Chapter Seventeen Tristan
Chapter seventeen
Tristan
Four weeks was a long time to make myself scarce.
Longer, in some ways, than when Razor had been inside. Back then, the distance had been brutal but defined. Bars, walls, rules. Now he was out. Within reach. And knowing I could see him but choosing not to was a different kind of torture. One I hadn’t anticipated.
So I didn’t let myself think about it.
I worked.
I buried myself in Chambers, in drafting and prep, in the clean, orderly grind of cases moving me only from court to home and back again.
I drafted Razor’s plea for the Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing, losing myself in the precision of it.
The language. The framing. The discipline required not to bleed into it.
I narrowed my world deliberately. No family dinners. No Hale-Fitzroy obligations. No unnecessary appearances that might put me in the same room as Lord Wolfe.
Or worse, my father.
Because, of course, his name surfaced in the CPS papers.
I should have seen it coming. Difficult cases like this always circled upward, and my father was still top dog.
Consulted first. Trusted last. Now stepping in properly.
Who better, after all, to front a prosecution built on intelligence, inference, and confidence rather than evidence?
Who else could take a case with nothing tangible and make it feel inevitable?
Win it, not because it’s proven, but because it’s decided.
Charles Hale-Fitzroy.
Amelia and Mother kept me updated on his recovery.
He wasn’t in the clear, but the treatments were working well enough to keep him upright, focused, convinced he was fighting the good fight.
They both avoided work talk with me, and I was grateful.
I doubted they understood anyway. How soon, I’d be standing on the opposite side of a courtroom from my father, the way I’d always hoped I would.
I never imagined it would be to defend my gangster boyfriend, though.
But life, it turned out, had no respect for expectations.
It meant I stopped sitting beside him at the Royal Marsden, too. My absence was noticed, remarked upon, then expected. I knew as much when the message came through on one of my usual days to sit with him, the one I’d begged to have and had spent months playing the dutiful son on.
I assume you are not here as you are instructed on the Slade matter. However, we should talk. Not about the case. About you.
I read it twice.
Had Wolfe already been in his ear? Had he suggested I was more entangled in the Slade matter than professionally appropriate?
Wolfe wouldn’t have proof—of that I was certain.
And my father wasn’t a man who acted on rumour alone.
He was a lawyer. He demanded structure. Corroboration.
Circumstantial weight built from more than a single whisper, no matter how elevated the source.
Still, he’d won cases on far less.
More likely, I decided, this wasn’t about exposure. It was pressure. Another line of approach. Wolfe, reaching for me through the one person he knew still had access. A reminder of where I stood, and where I was expected to remain.
Stand down.
Steer the case.
Encourage a guilty plea.
Let Razor do the time his superiors wanted him to do. Let him vanish quietly and allow the world to continue exactly as it always had. Drugs moving, money flowing, Wolfe’s pockets lined and clean.
I took my time before replying.
Because whatever this was, rushing would only give it shape.
I’m sorry I can’t be there. You’re correct in your assumption. For now, I think it’s best we maintain clear boundaries. I hope your treatment continues to go well. T.
I didn’t add a kiss. Or soften it with anything unnecessary. My father had never had patience for that sort of thing, but the bluntness felt abrasive once I’d sent it. Particularly given his health.
Still, I’d made the choice.
Not only was I waiting for my time with Razor, but now also my family.
I dropped the phone face-down onto the chaos of papers spread across my coffee table and turned back to work. Drafts. Notes. Authorities. The law had always been reliable in that way: it absorbed attention without judgement. It asked for precision, not feeling.
So I let it take all mine.
My father’s message hadn’t been the only correspondence over those four weeks. Lennon kept me informed on the other side of my life. Nothing overt. He never crossed the boundary I’d drawn by putting Razor on the phone to me. But sometimes the updates read dictated rather than relayed.
Razor was complying. Meticulously.
He stayed out of Hackney and every other postcode he’d been barred from. He made no contact with anyone from his former life, apart from phone calls to his mother and sister. No names, no shadows, no mistakes. He did exactly what he’d been told to do: stayed put.
And in doing so, he made himself useful.
Lennon reported the practicalities with faint disbelief.
Razor had become their live-in handyman.
