opened. But that wasn’t mine to worry about anymore. Now I couldn’t give a fuck if Ghost took my line. Let him have it.

Because I was out. Properly out.

And I hadn’t needed to flip to do it. No deals. No statements bought with fear or favour. Which meant I wasn’t anyone’s leverage anymore. Not Cormac’s, not Lord Wolfe’s, and not the police.

No one owned me.

Tyler disappeared, though.

Cooperation papers signed. Sentence cut down to being survivable. New postcode. New job. No contact. The system’s version of starting again. He didn’t ask about me. I didn’t ask about him. Some things were better left buried if I wanted to keep breathing.

What he did, though…I’d always be grateful for that.

Yeah, he’d taken Tristan from the courthouse and shoved him into that van. He’d done it on orders, and I couldn’t hate him for that. I’d followed orders once too. More than once. But after that, after the warehouse, after everything, he didn’t stay quiet. He confessed. Properly. No half-measures. The man fucking flipped.