Page 103 of Crave

The system.

I stared into the polished silver, my reflection warped in the curve of the spoon. Pale, still, uncertain which side of that system I belonged to anymore.

Father lifted his wine again. “If this holds, we’ll have traced the chain from street to supplier. A perfect study in hierarchy.”

“Or a perfect example of it,” I mumbled under my breath.

Though Father heard.

“What was that, Tristan?”

I lifted my wine glass. “Congratulations, Father. A job well done.”

“Hm.” His mouth twisted. “And how’s your thesis coming along?”

“It’s…” I swirled the wine, watching the reflection tremble against the crystal. The truth was, it had stalled weeks ago. In fact, I’d quit the Master’s without telling Father yet. There wasn’t a clear way I could look at sentencing data without seeing faces anymore. Real people. Breathing, bleeding, trying to survive the stories men like my father wrote about. “Nearly finished,” I lied.

“Marvellous. And after that?”

The question wasn’t really a question. It was an expectation. A doorway built for me to step through. He was waiting for me to say I’d come to chambers, to stand beside him and Marcus, another link in the chain of control.

I set my glass down. “I’ll take some time away. Do something less…structured.”

What I didn’t say was that I was already applying for pupillage. Quietly. Carefully. Chambers of my own choosing. No introductions, no legacy favours, and no hand on my back steering me towards the life he’d mapped out. If I was going to train at the Bar, it would be on my terms.

Or not at all.

“Don’t waste your potential, Tristan. The law doesn’t wait for those who hesitate.”

By potential, he meant privilege.

“Stay the weekend, won’t you, darling?” Mother interjected, her tone all silk and choreography, steering the conversation back to glossy and harmless. “Let’s have another spa day. Amelia’s coming, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Amelia glanced up, startled, before flicking her eyes back to her phone. “Yes, Mother,” she said absently, resuming her frantic tap across her group chat.

“Sorry, Mother.” I polished off the last of my fish. “I promised Henry and Zara I’d be back tonight. It’s Henry’s final evening before he goes on rotation.”

“Rotation?” she echoed, as if I’d mentioned a foreign custom.

“He’s starting his first trauma placement at Guys and St Thomas’s. Fourteen-hour shifts in A&E. Sleep deprivation. People bleeding on him. Hardly restful.”

Mother wrinkled her nose, that faint, offended twitch she reserved for things she found both vulgar and inconvenient.

“How ghastly. I never understood why Henry Redmayne chose medicine.” She waved a hand. “He could have done something far less… exhausting.”

“He likes helping people.” I took a sip of wine, trying to erase the memory of him patching up Razor without a word. “He’ll make an excellent doctor.”

“Perhaps he’ll practise privately,” Mother mused. “NHS doctors spend more time on the picket line than in the wards these days.”

I didn’t bother explaining why junior doctors were striking. She wouldn’t have understood, or comprehended, how not everyone came into medicine cushioned by the soft buoyancy of wealth Henry Redmayne had. And that Henry, of all people, would stand shoulder to shoulder with them precisely because he could afford to.

One of life’s many ironies she’d never recognise.

I left around ten, taking a car back to Clerkenwell. The house was quiet. Zara and Henry probably not asleep, but in bed. I hadn’t lied about the placement, but I knew Henry had wanted that night with her. He wasn’t avoiding me exactly, but he was... cautious. As if unsure which version of me he’d get anymore. I hadn’t told him who Razor was, what had happened. Not a word. And in doing so, I’d nudged him closer to Zara than I’d meant to. She was the golden one now.

Especially next to me.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe they would prove that love was thicker than bloodline after all.