Chapter Four Tristan
Chapter FOUR
Tristan
I stepped out of The Velvet Lounge and stood there like an idiot, not sure what the hell I should do next.
It hit me then. The pathetic truth of it. Because I was waiting. For instruction. For him. Like some obedient, kept thing who didn’t know where to walk unless a hand pushed me there.
Utterly stupid.
I’d spent years hacking at the silver shackles of my family, trying to carve out independence molecule by bloody molecule, only to discover I actually wanted shackles. Just those of a very different kind.
Razor’s.
Christ.
I was in an absolute daze.
Eight months of wondering if he was dead. Of swinging between fury and grief. Drowning myself in alcohol and watching my friendships slide through my fingers because there was only ever one person in my head. Then tonight, he’d been real.
Alive.
Breathing.
Thriving.
That did things to me.
No, I’m not stupid. I’m a defence barrister.
I know crime when I see it. I know men like him.
But looking up at that building, restaurant above, club beneath, humming with neon and sweat and secrets, and knowing he owned half of it?
I couldn’t explain what that stirred in me.
Pride wasn’t the word. Turned on was closer.
Maybe I was my father after all. Getting turned on by prospects.
And I stood on the pavement in the thick, humming heat of a July night in Soho where the streets buzzed, music leaking from every doorway, strangers laughing too loudly, taxis crawling past with their windows down, wearing his shirt, his scent in the collar, sweat dried on the fabric, wanting him to bolt out of the door.
Leave it all behind. To grab me. Kiss me.
Tell me it wasn’t another one-off. That he’d been thinking about me too.
And then we’d… what? Run off into the sunset?
Ignore the brutal reality that none of this could ever work.
That we were from different worlds, built wrong for each other, destined to tear one another apart?
“Tristan!”
I spun around, heart leaping stupidly into my throat. It wasn’t him. Of course, it wasn’t. The voice came from the open window of a chauffeured car idling across the road. And inside the back seat was Lord Wolfe.
My stomach dropped.
I snapped my spine straight, slapped on my barrister mask. “Adrian.”
Then I remembered I should be angry. He’d left me mid-dinner.
Me—Tristan Hale-Fitzroy—invited by Charles Hale-Fitzroy, the one man in London no one with political ambition dared offend.
Wolfe might pull strings in Westminster, but even he didn’t want to tangle with my father.
Plus, I wasn’t supposed to know the reason for his departure had been because Razor had seen him with me and demanded it so.
A spark of fire hit my gut at that.
The car door opened, and Wolfe stepped out, scanning both sides of the road as he fastened his blazer. Composed, immaculate, not a hair out of place.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said.
Not sorry. Never sorry. Wolfe didn’t apologise.
He offered catalogued fragments resembling one.
“I was called away unexpectedly. An urgent message.”
A lie. A polished, expensive lie.
He slid his gaze over me. “Weren’t you in a white shirt earlier?”
I glanced down at Razor’s too-big black one. “No.”
I could also lie. As polished and as rich.
He frowned, then smoothed it away in the space of a breath.
But it sparked something in my mind. Because what, exactly, could’ve dragged Lord Wolfe away from a dinner he arranged?
It hadn’t been brute force as there wasn’t a wrinkle on him.
Nor a threat. He would’ve called the police before anyone laid a hand on him, and he wouldn’t be calmly waiting in his car for me now.
So then… what? What power did Razor have over him?
What request could Wolfe, of all people, have obeyed without protest?
He’d left the table like a man obeying an order. Not avoiding a danger.
My interest sharpened.
“I didn’t intend to leave you sitting alone.” Wolfe squeezed my arm. “Your father was kind enough to agree to the introduction. I would never disrespect that… or you.”
Under the soft voice and impeccable manners, I felt the truth writhing. Wolfe wasn’t apologising. He was covering tracks. Tracks someone far more dangerous had forced him to abandon.
“Let me make it up to you.” He gestured towards the waiting car. “I know a lovely little Italian place near my apartment in Notting Hill. Come.”
“It’s late, and I have court tomorrow.”
“Then at least allow me to take you home, hm?” He stepped in again. “You don’t want to be on that tube in this heat.”
I absolutely did. I wanted distance. Air.
Out of this man’s gravity. Something about him set my nerves humming, the fine hairs along my arms lifting as if I’d brushed too close to a live wire.
