Chapter 16 Charity Knife
CHARITY KNIFE
CALLAHAN
Iwas still trying to convince myself that distance was strategy and not cowardice.
It wasn't working.
I sat in my flat with three laptops open, tracking financial breadcrumbs through shell companies that existed only on paper, and my mind kept circling back to firelight.
To the way Dom's hands had felt careful on purpose.
To the sound he'd made when I'd finally stopped fighting and just let him have me.
To the look on his face after, like he'd seen something in me worth keeping.
I slammed the laptop shut harder than necessary.
This was why attachments were poison. This right here. The way they bled into your focus, made you soft when you needed to be alert.
Dom hadn't called. Hadn't texted. Hadn't shown up at my door demanding explanations for why I'd left Ravenswood before dawn like a man fleeing a crime scene.
Maybe he understood. Maybe he'd realised what I'd known from the start: that whatever had happened between us was a complication neither of us could afford.
Or maybe he was just giving me space to work.
Either way, I stayed away from places where he might be. Ignored the part of me that wanted to know if he was safe, if Harrow had made moves, if the photographs we'd stolen were burning holes in his conscience the way they were burning holes in mine.
I opened the laptop again. Stared at the screen until the numbers made sense and the wanting didn't.
The charity pipeline had patterns. They always did if you knew where to look.
Harrow's preferred method was elegant in its simplicity: donations made through legitimate organisations that funnelled money to shell companies owned by people with convenient amnesia about where funding originated.
The amounts were small enough to avoid triggering automatic reviews, large enough to matter when you added them up over years.
And the timing was surgical. Donations appeared three to five days before major case decisions, before witness statements, before evidence got sealed or “lost.”
I'd been tracking one particular thread for six months.
The Victims' Justice Foundation. Clean name.
Clean website. Board members who looked respectable on paper until you dug deeper and realised half of them were lawyers who'd worked cases Harrow prosecuted, judges who'd ruled in his favour, advocates who owed their careers to his public endorsements.
The foundation was holding a gala tonight. Public-facing. Cameras everywhere. Harrow would be there, performing sainthood for an audience that wanted to believe prosecutors could be heroes.
I needed to be there too.
Not to confront him. Not yet. Just to watch. To record. To build the chain of evidence one link at a time until it was strong enough to strangle him with.
I showered. Shaved. Put on my suit. Navy, expensive enough to pass inspection, forgettable enough that people wouldn't remember my face afterward.
The foundation had rented a gallery in Mayfair.
All white walls and exposed brick, modern art that cost more than most people made in a year, champagne that tasted like regret.
I arrived early, before the crowd thickened, and found a position near the back where I could see the whole room without being obvious about it.
Harrow arrived twenty minutes later.
I watched him work a widow whose husband had been murdered three years ago.
Case Harrow had prosecuted. Conviction secured.
Justice served, at least according to the official record.
The widow didn't know Harrow had sealed evidence that might have pointed to a different killer.
Didn't know the man he'd put away had connections to people Harrow needed to protect.
She just knew the prosecutor had been kind to her, had made her feel heard, had given her the closure she'd needed to keep breathing.
Harrow hugged her. She cried into his shoulder. Cameras caught it.
My stomach turned.
This was the game. This was how corruption survived. Not through obvious evil, but through performances so convincing that even the victims applauded.
I pulled out my phone, angled it carefully, and started recording.
The camera was decent but not professional.
Good enough for documentation, not good enough to draw attention.
I captured Harrow's movements, his interactions, the faces of people who approached him with envelopes that weren't quite hidden, with handshakes that lasted too long, with whispered conversations that ended in nods.
One man in particular caught my attention.
Sixties, expensive watch, posture that screamed old money.
He approached Harrow near the bar, said something that made Harrow's smile tighten fractionally, then passed him what looked like a business card.
Harrow pocketed it without looking. The man walked away.
Thirty seconds later, Harrow followed, disappearing into a corridor marked “Staff Only.”
I gave them ten seconds, then moved.
The corridor was empty except for catering staff who were too busy to notice me. I followed the sound of voices to a door that was slightly ajar, positioned myself where I could hear without being seen.
Harrow's voice, low and controlled: “The timing isn't ideal.”
The other man, irritated: “The timing is what it is. My client needs this resolved before the appeals hearing. That's three weeks.”
“Three weeks doesn't give me much room to manoeuvre.”
“You've manoeuvred with less. The witness statement needs to disappear. The forensic review needs to conclude there's insufficient evidence for reconsideration. That's what we're paying for.”
“And if I can't deliver?”
“Then we find someone who can.” A pause. “Don't test me on this, Elliot. We've been generous. We've been patient. But generosity has limits.”
Footsteps. I moved before they could exit, slipping into a service alcove, pressing myself flat against the wall as they passed. The old-money man left first, face impassive. Harrow followed thirty seconds later, already smiling again, already sliding back into the performance.
I pulled out my phone, opened the voice recording app, and played back what I'd captured. Clear enough. Usable. Not definitive proof of bribery but strong circumstantial evidence when combined with everything else I had.
I saved the file, backed it up to three different cloud services, then deleted it from the phone. Paranoia, maybe. But paranoia had kept me alive this long.
Back in the main gallery, the speeches had started. Harrow stood at a podium, backlit by carefully positioned lights that made him look like something holy. He talked about justice. About victims. About the responsibility prosecutors carried to speak for those who couldn't speak for themselves.
He was good. I'd give him that. If I didn't know what he was, I might have believed it.
The crowd applauded. Someone near me wiped tears. I stood there cataloguing faces, memorising names from name tags, building the web of connections in my mind where it would live in perfect detail forever.
That was when Harrow's gaze found mine.
It happened mid-sentence. He was talking about a case, about bringing closure to a grieving family, and his eyes swept the room in that practiced way politicians did when they wanted to appear engaged.