A cabinet built from scratch for the boys’ room.
The bathroom plumbing finally fixed. Amara’s list tackled from top to bottom.
Painting, paving slabs laid in the garden, a swing set erected with the care usually reserved for structural integrity rather than children’s joy.
It sounded exhausting. Prison might have felt simpler.
The thought made me smile.
And then, inevitably, it made me ache.
Because every line told me the same thing: he was trying.
Not Razor. Not the man they’d built a case around.
But the man I’d spent that weekend with in the Chilterns.
The one I was hopelessly in love with. Strip away the name, the reputation, the violence, and what remained was him.
Richie. Good in a way that didn’t belong in any of this.
But there was danger in what he was doing.
Maybe he knew that. Because he wasn’t only sending a message to me, but to his superiors.
And to Lord Wolfe. He wasn’t negotiating.
Wasn’t folding. And whatever the formalities were still to come, Richie Slade was not going down quietly.
He was walking away from the Firm and refusing to take the fall for them.
And if he wasn’t backing down, then neither was I.
So by the time the Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing came around, I was a determined wreck.
I arrived early. Habit. Control.
Crown Court always carried a particular atmosphere at that stage of proceedings. Less spectacle than a trial. More tension than preliminaries. This was where cases stopped being theoretical and calcified. Where lines were drawn without ceremony, but with consequence.
I took my place behind counsel’s row in gown and wig, files tabbed, notes memorised rather than read. I told myself, again, that this was procedural. That I’d stood in courtrooms like this before. That I knew how to compartmentalise. This was any other hearing.
Then Imogen arrived. Gowned. Composed. And leant into me. “Good.” She glanced at my files and nodded. “You’re on your feet for this.”
“What? You’re not—?”
“I’ll be there.” She squeezed my shoulder. “But this is your hearing. Your client. Your strategy. And Tristan, whatever happens today, keep it procedural. We do not perform. Do not react. We let the court do its job.” She peered at me over her lashes. “Can you do that?”
“Yes.” I could. I would.
For more reasons than my career.
She then gave a small, approving nod and moved to take her seat behind me.
Then the dock door opened, and whatever composure I had left slid cleanly out of reach when they brought Razor in.
Because I hadn’t been prepared for the suit.
Dark brown, close enough to black to read as severity, warm enough to echo his eyes.
Perfectly cut to his broad frame. A crisp white shirt beneath it, immaculate, and a maroon tie knotted with care.
He looked composed. Contained. As if the four weeks had reshaped him rather than worn him down.
As if he’d chosen this moment.
He swept the courtroom, quick and instinctive, until his gaze settled on me. There was no expression in it I could name. Not that I should here. But my chest lurched anyway, sudden and disorienting, and I had to remind myself where I was. What this was.
I forced my eyes away first. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to. But as I did, I peered across the row and met with another familiar set of eyes watching me.
My father’s.
Seated with the CPS team, posture immaculate, suit cut perfectly despite the treatment that had reduced him, subtly but undeniably, with his gown and wig, he looked older.
Not frail. Never that, but altered. As if something had been taken and replaced with resolve.
And there was no warmth in his expression as he lingered on me.
No anger either. Only recognition, and an evaluation beneath it.
I looked away.
The judge entered. His Honour Judge Malcolm Avery KC. Senior Circuit Judge. I knew him. So would my father. He was old-school. Meticulous. Intolerant of optics problems. Not corrupt as far as I knew, but not na?ve either.
We rose.
The hearing itself unfolded exactly as it should.
Names were confirmed. Appearances noted for the record. The charge read aloud. Measured, formal, stripped of drama by repetition.
“Mr Slade.” Judge Avery looked down at the papers in front of him, then up again at Razor in the dock. “You are charged with conspiracy to supply Class A controlled drugs. How do you plead?”
I rose before Razor could so much as shift his weight. “Not guilty, my Lord.” My voice didn’t falter, and I was faintly aware of how steady it sounded, even to my own ears.
The judge nodded, making a note. “Very well. A plea of not guilty is entered.”
Across the aisle, my father stood smoothly, as if he’d anticipated the moment down to the second. “My Lord. The Crown estimates a trial length of three to four weeks, subject to disclosure.”