Chapter Twenty-One Tristan
Chapter twenty-one
Tristan
Several weeks later…
Friday dinner at the Hale-Fitzroys was an exercise in control.
Silver laid like armour, crystal gleaming, conversation rehearsed to the note.
I’d thought about skipping it. Even had my excuse ready. Something about work or a paper due. But Mother called. And had that tone. The one that meant appearances matter, darling.
Father sat at the head of the table, papers stacked beside his plate because even Dover sole meunière wasn’t exempt from his courtroom rituals.
Marcus was halfway through a glass of claret, gesturing grandly as he filled the air with talk of markets and mergers.
Eloise, his wife, abstained. Something about hormones and “trying again,” as if conception were a performance for polite applause.
Amelia picked at her potatoes, phone hidden under the table until Mother hissed her name with the precision of a sniper.
I hadn’t seen them in weeks. I’d been avoiding it. Guilt, mostly. And fear.
Fear that I’d drifted too close to the things that landed squarely in my father’s jurisdiction. It would be quite the scandal if Charles Hale-Fitzroy KC ever found himself prosecuting his own son.
Yes, I wanted to stand opposite him in court one day.
But as counsel, not the accused.
I’d heard what had gone down, of course.
The papers couldn’t shut up about it: Massive East London drug sting.
Fifteen arrests. Two dead. They’d called it one of the most significant operations in years.
I’d read enough headlines to piece together the broad strokes.
A turf war between rival crews, a suspected leak inside the network, and a carefully timed police raid gutting the Ghost Crew overnight.
No other major players named. No leader identified.
Which meant someone had walked away clean.
And part of me, the part that couldn’t sleep, already knew who.
Not that I knew where he was.
Razor had been staying away from me in the same way I had my family.
Of course, unless Razor was dead.
Father prodded his Dover sole, not eating, just rearranging it, as if perfect symmetry might make it taste like something. Across the table, Marcus dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin, eager to fill the silence and, as always, to perform for Father’s appraisal.
“It’s been chaos all week at work.” He pitched his voice towards our father. “Home Office’s thrilled. Half the papers are calling it a flagship operation. Minister’s been dining out on it ever since.”
Father’s smile was thin. “As he should be. Multi-agency coordination on that scale doesn’t happen often. MIU, NCA, Met, CPS. For once, everyone remembered they’re on the same side. We’ll be using it as a template for future enforcement.”
“So it’s official then?” Marcus asked. “The network’s down?”
“Largely.” Father took a sip of wine. “Two fatalities, fifteen in custody. They’re calling it a complete dismantling of the organisation. Lines seized, communications frozen. There’s talk of further arrests once the statements are verified.”
Two fatalities. Unnamed. My stomach clenched.
Marcus leant back, satisfied. “They always talk once they see what’s ahead.”
Father’s tone cooled. “One of the detainees has indicated a willingness to cooperate. If the CPS confirms material assistance, he may see leniency as he’s still technically a minor at seventeen.
He’s described an extended supply chain across borough lines.
Hackney, Bethnal Green, Roman Road. Early intelligence suggests overlap with O’Rourke’s network. ”
Marcus refilled his glass. “If that holds, that’s a headline case. Nice work.”
“It’s ongoing.” Father suddenly coughed, reaching for his napkin. “But we’re confident. The digital evidence is consistent. Once the analysts finalise correlation, we’ll have a clear picture.”
Marcus chuckled. “You make it sound like a chess match.”
“It is.” Father suddenly coughed into a napkin, then wiped his mouth and scrunched the cloth into his pocket. “The law always is.”
I sat there, fork in hand, stomach hollow.
“Tristan.” Mother tapped my hand. “You’ve barely touched your food.”
I forced a smile. “Just tired.”
Father carried on. “Next phase is asset recovery. Property, vehicles, financials. It’s remarkable how efficient justice becomes when everyone stops moralising and simply enforces.”
Marcus raised his glass. “A good week for the system.”
The system.
I stared into the polished silver, my reflection warped in the curve of the spoon. Pale, still, uncertain which side of that system I belonged to anymore.
Father lifted his wine again. “If this holds, we’ll have traced the chain from street to supplier. A perfect study in hierarchy.”
“Or a perfect example of it,” I mumbled under my breath.
Though Father heard.
“What was that, Tristan?”
