Page 70 of Claim

Then quietly, “So a kid and her baby are what? Left in the path of danger?”

I closed my eyes again. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you back. Not on this number.”

A huff of laughter. “On a burner?”

I smiled despite myself. “And you can answer with whatever greeting you like.”

“He’s a fucking lucky man, that Richie Slade.”

“With friends like you, he is.”

I ended the call, opened my laptop, and stopped thinking like a man in love.

And started thinking like a lawyer with no margin for error.

Informing wasn’t a solution. It was a trade.

People liked to pretend informing was an exit. Say the right names, trade the right secrets, and walk away. But at best, it meant survival through erasure: a life stripped down to conditions, compliance, and constant monitoring, valued only while useful. At worst, it meant dying twice. Once to the people who’d raised him, and again to himself.

Razor had already lived under control his entire adult life, first by men with knives and rules written in blood, and informing would only swap them for men in suits and surveillance logs. Different language. Same outcome. The state didn’t protect out of mercy; it protected assets. And when the asset was spent, so was the protection. That wasn’t freedom.

So I had to give him the only thing that might be—a legal way out.

One that didn’t require erasing him to save him.

Which meant that now, immediately, I had to get his sister out of harm’s way. And my first instinct was my flat. Baron’s Court. I could ask Henry to take me in. He had a three-bed semi in Chiswick I could rent out the spare room from. Then move Keeley and the baby into my place. On paper, it was neat. No one would blink at me moving back in with my oldest friend from Harrow.

But that solution collapsed the moment I followed it through.

My flat was owned by my father. He could drop by at any moment. I couldn’t tell him I was subletting it to a defendant’s sister. Plus, Wolfe knew where that flat was, and if he was already circling this case, alert to any overlap between my professional life and my personal one, I could not risk him catching a scent trail leading back to me.

I could ask Henry to take them all instead. Keeley. The baby. Even her mother. But Henry still orbited Zara in that maddening way men did when they pretended they were finished with someone. Pot, kettle, yes, I know. But Zara worked in Westminster. Adjacent, at best, to Lord Wolfe’s ecosystem. That was not shelter. That was exposure.

Next option: the local authority.

On paper, Keeley qualified. Minor. Infant. Property tied to organised crime. Clear safeguarding concerns. I could frame it as a child-in-need referral and push for emergency accommodation. In reality? That meant hotels. Temporary placements. And a process that would first explore family placements. Keeley’s parents, the baby’s father’s family, anyone who could plausibly step in would be asked first. People I could not trust to say no. People who might mean well and still hand her straight back into danger. And even if I could force it through, local authorities were stretched thin. Brutally so. Without police escalation, she would sit low on the priority list. Waiting. Exposed.

I leant back in my chair, heaving out a sigh.

Fuck.

Here I was, a Hale-Fitzroy, with access to property, money, influence, and not a single way to use it cleanly without contaminating the case or putting her at further risk.

I picked up my pen, then hurled it across the desk. It clipped the frame of a family photograph of us at Marcus and Eloise’s wedding.

The irony tasted bitter.

Privilege everywhere.

And not a single safe place to put a sixteen-year-old girl and her baby.

Then it hit me like a fucking bolt.

I stood, grabbed my stuff, and ran out of Chambers.

CHapter twelve

Tristan