It wasn’t just the familiarity, or that he knew my father, and my father had given his approval like a guarantee of safety.
The feeling sat deeper than that. Older. Instinctive.
I told myself it was leftover adrenaline. That I was still wound tight after Razor. That guilt had made me jumpy.
But the unease didn’t settle.
Adrian wasn’t looking at me as if he were making an offer. He was measuring. Waiting. As though my answer was already accounted for.
“Actually, Adrian.” I forced lightness into my voice, “I called Henry while I was in there. He’s on the picket line at St Thomas’s, and I promised to bring him something to keep him going until morning.”
Wolfe paused. “Henry Redmayne?”
“That’s right. And since he insists on escort duty after a few of my more… unfortunate dating experiences, the least I can do is support his fight for fair pay and humane working conditions.”
“Decent friend.” What he meant was: inconvenient obstacle.
I offered a bright, empty smile. “Perhaps we should rearrange? I promise not to tell my father you abandoned me mid-dinner.”
A flicker crossed Wolfe’s face. Annoyance? Relief? Hard to tell with men like him.
“Of course. We’ll arrange something far more… memorable.” He extended his hand. I shook it reluctantly, but he didn’t release. Instead, he pulled me in, his lips brushing my ear. “Perhaps we could skip dinner entirely and go straight to… dessert.”
My stomach twisted.
He pulled back, winked, then gestured towards Piccadilly Circus station glowing at the corner of the street.
“Go on. I’ll see you safely there.”
What choice did I have? Argue on the pavement while he loomed over me?
No. I needed out of his orbit. So I headed towards the station lights, with Piccadilly Circus glowing behind me.
Neon, tourists, hot July air clinging to the skin as if the city were sweating.
Wolfe’s gaze burnt between my shoulder blades the whole time, and I was thankful when I could get underground.
Westminster station spat me out onto the Embankment.
Parliament loomed. The river stank faintly of algae and heat.
I ducked into the late-night Tesco, grabbed crisps, Lucozade, flapjacks.
Strike fuel. Then crossed the bridge towards St Thomas’s, where the junior doctors’ picket line stretched beneath the streetlamps.
Even at this time of night the line was alive.
High-vis vests. Homemade placards. The rhythmic chant carrying across the Thames.
Cars beeped in support, a warm wave of sound rising above the traffic.
And I found Henry in the middle of it all, sweat-soaked scrubs under an NHS-branded vest, hair pushed back haphazardly.
He brightened the moment he saw the plastic bag.
“Lifesaver.” He took the bag from me and passed out the snacks to exhausted colleagues. “How was dinner with Lord Wolfe?”
A lorry honked; Henry spun, waving his placard—￡15 an hour isn’t fair pay for seven years of training. Someone behind him yelled, “Thank you!”
I agreed with the sentiment. Hard not to, when I saw how hard Henry worked for pennies.
Though the hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. Henry and I were both cushioned by family money while shouting about wages.
And still: as a pupil barrister, I was on less than the juniors here.
Barely twenty grand for six-day weeks, late nights, and wearing suits costing more than my monthly rent.
“It was… eventful.” I bit my lip.
“Oh, Tris. You didn’t—” Henry then checked out my clothes. “That can’t be your shirt, surely?”
I pulled my blazer tighter around myself. “It was all I had.”
“Go shopping, Tris. Or get your mother to go for you.”
Before he could say anything else, the chanting surged into song of an improvised chorus someone had started down the line. Saved through collective bargaining.
“I’ll catch you Saturday,” I called over it.
“Right-oh!” Henry yelled back, joining in with the singing, raising his placard high as another car beeped its support.
So I crossed the bridge and got back on the Piccadilly Line with its usual late-night half-asleep tourists slumped over their bags, someone eating something aggressively smelly with zero remorse.
The carriage lights glimmered as the train clattered out of neon-lit central London and towards the quieter, saner stretch of West London I called home.
A few stops later, I stepped out into the soft hush of Barons Court. Cooler air.
I walked the familiar route back to my flat, the second floor of a converted Edwardian townhouse, its red brick glowing faintly under the streetlamps, and climbed the steps to the entrance, let myself into the narrow communal hallway, then up the creaking staircase to my floor.
Unlocked my door. Stepped inside the quiet, lived-in stillness of my space.
And no, I’m not even embarrassed to admit it.
I kept Razor’s shirt on when I crawled into bed.
Of course I did.
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