Page 43 of Claim

I compartmentalised.

Proving to Mercer, Imogen, and the systems that would decide whether I was permitted anywhere near this, that Slade, Richard A was another name on a file tab. A defendant. A case. Someone I could represent without scandal, without weakness, without betraying a single professional line.

Even if every part of me knew that wasn’t the truth.

Mercer had formally notified the court that Razor had representation again, and I stayed far enough back to be permissible. Conflict checks ran. Instructions were drafted and revised. Imogen read everything with forensic care, striking out anything drifting too close to instinct rather than evidence. Disclosure requests went in. Proper ones, not summaries or assurances. They came back slow and thin, as they always did. Enough to suggest weight. Not enough to justify it. Which bothered me more than it should have.

In between all that, my own work didn’t pause. I’d had court twice that week on unrelated matters. Mentions, short hearings, administrative appearances where I’d stood, spoken when required, and sat again. Cases belonging to other people. Problems solved inside a courtroom without anyone bleeding for it. I drafted late into the evenings, notes and skeleton arguments stacking up in neat digital piles. I performed competence. I gave no one a reason to look twice at me.

Now I was here, dutiful Tristan Hale-Fitzroy, champagne balanced neatly between my fingers, expression arranged for public consumption. Every inch of me performed ease while my mind clawed back towards my desk, towards work. Work that might set things in motion again.

That would allow me to see Razor again.

My phone buzzed. I took it out and read the incoming message.

Sorry, Tris. I fully appreciate this is an obscene time for a road traffic collision to occur and for me to be called in. I shall endeavour to prevent such inconvenient emergencies for the next event neither of us wishes to attend.

I smiled despite myself and typed back.

As you fucking should, Dr Hen. These events are far more important than saving lives. Sending love x

I tucked the phone back into my pocket and took a sip.

Of course, Henry didn’t want to be here. Neither did I. But I had to play this part to keep me from going completely, utterly insane. And Eloise Hale-Fitzroy nee Kingsley wasn’t going to allow for that. Not when she’d spent years trying to reach this moment. Years of effort, disappointment, and waiting. If the reward for endurance was spectacle, then spectacle she would have. As the eldest daughter of retired Judge Kingsley, once one of the High Court’s most formidable figures, she had been raised on the understanding that events mattered. These moments were opportunities. Her patronage of the arts and her carefully chosen charitable affiliations meant occasions like this were never just personal. They were platforms. Statements. Proofs of continuity.

And yet.

The house itself hadn’t changed.

No plastic. No pastels. No evidence of disruption. The furniture remained sharp-edged and antique. The walls held art chosen for conversation rather than comfort. The abundant and loosely arranged flowers flown in rather than sourced, looked as though they belonged to the room, not the occasion.

The baby, it seemed, would adapt.

I drifted towards the main drawing room, where the centre of gravity had formed, and found a perch on what was almost certainly an eighteenth-century side chair, its presence justified by provenance rather than ergonomics. From there, I watched Eloise and Marcus pose obligingly beneath the tall windows, champagne in hand, smiling with the relaxed assurance of people entirely at home in attention.

She opened gifts with a gracious flourish. Cashmere blankets. Silver keepsakes. Neutral-toned objects that would one day be described as heirlooms rather than purchases. She looked radiant. Welcoming, composed, inhabiting the role she’d worked so hard to claim.

Around them, the room murmured. Barristers, judges, advisers, patrons. Old friends from university years, newer ones acquired through marriages and boards and committees. Conversations overlapped politely, never colliding. Everyone knew where to stand.

And I’d never felt more out of place.

Because the truth of it was simple: I’d rather be back inside a real prison than standing here, trapped in this gilded one of my own making.

“Tris.”

I looked up, realising belatedly that Marcus had appeared at my shoulder.

For most of our adult lives that moment would have arrived with a faint tightening somewhere between my ribs and my temper. Marcus and I had never quite mastered the art of being brothers without also being competitors. But somewhere between Father’s diagnosis and Eloise’s pregnancy, things had… changed.

The rivalry that had once seemed so important had quietly taken a back seat. It turned out there was very little point in arguing about legacy and expectations when the man who’d built them was suddenly mortal. Marcus, for his part, had softened too. The tight edge he’d carried for years, ever since the quiet panic about heirs and succession had started hanging over him, had eased once Eloise’s pregnancy was finally certain. As if producing the next Hale-Fitzroy had allowed the human underneath all that pressure to surface again.

“Marcus.” I tipped my flute against his glass of Gin and Tonic. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Though really, all congratulations should be redirected to my wife. My primary contribution occurred some time ago and involved very little effort.”

“One should always be congratulated for administrative success.”

He snorted. “Hardly administrative. More… outsourced.” He sighed. “I didn’t even get the enjoyable version. Wanked into a cup like a particularly underwhelming Eton dare.”