Page 121 of Claim

Braver than me.

I reckon his bird had something to do with it. She’d always liked me. Always told him when he was being a coward. Maybe she finally made him choose something other than survival. To make up for all those times he’d fucked up and I saved him. But he told them everything. Including Kyan. And between his statement and mine, Cormac and Doyle went down for murder too.

I hope it was worth it.

Sadly, though, not everyone got what they deserved.

Wolfe hadn’t touched a cell yet.

Men like him don’t.

And he slid out of my case as if he’d never been there at all, which told me exactly how close he’d been. Last I heard, he was keeping a lower profile and pretending that was a choice. I’d got him banned from getting his gear. That, I could live with.

As for me?

No further action.

No bail. No tag. No conditions. No one counting down the hours until I slipped. A clean slate, on paper. A new start, if you believed in that sort of thing. I’d walked away light. Time served or whatever. I was a fucking lucky bastard. But the truth was, it wasn’t luck. It was because I owed far more than the system could ever be bothered to collect. We all knew it. The CPS knew it. The police knew it.

I knew it best of all.

But dragging my history into open court would’ve meant building cases on witnesses who lied for a living or vanished when things got real. And if they’d pushed it anyway, if they’d thrown me back inside on what they did have, it wouldn’t have been justice. It would’ve been a handover. Straight back into cells with the same men I was meant to be walking away from. They knew that. Knew I’d be pulled back into the fold before the door even slammed.

So they wiped me clean instead. Not because I was innocent. Because it was safer. Because it closed more doors than it opened. It wasn’t justice. I’m not pretending it was. But for a man like me, it was a small miracle.

And I wasn’t about to waste it.

Lennon’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, checked the screen, and answered while I wandered into the bathroom to dump the cheap toilet rolls under the sink and take stock of the place properly. Mould creeping into the grout. Yellowing around the shower tiles. Curtain rail hanging on by one screw and optimism. Fuck, I missed my old shower back in the Wick. I could get two people in that one without trying. I had. Me and Tristan. The memory was alive in my mind like all the others.

But it wasn’t as if I’d have anyone to join me in this telephone box of a shower.

Lennon tapped my shoulder. “For you.”

I took the phone, eyeing the unknown number as if it might bite. I didn’t have a mobile. No burner. Not even a cheap smartphone. It had been safer that way. No way to reach me. No threats sliding through DMs at three in the morning. The only people who needed to speak to me were my lawyers, my sister, and Mum. And they all had Lennon’s number. Somewhere along the way, he’d become my personal secretary. Which was probably why he was smiling at me. Cause he wouldn’t have to come off the building site to pass on my messages anymore. Mostly from Keeley.

She and Maisie were still at that mother and baby unit out north. The private charity was covering them until she turned eighteen and the council would have to step in properly. And Darren—somehow—had been released as well. Time served or something like that. No custody though; supervised visits only. He was trying. I’ll give him that. But he was still stuck in Hackney. And men like him didn’t tend to reinvent themselves. Maisie would probably grow up barely knowing him.

Might not be the worst thing.

But Keeley had tried for her Maths and English whilst at that unit. Got herself onto a beautician course. She got a trade. Something solid. All made possible because of Tristan.

The thought of him tightened my throat.

Mum called occasionally, too. She’d finished rehab and moved in with a friend she’d met there. A bloke. I didn’t ask questions. Didn’t want details. But Keeley said she’d visited, said he seemed decent. Had a job. Turned up when he said he would.

That counted for something.

I lifted the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”

“Richie…”

My stomach dropped clean out of me.

“Tris…” I almost couldn’t get his name past my throat.

“How’s the new digs?”

My legs gave up on me. Properly. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, knees pulled in, Lennon’s phone clenched in my hand. Lennon nodded at me, his smile not for getting rid, but for knowing what hearing that voice would do to me. Then he stepped outside, shutting the door behind him to give me the privacy to fall apart.