16
CHARITY KNIFE
CALLAHAN
Iwas still trying to convince myself that distance was strategy and not cowardice.
It wasn't working.
I sat in my flat with three laptops open, tracking financial breadcrumbs through shell companies that existed only on paper, and my mind kept circling back to firelight. To the way Dom's hands had felt careful on purpose. To the sound he'd made when I'd finally stopped fighting and just let him have me. To the look on his face after, like he'd seen something in me worth keeping.
I slammed the laptop shut harder than necessary.
This was why attachments were poison. This right here. The way they bled into your focus, made you soft when you needed to be alert.
Dom hadn't called. Hadn't texted. Hadn't shown up at my door demanding explanations for why I'd left Ravenswood before dawn like a man fleeing a crime scene. Maybe he understood. Maybe he'd realised what I'd known from the start:that whatever had happened between us was a complication neither of us could afford.
Or maybe he was just giving me space to work.
Either way, I stayed away from places where he might be. Ignored the part of me that wanted to know if he was safe, if Harrow had made moves, if the photographs we'd stolen were burning holes in his conscience the way they were burning holes in mine.
I opened the laptop again. Stared at the screen until the numbers made sense and the wanting didn't.
The charity pipeline had patterns. They always did if you knew where to look.
Harrow's preferred method was elegant in its simplicity: donations made through legitimate organisations that funnelled money to shell companies owned by people with convenient amnesia about where funding originated. The amounts were small enough to avoid triggering automatic reviews, large enough to matter when you added them up over years. And the timing was surgical. Donations appeared three to five days before major case decisions, before witness statements, before evidence got sealed or “lost.”
I'd been tracking one particular thread for six months. The Victims' Justice Foundation. Clean name. Clean website. Board members who looked respectable on paper until you dug deeper and realised half of them were lawyers who'd worked cases Harrow prosecuted, judges who'd ruled in his favour, advocates who owed their careers to his public endorsements.
The foundation was holding a gala tonight. Public-facing. Cameras everywhere. Harrow would be there, performing sainthood for an audience that wanted to believe prosecutors could be heroes.
I needed to be there too.
Not to confront him. Not yet. Just to watch. To record. To build the chain of evidence one link at a time until it was strong enough to strangle him with.
I showered. Shaved. Put on my suit. Navy, expensive enough to pass inspection, forgettable enough that people wouldn't remember my face afterward.
The foundation had rented a gallery in Mayfair. All white walls and exposed brick, modern art that cost more than most people made in a year, champagne that tasted like regret. I arrived early, before the crowd thickened, and found a position near the back where I could see the whole room without being obvious about it.
Harrow arrived twenty minutes later.
I watched him work a widow whose husband had been murdered three years ago. Case Harrow had prosecuted. Conviction secured. Justice served, at least according to the official record. The widow didn't know Harrow had sealed evidence that might have pointed to a different killer. Didn't know the man he'd put away had connections to people Harrow needed to protect. She just knew the prosecutor had been kind to her, had made her feel heard, had given her the closure she'd needed to keep breathing.
Harrow hugged her. She cried into his shoulder. Cameras caught it.
My stomach turned.
This was the game. This was how corruption survived. Not through obvious evil, but through performances so convincing that even the victims applauded.
I pulled out my phone, angled it carefully, and started recording. The camera was decent but not professional. Good enough for documentation, not good enough to draw attention. I captured Harrow's movements, his interactions, the faces of people who approached him with envelopes that weren't quitehidden, with handshakes that lasted too long, with whispered conversations that ended in nods.
One man in particular caught my attention. Sixties, expensive watch, posture that screamed old money. He approached Harrow near the bar, said something that made Harrow's smile tighten fractionally, then passed him what looked like a business card. Harrow pocketed it without looking. The man walked away. Thirty seconds later, Harrow followed, disappearing into a corridor marked “Staff Only.”
I gave them ten seconds, then moved.
The corridor was empty except for catering staff who were too busy to notice me. I followed the sound of voices to a door that was slightly ajar, positioned myself where I could hear without being seen.
Harrow's voice, low and controlled: “The timing isn't ideal.”
