Chapter Seven Razor #2
He stopped suddenly, twisted me round to face him. “Stubborn shit.”
“I prefer survivor.”
“You won’t survive to trial if you don’t cling to what’s outside.”
I huffed. “What trial?”
Dent unlocked the cuffs and tipped his head towards the door beside us. “In there.”
I followed his gaze.
The conference room.
Not seg. Not medical. The usual legal room with the beige door, narrow window, and paint scuffed where fists and foreheads had met it over the years.
The place where men in suits sat across from me and decided whether I was worth the time to say my name.
Where I’d been told, more than once, that I wasn’t.
Dent stepped back. “Go on.”
Better than a box.
Or so I thought.
I opened the door.
Two men were in there. The one nearest stood immediately. Mid-forties. Neat. Neutral. A folder lay open on the table in front of him. He looked like every man who’d ever delivered bad news in a careful voice.
“Mr Slade.” The bloke held out a hand. “I’m Andrew Mercer. Criminal defence solicitor.”
I took the handshake on instinct, knuckles still swollen, skin split, a massive contrast to this man’s smooth fingers. Then, as he leant forward, his shoulder shifted, bringing into view the man behind him.
My world punched sideways. As if Ghost had had another go at me.
Tristan.
My fucking Tricky.
For a second, I genuinely thought I’d imagined him. That the crack to my skull when I’d butted Ghost had knocked something loose. That this was some sick hallucination I’d conjured through pain and lack of sleep.
Except I hadn’t, had I?
He was there. Right fucking there.
Maybe not the wild, frantic man drenched in sweat and heat, begging me to let him lose control.
The one I replayed in my head at night, trying not to wake hard on a bunk inches from another man’s.
Nor even the one who swam in glistening lakes.
Or who’d curled up beside me on a sun lounger.
No, that Tristan lived in memory only. This one in front of me right then was polished. Out of reach.
In a suit I recognised, though.
The one he’d worn that night. When I’d pulled him out of my club and made him stay with me til Sunday. The one I’d peeled off him, folded neatly, and kept it that way so he could put it back on when the world called him to order again.
Had he chosen it on purpose?
To throw me. Remind me. Fuck with my head.
“Please, sit, Mr Slade.” Mercer gestured to the chair opposite them.
I sat.
They sat.
My eyes stayed on Tristan.
“Before we go any further,” Mercer smoothed his tie, “I want to be clear about what this meeting is and what it isn’t. This is a legal conference. Anything discussed here is confidential and legally privileged.”
I barely heard him. All I kept doing was staring at Tricky.
He stared right back.
And even though his stare was subtle, done with discipline and control, I saw him take me in. My split lip. The bruise darkening under my eye. The jumper that wasn’t clean anymore. The grey joggers. The full, ugly state of me.
His chest lifted.
I saw it because I couldn’t stop looking at him.
“We’re not here to question you,” Mercer continued. “We’re here to stabilise your position.”
I dragged my gaze away from Tristan to the man speaking. “Stabilise?”
What? Like I was leaking.
“That’s right.” Mercer gestured at Tricky. “Mr Tristan Hale-Fitzroy is here as junior counsel.”
My eyes snapped back to him.
There was the smallest shift in Tristan’s mouth. Not a smile as such. Not quite. But the whisper of one that might have been familiar.
Then Mercer opened the file.
“You’ve met previously.” He motioned between us, neat and meaningless, as if he were talking about a networking event. “But for the purposes of this conference, he’s here in a professional capacity only.”
Wow. Met.
Down a dark alley, sure. With him on his knees, looking up at me as if he wanted to ruin himself.
In the back room of a club with the bass shaking the walls, my name breaking out of him as if it didn’t belong to anyone else.
Across weekends where we’d begged, shaken, cried, laughed, came apart in each other’s arms and blurred every line I thought I had.
But yeah…
Met.
Tristan shifted, then looked down at his file. Armour back in place.
“Your previous defence team has stepped back.” Mercer glanced up to check I was still present. “And you are currently without active representation?”
I dragged my gaze away from Tristan, clenched my hands into fists, felt the skin pull tight over swelling knuckles. “Yeah.”
“That’s the first thing we’re addressing.” Mercer turned a page. “At this stage, we’re not advising pleas. Not making promises. We’re assessing whether we can act and whether you want us to.”
I tipped my head. “If I want you to?”
Mercer clasped his hands over the file. “This is your call.”
My call.
I looked at Tristan again.
He was still. Controlled. Present in a way that hurt worse than absence.
“So before I ask anything else.” Mercer pulled me back. “Do you consent to us discussing your case today and to us considering whether to take conduct of your defence?”
I looked at him. Then back at Tristan.
I thought he nodded. Gave me the barest inclination of his head for me to say yes. Or maybe I invented it because I didn’t know what the fuck he wanted from me, cause he wasn’t saying anything, and I wasn’t sure if I even wanted him to anyway, and the room was closing in.
So I waved a bruised hand. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
“Great. Then, for clarity, your previous relationship has been declared internally. Boundaries are in place. If at any point you are uncomfortable with Mr Hale-Fitzroy’s presence, you say so. Immediately.”
I glanced back at Tristan.
So not just met then. ‘Previous relationship’ was now out there for the room.
I snorted, glanced away, and folded my arms to dig my fingers into my biceps.
I wanted to shout. Tear the table off the floor and cross the distance between us.
To grab him and shake answers out of him.
What was I supposed to say here? Deny it?
Confirm it? Pretend he hadn’t been in my bed, my mouth, my head?
