Page 118 of Corrupt

“How?”

I stared at the ceiling for a moment, then back down at him. His eyes were steady. Patient. Not prying. Not demanding. As if he wasn’t trying to pull answers out of me, but giving me somewhere to set them down if I had them. He wasn’t naïve. Not with the world he came from. Not with the job he was training for. He knew the broad shape of how men like me left organised networks. The leverage. The danger. The debts. He had to.

The problem was, I didn’t yet.

How the fuck was I meant to get out?

“I’m shrinking the circle,” I said. “Pulling things in tight. Making myself… less necessary.”

“If you’re less necessary, doesn’t that make you…expendable?”

“Yeah.”

“So…dangerous.”

I smiled, because of course it did. “Everything I do’s dangerous. This time it’s just… deliberate.”

He considered that, then nodded once, as if filing it away. “And after?”

“After…” I brushed my thumb along his shoulder, knowing full well that ‘after’ wasn’t really a thing. But I had to cling onto something, or I’d never crawl out. “I sort out my sister so I can disappear. Properly. Leave before I get pulled back in.”

His mouth softened at that. “You could… come here.”

I bent my head and pressed a kiss to his hair. “You don’t get to offer things like that unless you mean them.”

“I do.”

“And your world will welcome me in, will it? Your tuxedos and country cottages and double fucking barrel names and thwack, thwack, fucking thwack?”

He said nothing.

Didn’t try to dress it up. Didn’t lie.

So I pulled him closer and felt him settle against me. I didn’t bother trying to work out how any of that was possible. Some things I shouldn’t interrogate too hard if I wanted to keep them. Instead, I let myself cling to the idea there might be a way. That wanting it could be enough to start. That hope, thin and dangerous as it was, might keep me moving.

Might keep me alive.

After a while, he shifted. “What was wrong? The thing you were fixing.”

I breathed out slowly.

I knew exactly what Tyler had done to earn Cormac’s punishment. Why my name had been dragged back into it. There’d been money on the table from someone high-end wanting something new, something with teeth. Pretty Poison. Tyler had tried to reach me. Couldn’t. Because I’d been with Tricky. So he’d made a call of his own. Brought Kyan in. Started nudging things forward, probably thinking he was doing the right thing. That was how you climbed. How we all had.

Of course, it hadn’t stayed quiet.

Cormac didn’t like surprises. Especially not ones with his product.

The punishment. Setting it right. Making sure the lesson was heard?

That part had been mine.

“Probably best you don’t know.” I pressed a kiss into his hair.

I felt him tense for a moment, as if he might push back. Then, “Can you stay?”

“If you want me to.”

He shifted closer, tightening around me, breath evening out as if the decision cost him something. That was answer enough.