Page 42 of Corrupt

“If I make myself essential? Yeah. If I’m the one holding the routes, the books, the product? No one bins the engine keeping the motor running.”

Lennon snorted. “No one’s the engine, Rich. Not in this game.” He tapped my chest with the back of his hand. “Not even Razor.”

Then he walked away, out into the crowd gathering on the steps, towards Amara, the twins, the aunties, the family he’d held onto with both hands. The life he’d built. The life he kept standing even when everything else fell apart.

I stayed where I was for a second.

Just breathing.

Badly.

A tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it. Traitorous thing. I wiped it away fast. Anger. Shame. Grief all tangled in my chest. Then I spun on my heel and got the hell out of the church.

As I stepped down into the heat and noise, someone shouted my old name across the grass. “Oi, Rich! You coming Jules’ afters or you too fancy for rice and peas now?”

Laughter followed. A couple of heads turned.

I lifted a hand in some half-arsed wave and kept walking. I couldn’t face another room full of memories and folding chairs. Couldn’t be Rich for them, not after Lennon had looked straight through all that and still said he missed me.

Back in my car, I sat there with the door shut and the silence crushing. My throat tightened enough to choke on. That lump sat dead centre, refusing to budge, making it hard to breathe, hard to swallow anything except guilt. The sun had dipped low enough for a shaft of light to cut through the window, landing square on the dashboard and lighting up a small rectangle tucked beside the gear stick. I sniffed hard, wiped the last of the wet from under my eyes, and picked it up. Read it.

The warning was there. Clear as sirens.

Don’t drag him down with you.

But underneath it, slipping between the caution and the guilt, was something uglier.

Want.

No. Not want.

Greed.

I shifted, hooking my thumb into my back pocket and pulling out my phone. The screen lit my face as if it was asking me if I was sure. I unlocked it anyway. Opened the thread. Stared at the number from that card as if it might burn me.

I should’ve put it away.

Should’ve left it.

Instead, after a long minute, I typed.

So where’s this window of yours at now?

I hit send before I could delete it. Before I could remember all the reasons this was a bad idea.

It was fine, though.

Cause me and him? That was just sex. Two bodies and a locked door. No promises. No futures. No consequences that mattered.

A man like Tristan Hale-Fitzroy sure as fuck wouldn’t fall for someone like me.

chapter nine

Tristan

I was on full Sunday catch-up.

Collapsed on the sofa, Bluetooth speaker whispering soft chill tracks, wearing nothing but boxers and an old tee that had seen better centuries, drowning in paperwork and case files.