More than that, what I wanted was for him to explain why he was here at all. Why he’d walked back into my life wearing titles and distance and restraint. Whether this was coincidence or obligation. Whether he’d told them what we were. What we’d done. What it had meant.
If it had meant anything at all.
But Tristan said nothing.
Not giving me a single fucking thing to hold on to.
So I glanced back to the other one. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” Mercer nodded. “Then we proceed professionally.” He turned a page and read, and in that moment, I peeked at Tristan as he turned his gaze on Mercer, probably waiting for this to all actually start.
God, he was fucking perfect.
He hurt my eyes.
“We’re going to ask you about timelines, contact, and procedure.” Mercer looked back up. “Not guilt. No explanations. If we need those later, we’ll tell you. First, has anyone explained why your previous team stepped back?”
“They told me it was complex.”
“It is.” Mercer leant back in his chair. “Has anyone outside legal channels contacted you regarding this case?”
I frowned. “No.”
“Good. Don’t answer anyone who might.”
“Who’s likely to contact me?”
“People who want to steer this somewhere.”
“Where? Who? Gimme names.”
“I can’t do that.”
Tristan cleared his throat. “If I may?”
I glanced at him. Mercer did too.
“Mr Slade,” Tristan said, “are you aware of a Lord Wolfe?”
For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
It was his voice. Out loud. That careful, contained accent. Timid only if you didn’t know what sat underneath it. The same one I remembered whispering my name. My real one. As if he was saying it again now, asking me to hear him. To answer.
It threw me. Hard.
So I dragged my focus back to the question. Turned it over in my head. Yeah. I knew the name. And I caught the tone he’d used too. As if willing for me to get what he wasn’t saying.
Then it hit.
All at once.
Another blunt knock to my thick skull, but this time, I understood what he was doing.
“You should know him in your line of work.”
So I said, “Yeah. I’ve heard the name.”
That night.
The moment I’d pulled Wolfe out of Tristan’s orbit so I could fuck him in a supply closet.
Elliot had tried to warn me. Tristan had too.
I hadn’t listened. Cause I’d thought I was invincible.
Thought I had real backup. Real weight behind me.
And because, more than anything, I’d wanted the man sitting in front of me.
Tristan looked down at his pen. “He’s aware of you as well.”
I saw his regret. His guilt, maybe. He thought this was on him.
But Mercer closed the file and interrupted that moment. “Here’s what happens next, Mr Slade. If we take this case, we formally notify the court that you’re represented again. That stops the drift. We then request full disclosure. Proper disclosure. Not summaries.”
“That includes digital extraction timelines,” Tristan added, as if he needed to get that out. “And any CCTV referenced but not served.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t look back. His gaze stayed on the papers, as if this were routine. As if I weren’t sitting there trying to work out whether this meant something or nothing at all. Maybe it was just another day at work for him.
Mercer nodded. “Once we have disclosure, we reassess bail. Only if there’s been a material change.”
“Bail?” I sat forward. “I’ve already been denied it.”
“There are gaps,” Tristan said, and this time I couldn’t not look at him. “In your case. Areas where evidence hasn’t been served and shouldn’t be holding you.”
“Which we will examine,” Mercer cut in smoothly.
“What gaps?” I pressed, testing whether they knew I’d left those gaps deliberately. Or whether this was hope dressed up as process.
Tristan opened his mouth, then stopped.
Mercer answered instead. “Only once we’re formally instructed can we identify that with any certainty.”
I cocked my head. “And if there aren’t any?” Because they hadn’t saved me yet.
“Then we tell you.” Mercer gathered the papers. “And you decide how to proceed. We’ll need your formal consent to act. Not today. Take tonight. Think about it. If you agree, we’ll return with the paperwork.”
Mercer stood first, shrugging into his coat and buttoning it.
Tristan rose beside him, slipping into a long wool coat that looked as if it had been made for his shoulders.
Dark. Expensive. The sort of thing that didn’t wrinkle, didn’t yield, didn’t belong in places like this.
The gulf between our worlds opened wide and unmistakable.
He looked as if he belonged somewhere I would never touch.
How fucking stupid of me to ever think I could have him.
That message was being delivered loud and fucking clear now.
“Thank you, Mr Slade.” Mercer opened the door.
Tristan followed. Then stopped, catching the edge of the door.
He let it fall almost shut, enough to cut the room down to a narrow slice of space belonging only to us.
Then he glanced through the window, a professional check, before looking back at me.
And for that one suspended moment, there was nothing else.
Only us. In here. Together.
He then reached into his jacket pocket and produced a business card.
“For if you lost the other one.” He held it out.
I stood. Reached for it across the table. And as I took it, I brushed my thumb over his. A tiny, nothing touch that felt like a spark detonating right through my core. His breath caught, too. I saw it. Felt the warmth of his exhale on my cheek. But he stepped back. Professional distance.
I glanced down at the card. “Tristan Hale-Fitzroy. Defence Barrister.”
Saying his name out loud after weeks of carrying it only in my head nearly took my knees out.
“No pupillage.” Tristan tilted his neck to get in my line of sight. “Fully qualified. That took time. Eight weeks to be precise.”
I breathed out, understanding what he wasn’t saying. Then I waggled the card. “Lucky time’s all I got.”
Tristan held my gaze. “Not anymore.”
Then he nodded, gave a minuscule smile, opened the door, and left.
And I stood there with his name in my hand, regret burning hotter for the simple fact that I’d stepped out of his bed the morning that had landed me in here. And why, when he’d asked me to stay, had I thought this would end any other way. That I’d had a choice.
I’d made a lot of dumb decisions before.
None more gutting than that one.