Page 108 of Crave

Lennon watched me for a beat, weighing it up. Checking if I meant what I was saying. If I was as concerned for him as I sounded. I was.

“If you do know him,” he said, “then you’ll know he’d never leave his sister. And seeing as she ain’t come running to me yet, I’m guessing he hasn’t left her.”

Relief flooded me.

Lennon nodded, as if that settled it. As if we’d both reached the same conclusion and were choosing to walk towards it anyway. Then he turned and went, swallowed by the street, the city waking around us. Engines coughing to life. A siren somewhere distant. The sharp, clean smell of rain rising off warm pavement.

Forget him.

As if I ever could. He was in my blood, in my bones. Threaded through me like the sweetest poison I’d ever tasted. You don’t forget the thing that changes your chemistry. The man who rewires you from the inside out.

I couldn’t.

But I walked away. Not because I didn’t want him, but because wanting him didn’t erase the cost of being with him. Knowing he was alive had to be enough. And if I was going to claim the future laid out for me—polished, protected, paid for—I couldn’t afford to fall in love with a man like Razor.

I’d just have to learn how to live with the craving.

Epilogue

Razor

Two months later

The Wick flat didn’t feel like mine.

Too big. Way too new. And far too quiet.

It was a place meant for someone who’d made something of himself, not someone who’d bled his way up the ladder. But Cormac had tossed me the keys as if it were a reward, and refusing wouldn’t have been smart. So here I was. Top floor of a converted warehouse overlooking the canal, exposed brick, steel beams, open-plan everything. It echoed when I breathed. When I moved. When I let myself think too long. It was the hipster end and I had to pretend I belonged here.

Didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to live.

I sat behind a cheap desk I’d dragged up three flights of metal stairs, papers spread, burners lined in a row, ledger open. Tyler had done the rounds already, sent the runners home, locked up the stash. We’d moved so clean that even I couldn’t trace half the routes without a map. The money was piling faster now. Bundles boxed up under the desk. Crisp. Anonymous. A number on a page.

Cormac’s number.

I kept the chair angled so I could see the entire room. Front door, windows, balcony. Habit. Survival. Paranoia. Whatever word made it sound less pathetic. The clock on the wall blinked past midnight. Somewhere below, the canal lapped against the walls, slow and thick, carrying bits of bottle caps and cigarette butts downstream. London’s bloodstream.

My phone buzzed. The real one.

Tyler.

“We’re squared, boss. Stock’s moved. Wick lock-up’s sealed. New runner’s decent. Don’t talk much.”

“Good.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Anyone sniffing around?”

“Not today. Place is dead.” A pause. Then, quieter, “You should see Keeley’s new garden, bruv. She’s got one of them plastic slides for Maisie. Proper posh.”

My chest tightened. “She alright?”

“Happy as fuck.” He cleared his throat. “Your mum too. Keeps saying she don’t know what she did to deserve it.”

She didn’t deserve it. She deserved more. A life that wasn’t built on violence and back rooms and boys dying young. But this was all I had to give her. A nicer flat with central heating and a view of a quiet road, bought with the promise that I’d keep working for the man who’d gutted a lieutenant and fed him to pigs without blinking.

“Good,” I said. “Tell ’em I’ll come by tomorrow.”

“You fancy coming round? Shanice is here. Says she’s up for a bit of you.”

“Not tonight, mate.” I hung up. Didn’t know what else to say. I’d run out of excuses to not fuck his girls’ mates.