I lifted my wine glass. “Congratulations, Father. A job well done.”
“Hm.” His mouth twisted. “And how’s your thesis coming along?”
“It’s…” I swirled the wine, watching the reflection tremble against the crystal.
The truth was, it had stalled weeks ago.
In fact, I’d quit the Master’s without telling Father yet.
There wasn’t a clear way I could look at sentencing data without seeing faces anymore.
Real people. Breathing, bleeding, trying to survive the stories men like my father wrote about. “Nearly finished,” I lied.
“Marvellous. And after that?”
The question wasn’t really a question. It was an expectation. A doorway built for me to step through. He was waiting for me to say I’d come to chambers, to stand beside him and Marcus, another link in the chain of control.
I set my glass down. “I’ll take some time away. Do something less…structured.”
What I didn’t say was that I was already applying for pupillage. Quietly. Carefully. Chambers of my own choosing. No introductions, no legacy favours, and no hand on my back steering me towards the life he’d mapped out. If I was going to train at the Bar, it would be on my terms.
Or not at all.
“Don’t waste your potential, Tristan. The law doesn’t wait for those who hesitate.”
By potential, he meant privilege.
“Stay the weekend, won’t you, darling?” Mother interjected, her tone all silk and choreography, steering the conversation back to glossy and harmless. “Let’s have another spa day. Amelia’s coming, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
Amelia glanced up, startled, before flicking her eyes back to her phone. “Yes, Mother,” she said absently, resuming her frantic tap across her group chat.
“Sorry, Mother.” I polished off the last of my fish. “I promised Henry and Zara I’d be back tonight. It’s Henry’s final evening before he goes on rotation.”
“Rotation?” she echoed, as if I’d mentioned a foreign custom.
“He’s starting his first trauma placement at Guys and St Thomas’s. Fourteen-hour shifts in A&E. Sleep deprivation. People bleeding on him. Hardly restful.”
Mother wrinkled her nose, that faint, offended twitch she reserved for things she found both vulgar and inconvenient.
“How ghastly. I never understood why Henry Redmayne chose medicine.” She waved a hand. “He could have done something far less… exhausting.”
“He likes helping people.” I took a sip of wine, trying to erase the memory of him patching up Razor without a word. “He’ll make an excellent doctor.”
“Perhaps he’ll practise privately,” Mother mused. “NHS doctors spend more time on the picket line than in the wards these days.”
I didn’t bother explaining why junior doctors were striking.
She wouldn’t have understood, or comprehended, how not everyone came into medicine cushioned by the soft buoyancy of wealth Henry Redmayne had.
And that Henry, of all people, would stand shoulder to shoulder with them precisely because he could afford to.
One of life’s many ironies she’d never recognise.
I left around ten, taking a car back to Clerkenwell.
The house was quiet. Zara and Henry probably not asleep, but in bed.
I hadn’t lied about the placement, but I knew Henry had wanted that night with her.
He wasn’t avoiding me exactly, but he was.
.. cautious. As if unsure which version of me he’d get anymore.
I hadn’t told him who Razor was, what had happened.
Not a word. And in doing so, I’d nudged him closer to Zara than I’d meant to. She was the golden one now.
Especially next to me.
Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe they would prove that love was thicker than bloodline after all.
I went straight to my room, crawled into bed with a bottle of wine and my laptop.
Never a good mix, but it was routine now.
Because that’s where I reread case files, scanning for any trace of him.
Razor. Richie. Richard. Anything that might prove he existed somewhere in the system.
But there wasn’t anything. He’d wiped his line clean. Like I’d told him to.
Erased himself.
From there and from my life.
I drifted my gaze to the open window. The same one he’d climbed out of.
It hadn’t been touched since.
Sighing, I took a long swallow from the bottle and set it down beside me. Then, because I couldn’t help myself, because I never can, I opened a new tab. Tried a new search term. One that made me heart thud painfully.
Levi. Drug death. Hackney. Lennon.
I hit search.
The results loaded slowly, the spinning wheel mocking my impatience. Then most of it was noise. Police reports behind paywalls, drug forums full of speculation, dated Hackney news about raids and overdoses. Then one headline stopped me.
Man, 20, found dead in suspected overdose. Police link death to contaminated batch circulating in East London.
The name hit like a punch.
Levi Foster.