Page 13 of Claim

The observation sat between us, neither accusation nor defence.

“I’m not looking to be arranged.” I went back to my case notes. “Not by you, not by Mother, and certainly not by Lord Wolfe.”

“I’d assumed as much.”

“Then why raise it?”

He considered that, drifting his gaze to the window. “Because attention from men like Adrian Wolfe is seldom incidental. And because, whether I like the shape of it or not, it would be… advantageous to you.”

“Advantageous?”

“Of course. And your mother is correct about one thing.”

I waited.

“You’ve been alone longer than you ordinarily permit yourself to be.”

The observation struck deeper than I allowed to show. Perhaps because it was accurate. My history hadn’t been one of abstinence. Far from it. Before Ollie, I bounced from one boy to the next. Then two years of investment begun at nineteen and undone in one decisive collapse. And after that… Razor.

A complication I refused to catalogue too closely.

I drew a steadying breath, closing my eyes, as if that might lock the thought away.

“I don’t have time for boyfriends.” The word stuck. Not because it was untrue, but because it wasn’t the whole truth. I had time. But that time was the problem. In that the only prospective boyfriend I wanted possessed a disproportionate amount of it. Years. A sentence measured in scrapes on a cell wall. “And let’s not pretend we’ve forgotten that my last attempt—two full years—ended with a liar, a cheat, and an extravagant misuse of the Hale-Fitzroy seal of approval.”

“Hm.” Father looked away. “Perhaps. But solitude, Tristan, much like ambition, tends to become a habit if left unexamined.”

I didn’t have the chance to respond before Father’s phone buzzed.

He glanced at it, frowned, then answered. “Charles Hale-Fitzroy.”

I went back to annotating a CPS update, highlighting a reference to intelligence that wasn’t attached to anything tangible. Sloppy. Or deliberate. I made a note to cross-check later.

My father listened in silence for a moment, expression merging from listening to…concerned.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “I’m aware.” Pause. “No, I don’t think that’s wise.”

I stilled. Then peered up under my lashes. Not because of what he was saying, but the tone he was using. That was his courtroom voice. The one he brought out when someone was trying to sell him a position he didn’t respect. The same voice he’d used when I’d told him I wasn’t applying for pupillage and was taking another year instead. With Ollie.

To be fair, he’d been right. I had been wasting myself.

Still. Life had taken a rather violent turn since then.

“I understand the reasoning.” Irritation sharpened the edge of his voice, and he looked ready to rise from the chair, only the lines and wires preventing him. “But optics aren’t the same as justice.”

I made a show of not listening. It fooled no one, least of all me. My father didn’t take calls like this unless something important had gone wrong and I’d never had much talent for minding my own business.

“I’m not disputing the intelligence; I’m questioning the strategy.” Another pause. Longer this time.

I looked up.

He drifted his gaze to the window with that familiar internal calculus playing out behind his eyes.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I know who he is. Dropping active pursuit doesn’t make the problem disappear. It just relocates it…I’m saying prolonged remand without charge is going to look very bad if this ever sees daylight. You can’t simply allow it to drift because his solicitor has stepped back.” Silence. Then, sharper: “That’s precisely why it needs managing. If there’s no defence pressure, the optics worsen, not improve.”

He listened again, jaw tightening.

“Yes. I understand resource constraints. I’m saying the absence of challenge invites scrutiny.” A beat. “Put interim cover in place. At least on paper. Temporary is fine.” Another pause. “No. Not a KC yet. That escalates it unnecessarily.” Then he ended the call with a clipped, “Keep me informed.”