Then they stopped. On me. And something shifted in his expression. Not fear. Not anger. Just recognition.
The temperature in the room dropped.
Harrow's smile never faltered. He finished his sentence, got his applause, and moved smoothly into the next point. But his eyes tracked back to me twice more before the speech ended, and each time felt like being marked.
I needed to leave. But leaving now would confirm his suspicions, would make me look guilty of something worth chasing. So I stayed. Listened to the rest of his performance. Applauded when the crowd did. Played the role of anonymous attendee who had every right to be here.
When the speeches ended and people started moving toward the bar, I disappeared.
Not obvious about it. Just drifted toward the exit with a group of other guests, blended into the flow, walked out into Mayfair night air that tasted like temporary freedom.
The street was empty except for tourists and late-night shoppers, but that didn't mean anything. Surveillance had evolved past obvious tails. Could be cameras. Could be tracking software on my phone. Could be someone patient enough to stay far enough back that I wouldn't notice.
I took the long route home. Changed directions six times. Ducked into a pub, exited through the back. By the time I reached my flat, I was reasonably certain I was alone.
Reasonably wasn't good enough, but it would have to do.
Inside, I locked the door, checked the windows, swept for bugs I knew probably weren't there but might be. Paranoia again. But the look on Harrow's face had rattled me more than I wanted to admit.
He knew I was hunting him. And if he knew that, he'd start hunting me.
My phone rang. Different number this time. I recognised it: Bishop.
“Talk,” I said.
“You need to be more careful.” Bishop's voice was flat. Professional. The tone he used when things were about to get complicated. “You were seen tonight. Harrow's people are asking questions.”
“Let them ask.”
“They're not just asking, Cal. They're moving. One of your contacts flipped. Martin Cross. He called me an hour ago, said he can't help you anymore, said it's not worth the risk.”
Martin. The courthouse clerk who'd been feeding me information about sealed files for eighteen months. Reliable. Fearful, but reliable. If he'd gone cold, it meant Harrow had gotten to him. Threatened him or paid him or convinced him that silence was safer than cooperation.
“Did he say what changed?” I asked.
“No. But he sounded scared.” Bishop paused. “How close are you to Harrow?”
“Close enough to make him nervous.”
“Close enough to make him dangerous.” Another pause, longer this time. “I'm hearing rumours. Someone's been sniffing around Ravenswood. Asking about Adrian’s people. Asking about a bodyguard with a dead sister and anger management issues.”
My chest tightened. “Dom.”
“That's the name I heard. Dominic Rourke. You know him?”
“We've met.”
“Well, someone thinks he's connected to you.
Someone's tracing threads, trying to map your network, trying to figure out who you talk to and who might be helping you.” Bishop's voice hardened.
“If you care about this man, you need to warn him. Or you need to cut him loose before Harrow uses him as leverage.”
The line went dead.
I stood there holding the phone, staring at nothing, feeling the trap close around me with the inevitability of tides.
Harrow was buying silence. Closing mouths. Cutting off my access to information before I could build something strong enough to hurt him. And now he was looking at Dom. Seeing the connection. Preparing to exploit it the way he exploited everything else.
My first instinct was to go to Ravenswood. To check on Dom. To make sure he knew Harrow was circling, that danger was coming, that staying close to me made him a target.
I didn't move.
Because going to Dom meant admitting I cared whether he lived or died. Meant admitting the connection was real, not just tactical. Meant giving Harrow exactly the leverage Bishop had warned me about.
And more than that: it meant letting Dom see me scared. Meant showing him the cracks I'd spent years hiding. Meant asking for help when I'd built my entire identity around not needing anyone.
I couldn't do it. Wouldn't.
Not when I was this close. Not when Harrow was finally making mistakes I could document.
So I made a different choice.
I opened my laptop. Pulled up everything I had on Eden.
I started planning a trap. Something that would force Harrow or his people into a position where I could record them doing something undeniable. Something that couldn't be explained away as misunderstanding or coincidence.
I'd need access to Eden's private rooms. Would need to get cameras positioned where club security wouldn't find them. Would need to create a situation that looked natural enough to pull targets in but controlled enough that I could document everything.
I pulled up Eden's business registration. Standard procedure. Know who owns what you're trying to infiltrate. Know who you're really fighting.
The name stared back at me from the screen like a punch I should have seen coming.
Owner: Adrian Calloway
I sat back. Stared at the ceiling. Laughed humourlessly.
Of course. Of course Adrian owned Eden.
Eden wasn't just a BDSM club. It was Adrian's territory. His surveillance network. His leverage machine. Every person who walked through those doors gave Adrian information he could use, connections he could exploit, secrets he could weaponise.
Which meant I couldn't just walk in there and start installing cameras without Adrian noticing. Couldn't set a trap without his security flagging me as a threat. Couldn't do any of this alone the way I'd planned.
I needed access.
I needed Dom.
The realisation settled in my chest like lead.
I pulled out my phone. Stared at Dom's contact information. Deleted the message I'd started typing. Closed the contact. Opened it again.
This wasn't about wanting to see him. This was tactical. Strategic. The smart play when your target operated on territory you couldn't access without help.
That's what I told myself.
The truth was messier. The truth was I'd spent two days avoiding Dom because I didn't know how to look at him without remembering firelight and careful hands and the way he'd seen straight through every defence I'd built.
The truth was I was terrified that going back to Ravenswood would mean admitting I needed him for more than just access to Adrian's resources.
But Harrow was moving. Buying silence. Tracing threads toward Dom. And I was out of options that didn't involve swallowing my pride and asking for help.
I closed the laptop. Stood. Paced to the window and back. Made the decision six times and unmade it five.
Then I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door before I could talk myself out of it again.