Page 35 of Claim

“I’ll tell him the truth. That he has counsel again. And I’m part of that team.”

She reached for the file and closed it properly this time.

“I’ll speak to a solicitor today. One who understands sensitivities. If they agree to take conduct, we proceed cautiously.”

Relief soared. Brief. Contained. I exhaled. Went to leave.

“And Tristan?”

I turned back.

She fixed me with a look stripping away whatever was left of my night’s exhaustion and opened her laptop. “If I take this case, you don’t get to be brave. You get to be precise.”

“I can do that.”

She peered over the screen. “We’ll see.”

I nodded.

“And you do not contact the defendant until I say so.”

“Understood.”

“This stays clean.” She tapped her screen. “Or it doesn’t happen at all.”

Chapter seven

Razor

Days passed.

Again.

Stacked up like they always did in here. Featureless, interchangeable, measured not in dates but in doors opening and slamming shut. I limped through them, body stiff from the fight, ribs catching on every breath, reminding me I’d lost something important.

Since the altercation, the screws cut our free time back. Less movement. Less air. An hour in the yard if we were lucky. Long enough to feel the cold bite into my lungs before someone drifted too close. Long enough for a shoulder check. A muttered word. Spit hitting the concrete near my feet.

In the showers, I got the looks. The ones they thought would crawl under my skin. Long. Appraising. Measuring what I had left to take. At lunch, my tray went over more than once. Food sliding, splattering, gone before I’d even sat down. No one said a word. No one had to.

I was fair game.

The panic burnt itself out first. Then the fear. They took too much energy to keep alive. What replaced them was flatter. Heavier. Acceptance. No one was coming. Not Cormac. Not a defence team. Not the cavalry. Not even the miracle I hadn’t admitted I’d been waiting for.

There would be no intervention.

I was in here.

And this was it.

Ignoring what was happening around me didn’t buy safety. It only bought time for someone else to decide how I’d be broken. Ghost was shifting the hierarchy piece by piece. He didn’t want me gone quickly. He wanted me to unravel. To be reduced to a shell of a man who begged.

Well.

Fuck that noise.

When the doors finally slammed shut for the night, the wing fell into its usual uneasy quiet. Men coughing. Metal settling. Someone crying two cells down and trying not to be heard. I waited until Colin’s breathing evened out, until the small, hopeful sounds of sleep took him.

Then I reached under my mattress.