Page 122 of Corrupt

For falling in love with a man who did bad things. No matter how carefully I’d dressed them up. No matter how good I wanted to believe he could be. I didn’t get to want both safety and someone like Razor. And even though he wanted me to call him Richie, as that’s who he was when he was with me, Razor still existed out there. Outside the safety of my Hale-Fitzroy walls. So I had to choose. Or the world would choose for me.

I repeated that to myself as I dressed, knotting my tie with hands refusing to steady. As I stood in my kitchen staring at the coffee machine, unable to remember whether I’d already filled it with water or had only thought about doing so. I called myself a whole catalogue of names. Pathetic. Needy. Delusional. I was all of it for letting twenty-four hours do this to me.

Twenty-four hours was nothing.

It wasn’t even long enough to be concerned. Not in his world. Not with the things I knew—didn’t know—about how he lived.

Still.

He hadn’t come back.

And no amount of telling myself that this was normal, expected, deserved even, could make the hollow in my chest feel any less real.

It followed me out of the flat, down the stairs, and into the street, clinging as I walked towards Baron’s Court tube. I moved on autopilot, letting myself be absorbed into the press of other commuters, bodies and sweat and breath, all of us funnelled forward without thought. Somewhere between the platform and the carriage, I checked my phone again.

Nothing.

That was it. No more. I wouldn’t look again. I wouldn’t.

I got off at Holloway Road and walked the rest of the way to Highbury Magistrates’ Court, the route familiar enough that my feet knew it even while my head didn’t. The same steps. The same façade. The same place I’d seen Razor all those weeks ago, spiralling us into whatever the fuck we were. And for a ridiculous second, I half expected him to pull up in his car beside me again. To tell me to get in. Maybe blindfold me, kidnap me, disappear me into whatever dangerous orbit he lived in.

And fuck it, I’d go.

Willingly.

But nothing happened. No engine. No shadow. No voice cutting through the morning.

So I climbed the steps alone.

And went to work.

Highbury had a way of pulling me back to earth. No grandeur. No echoing marble halls or hushed reverence. Just scuffed floors, fluorescent lights, and the faint, persistent smell of disinfectant and burnt coffee. Justice at its most functional. Most unromantic.

I signed in, nodded at a clerk I vaguely recognised, and took the papers Imogen’s assistant handed me without really seeing them.

“Court Three,” she said. “You’re observing today. She mentioned you’d be interested.”

I nodded, trusting myself not to speak.

Court Three was half-full when I slipped inside. Duty solicitors murmured to anxious clients. A CPS lawyer flipped through a file. Two security officers leant against the back wall, chatting quietly.

Routine.

Ordinary.

I took a seat on the wooden bench reserved for observers, smoothing my tie and grounding myself in the familiarity of it all. This was where I belonged. The world I understood. And the list in my file was long. Assaults. Breaches. Drunk and disorderly. A steady procession of small catastrophes I could argue against.

I forced myself to focus. To listen. Learn.

Time passed strangely. Stretching, snapping back. I made notes I would barely remember writing. Names blurred. Faces blended into one another.

Then the clerk spoke again.

“Call on the matter of Rex versus Richard Slade.”

My gut twisted. As if it had knowledge I didn’t. And I felt the sharpness all the same. The wrongness. I looked up from my notes as the side door opened, the defendant coming in flanked by two dock officers.

Grey joggers. Grey T-shirt. Prison issue.