Page 6 of Corrupt

“Particularly callous, sir.” Elliot straightened his jacket with a look that said he wasn’t as impressed with my cruelty as I might assume.

I grinned through a mouthful of steak and Elliot walked out like a man stepping into his own grave.

I turned back to Trentham. Business. Keep it business. “Thirty?”

He studied me, rolled the whisky on his tongue. Then smiled. “Deal.”

We shook. Two liars sealing a truth we’d both rewrite later.

I leant back, the glass cooling my fingers, and drifted my gaze past Trentham to the back of the head I couldn’t stop looking at. To the man who made me think something I avoided at all costs. I might’ve been building an empire, reeking of money instead of blood these days, but underneath, it was still rot. Same rules, different wine glasses. You could scrub the crime off a postcode, polish the silver, pump the floral air freshener, but street stink always finds its way back through the cracks.

And he…

He made me want to lose it permanently.

Tristan was the cleanest thing I’d ever touched, and somehow, I dirtied him just by wanting him.

Can’t wash that kind of stain.

Chapter two

Tristan

I’d eaten in more than my fair share of pretentious London restaurants.

This one was no different. At least, not at first glance.

New place in Soho. Recently opened. Trying far too hard. Tablecloths so aggressively white they could double as interrogation lights, and a menu written entirely in French. As if the ability to pronounce poulet rôti proved character. Most nights, I would’ve risen to the challenge. I could recite half the dishes in Latin if someone pressed me. Harrow, then Oxford, then called to the Bar, followed by the detour of a disastrous master’s degree my father reluctantly funded before I quit it for pupillage, I was packaged and polished to perfection. And had dined at enough top-tier establishments where I left hungrier than when I arrived, my father’s wallet lighter and my self-importance heavier. But something about this place felt… off.

Not the food. Nor even the gaudy décor. It was something in the air.

Or maybe it was just the man sitting across from me.

Tonight, I wasn’t here for fine dining. I was here for Lord Adrian Wolfe. A life peer in the House of Lords. Political adviser.

Not a date.

Christ, no.

Charles Hale-Fitzroy would never risk the family name on something as flimsy as romance. If he arranged a dinner, it was because the other party had the power to buy, bury, or resurrect an entire career with a single phone call. And Lord Wolfe ticked every one of those boxes.

With a diamond-tipped pen.

Father wasn’t aware of Wolfe’s favourite secret, though. The worst-kept one in certain corners of Westminster. That Wolfe liked men. Young men, in particular. But his scandals never reached the tabloids because he had them smothered long before any camera dared to blink. He was a public saint with a private appetite. A man who lived two lives and controlled both with immaculate precision.

Though if Father did know…

Then this dinner wasn’t for networking.

It was a polite shove into the cattle ring. Go on, Tristan. Mingle. But only with the pedigree stock we’ve pre-selected for you.

Either way, I was here.

Because Father had asked. And he’d looked…tired and hollow around the eyes when he had, and I’d clearly been in a rare, good mood when I’d agreed. But now I regretted it as Wolfe stared at me across the table as if he’d ordered me specially and the chef had sent me out on a silver platter. It was obvious how he would fill the hunger the food wouldn’t touch.

With me.

Wolfe lounged back in his chair, the picture of tailored power. Charcoal suit cut to his frame, cufflinks burning amber under the low lights, a face sharp enough to slice through a man and cold enough to enjoy the precision of it, with a flock of silver hair defying age. He steepled his fingers over his mouth, settling his elbows on the table in a way that would’ve earned me a Hale-Fitzroy lecture about posture, breeding, optics.