Page 18 of Corrupt

No, I’m not stupid. I’m a defence barrister. I know crime when I see it. I know men like him. But looking up at that building, restaurant above, club beneath, humming with neon and sweat and secrets, and knowing he owned half of it? I couldn’t explain what that stirred in me. Pride wasn’t the word. Turned on was closer.

Maybe I was my father after all. Getting turned on by prospects.

And I stood on the pavement in the thick, humming heat of a July night in Soho where the streets buzzed, music leaking from every doorway, strangers laughing too loudly, taxis crawling past with their windows down, wearing his shirt, his scent in the collar, sweat dried on the fabric, wanting him to bolt out of the door. Leave it all behind. To grab me. Kiss me. Tell me it wasn’t another one-off. That he’d been thinking about me too. And then we’d… what? Run off into the sunset? Ignore the brutal reality that none of this could ever work. That we were from different worlds, built wrong for each other, destined to tear one another apart?

“Tristan!”

I spun around, heart leaping stupidly into my throat. It wasn’t him. Of course, it wasn’t. The voice came from the open window of a chauffeured car idling across the road. And inside the back seat was Lord Wolfe.

My stomach dropped.

I snapped my spine straight, slapped on my barrister mask. “Adrian.”

Then I remembered I should be angry. He’d left me mid-dinner. Me—Tristan Hale-Fitzroy—invited by Charles Hale-Fitzroy, the one man in London no one with political ambition dared offend. Wolfe might pull strings in Westminster, but even he didn’t want to tangle with my father. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to know the reason for his departure had been because Razor had seen him with me and demanded it so.

A spark of fire hit my gut at that.

The car door opened, and Wolfe stepped out, scanning both sides of the road as he fastened his blazer. Composed, immaculate, not a hair out of place.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said.

Not sorry. Never sorry. Wolfe didn’t apologise.

He offered catalogued fragments resembling one.

“I was called away unexpectedly. An urgent message.”

A lie. A polished, expensive lie.

He slid his gaze over me. “Weren’t you in a white shirt earlier?”

I glanced down at Razor’s too-big black one. “No.”

I could also lie. As polished and as rich.

He frowned, then smoothed it away in the space of a breath. But it sparked something in my mind. Because what, exactly, could’ve dragged Lord Wolfe away from a dinner he arranged? It hadn’t been brute force as there wasn’t a wrinkle on him. Nor a threat. He would’ve called the police before anyone laid a hand on him, and he wouldn’t be calmly waiting in his car for me now. So then… what? What power did Razor have over him? What request could Wolfe, of all people, have obeyed without protest? He’d left the table like a man obeying an order. Not avoiding a danger.

My interest sharpened.

“I didn’t intend to leave you sitting alone.” Wolfe squeezed my arm. “Your father was kind enough to agree to the introduction. I would never disrespect that… or you.”

Under the soft voice and impeccable manners, I felt the truth writhing. Wolfe wasn’t apologising. He was covering tracks. Tracks someone far more dangerous had forced him to abandon.

“Let me make it up to you.” He gestured towards the waiting car. “I know a lovely little Italian place near my apartment in Notting Hill. Come.”

“It’s late, and I have court tomorrow.”

“Then at least allow me to take you home, hm?” He stepped in again. “You don’t want to be on that tube in this heat.”

I absolutely did. I wanted distance. Air. Out of this man’s gravity. Something about him set my nerves humming, the fine hairs along my arms lifting as if I’d brushed too close to a live wire. It wasn’t just the familiarity, or that he knew my father, and my father had given his approval like a guarantee of safety. The feeling sat deeper than that. Older. Instinctive.

I told myself it was leftover adrenaline. That I was still wound tight after Razor. That guilt had made me jumpy.

But the unease didn’t settle.

Adrian wasn’t looking at me as if he were making an offer. He was measuring. Waiting. As though my answer was already accounted for.

“Actually, Adrian.” I forced lightness into my voice, “I called Henry while I was in there. He’s on the picket line at St Thomas’s, and I promised to bring him something to keep him going until morning.”