Page 121 of Corrupt

Escape.

The same way he’d dangled a roll of notes all those years ago when I was skimming milk from the Co-op fridge. Something bright and impossible held just out of reach. A thing I wanted so badly it hurt. That I told myself I deserved.

And for a second, I let myself believe it might be real.

So I tightened my grip on the bag and walked inside.

The shutter clanged down behind me. The unit swallowed the sound, the light, the lie. And by the time I realised there was no way back out, I was inside the trap.

The men were waiting. Suits. Calm. Polished. Pretending this wasn’t exactly what it was. One of them smiled as if we were about to close on a flat overlooking the river.

“You Razor?” the one reeking of a bath load of cologne said.

I didn’t answer.

He smiled anyway. “Let’s have a look, then.”

I set the bag on the table. Didn’t push it towards him. At this level, you didn’t invite scrutiny. And I tried to keep calm while my heart pounded in my skull. Then a heavy thud broke through the quiet and I flinched. Then another. A bang travelling through concrete and bone rather than air. I turned.

And I understood then.

Not in a flash of panic. Not with fear. But with a cold, settling certainty. Like when a balance sheet finally adds up.

Some doors, once they closed, didn’t reopen.

I’d known that walking in.

Known there was always a reckoning waiting at the end of things like this.

I hadn’t expected it to arrive so quietly.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Tristan

By Monday morning, the silence had teeth.

I’d known quiet from him before. Gaps I’d learnt not to press against. The unspoken rules I had to accept if I wanted Razor to keep coming back to my bed. Don’t ask, don’t cling, don’t pretend this was anything it wasn’t.

But this was different.

His absence had weight. It pressed down on me, followed me from room to room, clinging to the back of my throat as if it had substance. Even after I’d left the flat, it lingered, trailing behind me as if it were a scent I couldn’t wash off.

Twenty-four hours.

That was all it had been.

Lot could happen in twenty-four hours, though.

But there had been longer silences before. Weeks, even. And I hadn’t unravelled like this. Hadn’t paced. Hadn’t checked my phone with a sharp, humiliating jolt of hope every time the screen lit up. Somewhere in my stupid brain, something had shifted. A fault line I hadn’t noticed forming until it split.

He’d said he wouldn’t be long.

He’d said to keep the window open.

And somehow, I’d let myself believe that meant Sunday. That it meant I’d see him again before the week turned over. As if he dealt in promises. As if men like him came back because I wanted him to.

This, I told myself, was my punishment.