Page 100 of Corrupt

That surprised me. And caught in my throat before I could stop it.

I scrubbed a hand over my face, forced myself upright. Get it together. Feelings later. First things first. The burner. I pulled it out of the glove box.

My stomach dropped.

Missed calls. Too many of them. Tyler. Over and over. Messages stacked beneath, unread. Shit. I’d been off-grid longer than I’d realised, but this wasn’t him panicking over nothing. Tyler could handle a quiet day or two. This was something else.

I hit callback.

“Razor. Nice of you to check in.”

My spine went rigid. Every muscle in my body locked at once.

“Cormac.” The name tasted wrong in my mouth. “Where’s Tyler?”

A pause. Long enough to hurt.

“He’s right here with me, lad. Me and Doyle. Bit tied up at the moment, though.”

Cold flooded my veins. Proper, bone-deep ice.

“What’s happened?” I kept my voice level. Professional. As if my heart wasn’t trying to beat its way out of my chest.

“He went a bit… rogue.” Cormac’s voice was all smooth familiarity. It was unnerving. “Thought outside the box you should’ve had him in. That’s not clever, Razor. You know my line. You know how this works.”

I swallowed. Hard.

“And if you still want arms and legs on your boy, you might want to get yourself down to the Battersea warehouse. Now.” His tone shifted, silk pulling tight over steel. “And bring your weapon of choice. I don’t like getting my hands dirty.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone.

Then I dropped it onto the passenger seat and gripped the wheel. The image of Tristan walking away burnt behind my eyes. The warmth of him. The promise I’d let myself believe in for all of five reckless minutes.

Gone.

Just like that.

I started the engine and pulled out into traffic, the city swallowing me whole again as I drove straight back into the life I’d just tried, stupidly, to step away from. By the time I hit the bridge, my hands stopped shaking.

That was worse.

Traffic crawled, scorching sun bleeding across the tarmac to make it look as if it might melt. London never did fare well in the heat. But I drove on instinct, emptying my head of anything that might slow me down. No Tristan. No balcony. No hands in my hair. I couldn’t afford him in my head right then.

I needed Razor.

Battersea slid into view in slabs of concrete and half-finished glass, cranes clawing at the oddly blue sky, regeneration trying to paper over old bones. Cormac always liked places like this. In-between spaces. Places no one looked at too closely because they were meant to disappear soon, anyway.

Same as how he’d found me on the estate in Hackney.

The pin he’d sent took me off the main road, down a stretch of broken tarmac lined with temporary fencing and dead streetlamps. The warehouse sat back from the road, squat and ugly, windows blacked out, roller door half-raised like a mouth waiting to swallow me. Two cars were parked. Familiar plates. I pulled up beside them and sat for a beat.

That was the last moment I got to choose who I was.

I got out of the car.

The warehouse swallowed sound. Cold, stale air pressed in from every direction, thick with damp, oil, and that sharp metallic tang that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. The lights were on. Harsh industrial strips bolted to the ceiling casting everything in a sick, unforgiving white, leaving nowhere to hide. The space itself was almost bare. Concrete floor. Pallets stacked along one wall. A scattering of tools pushed to the edges, as if the centre of the room had been deliberately cleared. And in that centre, a metal chair had been bolted to the floor. Tyler tied to it.