Page 1 of Crave

Chapter One

Tristan

“Mate.” I slumped against the taxi door, watching Benji raise his black Amex to his nose and sniff a line off the corner of his inheritance. “We’ve been in the car five fucking minutes.”

Benji’s pupils blew wide, grin brighter than Soho’s Strip. “Pre-game, darling. You think I’m stepping into East London sober? Their drink measures are barbaric.”

“How would you know?” I arched an eyebrow.

He answered by snorting another bump.

“You’re going to end up dead in a gutter.” Zara, opposite him, checked her lip gloss in her compact, then snapped it shut. “And I’m not carrying you home.”

“Course you would.” Benji wiped his nose. “You’d sell the story to the Mail first. Exclusive rights. ‘Tragic Guildhall Star Overdoses in Dalston’. Front-page material.” He winked, as if that was his life goal.

It probably was.

We laughed. Even Henry. Though his came out thin, tight, already over it.

Outside, London staggered past the window looking exactly how the night felt: half-cut, mascara-smudged, spilling sins across wet pavements. Neon bled into the rain-slick glass until the city became a blur of grime and light. A place where anything could happen and usually did. And we were here to take what it offered. Why wouldn’t we? We told ourselves we could afford the damage. That was a lie that came free with money. And as our cab curved east where the glass towers thinned into council blocks, old warehouses rose from the dark, gutted and reborn as temples of bass and strobe light, this night threatened to slip outside of our usual curated chaos.

I could already tell.

But this detour was on me. I’d dragged us out of the champagne bubble of our usual haunts and into borrowed grit, following a glowing icon on my phone, Ollie’s name pulsing beneath it. My boyfriend. Two years. The man I’d turned down the golden inheritance of the Hale-Fitzroy tradition for — Harrow to Oxford, law polished and predestined — finishing my Bar training and then choosing a Master’s instead of applying for pupillage, to stretch the time we had together. As if proximity could rewrite the script my family had already written for me. And that man I’d taken the hits for? He’d sworn he was working late.

Working. Right.

I should’ve guessed then.

Ollie never had to work a day in his life. Whilst he wasn’t the level of elite that this private taxi had in its back seats, his father still ran a private equity firm with fingers in every pie worth tasting. Property developments, security contracts, even whispers of defence deals. Old money turned new power, an empire crushing people while looking charitable in the press. And occasionally, Ollie played at being useful, shadowing board meetings or visiting the offices, but that was theatre, not necessity. So why his location pinged here, in this part of the city, a place his father’s tailor-made suits and hand-stitched footwear never touched, where the only equity was measured in bruised knuckles and counterfeit pills, was something I wanted to find out.

I’d always been a bit too intuitive for my own good.

Zara frowned at me. “You alright, Tris? You’ve gone awfully quiet.”

I nodded. Said nothing. And I could feel Henry’s eyes on me, assessing how much of this I could take.

But Benji handed over a bottle of Macallan Rare Cask, a whisky meant for mahogany studies and crystal tumblers, not sloshing from sweaty hands in the back of a taxi, ridding us of any thoughts as to how this might ruin us. That was Benji, though. Chaos stitched into couture, grinning as though money bought immunity from consequences. Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s golden alumni, a trust fund wrapped in sequins and anarchy. He was exhausting. Impossible, most of the time. But he was mine. As were the other two in the car. The people who’d learnt how to catch me when I tipped too far. Who knew my tells, my silences, the precise moment charm became collapse.

We’d all grown up cushioned, yes.

But cushions still bruised when you fell hard enough.

I tipped the whisky back, letting the fire roll through my chest, a heat fierce enough to keep my doubts at bay for a few more heartbeats. The bag came next, a casual flick of Benji’s wrist, as if passing sweets at prep school. I took it but slipped it into my pocket. I had no intention of using it. Cocaine was a sometime indulgence. Ollie’s indulgence, really. For those nights he wanted to keep going—keep me going—until dawn turned sickly and unrecognisable. Tonight, though, I knew powder wouldn’t be my friend.

Not where this night headed.

Zara bent forward, dark hair tumbling down to her knees as she, elegant and unapologetic, took her line clean. Henry winced. Not in disgust, but the way he always did when things tipped from reckless into unsafe. He had the same expression my father wore when I’d told him I wasn’t joining the family counsel and instead doing my master’s in criminal justice. Though, unlike my father with me, Henry slid his arm around Zara. Dutiful. Automatic. And he, of course, shook his head at Benji’s offering. He didn’t need coke to stay wired. Surgical rotations and med school case notes kept his perfect little mind busy. He was rehearsing his destiny where he’d be saving lives, ticking boxes, becoming exactly what the world expected of him.

I didn’t need to rehearse mine.

I‘d been given my script early on.

“Oh, cheer up, you grumpy sausage.” Zara slapped my knee, nails flashing scarlet, before dropping her head back onto Henry’s shoulder. “You’ll see; it’s nothing. Ollie’s halo will still be polished when we arrive.”

Of course she’d say that. Zara was the reason I’d met Ollie in the first place. At one of her parents’ parties, all chandeliers and champagne flutes, thrown in some desperate attempt to prove they belonged on cash row with the rest of the elite. Because Zara was money, yes. But money with edges. Her parents had built their empire on high-end members-only clubs. Sex parties dressed in velvet. Old scandal packaged as luxury. She wore it well, but it clung to her, faintly gaudy against the backdrop of Mayfair polish. And even though I was fairly sure she and Henry were fucking, though Henry wouldn’t admit it, I knew she couldn’t stick. See, my bestie came from higher prestige than all of us put together. His family brushed against royalty. Distant titles, ancestral estates, all the dull grandeur making him believe he’d been born to ride in luxury vehicles with unblemished leather.

Zara was the Mercedes he’d drive until the Bentley finally came home.