Page 13 of Corrupt

Possession.

All the things I shouldn’t feel for him.

The things I felt anyway.

Things I shouldn’t…no, couldn’t shake off.

“You didn’t walk away then?” Tristan asked quietly, eyes wide and, Christ, hopeful. “Sort of thought that would be why I hadn’t seen you.”

There it was. The thing I’d been ducking for eight months. That look. That fucking hope. I could take a knife to the ribs better than that expression. At least a knife made sense. This…him wanting something from me never did. Never would. Cause no one should want anything from me other than my gear or my protection.

“We both knew that weren’t possible.”

He probably thought he’d saved me that night. Body and soul. Thought I was one of those hard-luck cases he collects on his moral conscience. People who got chewed up by poverty and bad choices and needed rescuing.

Truth was, most of us who ended up here? We got ourselves here. Maybe not at first. But at some point, we stayed. We played along. We took the easy money, the protection, the reputation. I did. I wasn’t some tragedy for him to fix. I was a man who made his bed in blood and cocaine and then lay in it ’cause it was warmer than the cold I’d come from.

Yeah, I was stuck. No, I couldn’t walk without a fight. But there wasn’t fuck all else for me outside the Firm to risk the thought of it. What did I offer the world? A fist, a temper, and a smart mouth. That was it. And what was waiting for me if I got out? Nothing. And looking at Tricky now, at that fragile hope that his world made sense, made me hate myself for exactly that. Made me question why I hadn’t followed Lennon after Levi passed. Why I didn’t graft legit somewhere instead of sliding back into the life waiting for me. Why every choice I made dragged me further from him.

He dropped his gaze with a small nod, as if bracing for impact.

I hooked my finger under his chin and forced his eyes back to mine. “Never got to thank you, though.”

And, fuck me, the way he looked at me then almost made me wish I’d been someone worth thanking.

“Probably best you don’t.”

I dropped my hand. “Fair enough.”

I should’ve walked. Should’ve turned and left right then. Should’ve made this the clean break. But everything about him—his eyes, his heat, his fucking existence—pulled me in like gravity. I knew this would ruin me. I knew touching him again was a death sentence in my world.

Somehow, I didn’t care.

So I kissed him. Lazy. Consuming. Wrecked. And my hands went to his hips as his slid under my shirt, making me want things I had no business wanting. Until voices in the corridor broke us apart, along with boxes scraping, then a hand on the doorknob, pulling it down.

“Shit.” I grabbed the handle before it could crack open, then shoved Tristan behind the door with one arm, out of sight and plastered on a calm I didn’t feel as I yanked it open.

“Razor?” Tyler flinched, serving girl half-hidden behind him. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

I filled the doorway with my body, blocking the view, keeping Tristan concealed behind me where neither of them could see a shadow of him.

I looked Tyler dead on. “Checking no cunt’s sneaking off in work time.”

He jolted. “Oh. Right. Yeah.” He tugged the girl’s hand awkwardly. “We were just…uh—”

“She should be serving my customers. Not you.”

Tyler stiffened, nodding fast. “Course. Won’t happen again.”

He backed off, pulling the girl with him.

But he didn’t break eye contact. And something passed over his face. Confusion, calculation, the hint of a question he didn’t know how to ask. Because he’d never seen me this… off. Hiding someone. Too defensive of a space. He didn’t know why. Wouldn’t have seen who. And had no reason yet to suspect.

Something in him clocked difference though.

Causing a hairline crack in the blind trust he’d always had.

I shut the door and looked at Tristan. His shirt ripped open, hanging off one shoulder, biting his tongue as if he somehow understood the danger without knowing the half of it. So I reached out, grabbed the torn fabric, and ripped the rest clean off him. I folded it once, screwed it into a ball, and tossed it into a pile of mops and bleach-stained rags.