Jude narrowed his eyes behind the crooked line of his glasses, and he nudged them up his nose, studying Warren as if he was an essay to mark. “Alright. Who are you, then? And what exactly are you risking by being here?”
Warren drew in a breath, let it out slow. “I’m Detective Sergeant Warren Beckford. Seconded from the Met, where I’ve spent most of my career working organised crime. Ten years undercover. My bread and butter is cracking the underbelly. Trafficking, drugs, men you don’t want near your family. A bad op pulled me out of the Met and into SEROCU. This one was meant to test me. Make sure I was still fit for purpose.” He let out a bitter snort. “Irony, eh? That ten-year career and second chance not to be benched is what I’m risking here.”
He dragged a hand down his face, a rough exhale slipping out. “But if you’re asking who I am, not the warrant card, then I’m South London born and bred. British Jamaican. Grandparents came over on the Windrush, grafted hard so the rest of us could stand on our own two feet. I’ve got two sisters—one older, one younger—and both a bloody menace. Always found new ways to get in trouble until they both found their other halves and got married. Their teen years were the worst. I was lucky, football and rugby kept me off the streets where most the lads on my estate ended up.”
Jude tilted his head. “So you were never a PE teacher?”
“Yes. Actually, I was.” Warren leaned back, letting the memories surface. “For a year. Straight out of uni. Full disclosure—did Sport and Exercise Science at St Mary’s inTwickenham. Came out with a 2:1, went straight into my PGCE. First job was at St Bon’s in East Ham. Paid the bills while I sat the Met entrance tests.”
Jude adjusted his glasses. “What made you want to join the police?”
Warren huffed, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Pretty sure you know the history. Where I grew up, police and community don’t exactly see eye to eye. Stop and search was a daily soundtrack if you were a Black kid in South London. I knew that better than most.” He glanced over to Jude’s bookshelf for a moment and all the books on British history. “But I also saw the other side. A bust went down on my street. Proper heavy guys lifted out of a house. And the one leading it?” Warren let the pride show in his smile. “Black officer. Standing there, pulling out men who’d been poisoning the neighbourhood for years. And something about that stuck. Made me think maybe we didn’t always have to be on opposite sides of the line.”
He looked back at Jude. “That’s when I knew. I wanted my family to be safe. Wanted kids on my street to know the police could be on their side too. Best way to prove it? Join up. Be in the room. Be one of the ones making the calls instead of watching from the outside.”
“And your family? They’re proud?”
Warren tapped his knees with his hands. “Yeah, they’re proud. They don’t know the full details of what I do. Obviously. But they pray for me at church every Sunday. Mum stuffs me full of jerk chicken at the weekend if I get back. My sisters rope me into babysitting six nieces and nephews. I’m a decent uncle who remembers birthdays and a pretty good son who sends flowers on Mother’s Day. Also, a protective brother who vetted both their husbands. And I’d lay down my life for every one of my family without hesitation. And yeah—” he met Jude’s eyes “—I’m a copper who still gets a kick out of putting the bastards away.”
Jude absorbed that for a moment. Then asked, “Relationships?”
Warren raised a brow. “Not my strong suit, granted. Bit hard to keep up a relationship when you’re always being someone else. My last girlfriend was police, too. But she walked out of our shared flat three years ago. We’d worked for a while. Stopped working longer. Ironically, she’s my handler now. Been living in that house together. My,” he lifted two fingers in inverted commas, “cousin.”
“The one you heard through the walls.”
“Yeah. Another truth.” Warren shook his head. “When you hear your ex-girlfriend having better phone sex than you ever had actual sex… you know it was for the best.”
Jude gave a short snort and looked down, hands restless in his lap.
Warren edged closer, itching to take those hands in his. “Look…I’ve been places you’d never want to go. Played characters I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And not once—not once—have I ever fallen for anyone in that world. Then they hand me this job where the best cover I could run was being myself. So that’s what you got. Me. The me before the Met. The teacher. And another truth bomb? I liked it. Liked being me again.” He swallowed. “I’ve never enjoyed an op. Not until the end, when we finally take the bastards down. But this one, meeting you, getting to be me again? It’s made me realise who I actually am. And I like that version better. I likemebetter here. With you.”
Warren pressed his palm flat on his chest, over the hard, relentless thud of his heart. “I like you, Jude. Really like you. It wasn’t expected, it wasn’t planned, but it’s real. And whatever this is, it won’t vanish because someone tells me to walk away. I think about you all the time. Dream about you. And I wonder, and hope, that you feel the same too, so all this has been… worth the risk. For both of us.”
Jude fixed him with those soft eyes, and Warren couldn’t tell if he’d done enough. If stripping himself bare like that had done the trick of securing the ground between them. He doubted it. Jude had been clinging by a thread for too long and finding out thatWarren Baileywas a name on a file, not a man, would cut deeper than any knife. It would send him right back behind those walls Warren had been desperate to chip away at. But hewasWarren Bailey. The same bloke. The same feelings. If only Jude could see that.
Jude dropped his gaze. “Tell me something no one else knows about you.” He looked up again, eyes bright with unshed glass. “You already know all my darkest secrets. Let me have one of yours.”
Warren swallowed. Laying his heart bare was one thing; this was something else entirely. The request pressed on him, a weight between classified and personal. He could feel the line of it. Thin, dangerous, and honest. Still, if he wanted Jude to believe him, to really see him, he owed him something true.
So he said, “I really fucking hate tuna.”
Jude blinked, then stared. Warren kept his expression dead serious until Jude let out a short, startled laugh, breaking the tension in the room clean in half. Warren felt it ease through him, warm and quiet. He loved that laugh. Loved that smile. He was starting to realise he might love this man, too. All of him.
“Sorry,” Warren said with a faint grin. “I just wanted to see you smile.”
Jude’s smile lingered, then faded, eyes steady on his. Waiting.
Wanting something that mattered.
So Warren nodded once, the humour draining from his voice. “Alright, I’ll give you something real. Something that’s still locked in a file. Only a handful of people know. The thing thatgot me here. From the Met… to a desk… then to SEROCU. To you.”
Jude nodded. “Okay.”
“Last op I ran for the Met, I was deep inside a trafficking line. Proper heavy stuff. Guns, coke, heroin. Kids running it. The whole mess. I’d been under eighteen months, playing the loyal foot soldier. Building trust. Waiting for the right moment. Then found out what they were really making money on. Girls. Kids pulled out of care, groomed into thinking they were making choices. We called them ‘clean skins.’”
Warren’s jaw flexed. “There was one girl—Aneesa. Twenty. Thought she was in love with one of the lieutenants, JD. Thought she mattered to him. I knew better. I watched him rotate her between flats, rent her out, cover up a stabbing when she got hurt. I passed intel up the chain. They told me to wait. Hold. Build the bigger case. Too many moving parts. Too many arrests to make. They wanted to use her as evidence.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t. She wasn’t evidence. She was a girl. And if that had been my sister, my niece, I’d want someone pulling her out.”
Jude’s lips parted, listening intently.
