AI The ice in Silas Blackwood's tumbler clinked against the glass, a solitary sound in the low thrum of conversation at The Raven's Nest. He traced the rim with a calloused finger, eyes tracing the familiar patterns of swirling amber liquid. A slight adjustment of his weight , an almost imperceptible wince in his left knee, and he turned his attention back to the worn leather-bound ledger. It was a quiet Tuesday, the kind that settled into the bones of Soho like a fine London fog, damp and persistent. The green neon sign outside blinked its steady rhythm, a beacon for those seeking refuge, or perhaps, something more clandestine .
“Evening, Si,” a voice, roughened by what sounded like a decade of shouting over crowded rooms, sliced through the ambient murmur.
Silas felt a prickle of recognition at the back of his neck, a sensation he hadn't experienced in years. He looked up. Standing a polite distance from the bar, silhouetted against the soft glow of a distant streetlamp filtering through the grubby window, was a man he hadn't seen since their university days. His once sharp edges had been rounded by time, his frame a little slacker, but the eyes, though shadowed by a perpetual weariness, held a flicker of something Silas remembered vividly.
“Brendan,” Silas acknowledged, his voice a low rumble. He gestured with his chin towards an empty stool at the bar. “Long time no see.”
Brendan Carter, his old friend from Cardiff, a man who’d seemed destined for the hallowed halls of the Old Bailey, shuffled forward . The faint scent of stale cigarettes and something sharp, like cheap whisky, preceded him. He settled onto the stool with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of more than just years .
“Years, Si. Decades, feels like,” Brendan admitted, running a hand through thinning, lank hair. He was wearing a tweed jacket that looked perpetually rumpled, a stark contrast to the immaculately tailored suits Silas remembered him favouring.
“You look… different,” Silas observed, his gaze sweeping over the man. No sign of the promising young barrister, the quick wit and sharp legal mind that had once dazzled their lecturers. This man looked hardened, worn thin by a life lived on the fringes.
Brendan chuckled, a rough, dry sound. “Life. It does that, doesn’t it? And London. London grinds you down if you let it.” He waved a hand at the bartender, a young man with an impossibly slicked-back quiff. “Whisky. The cheapest you’ve got.”
The quiffed bartender nodded and moved with practiced efficiency. Silas watched Brendan’s hand as it reached for the coaster. Calloused fingers, nails bitten short, a far cry from the immaculate ones that had once gestured emphatically during heated debates about jurisprudence. And on one of those fingers, a wedding ring that looked surprisingly new, gleaming dully in the dim light.
“What brings you to this neck of the woods, Brendan?” Silas asked, keeping his tone neutral. The Raven’s Nest was not a place one stumbled into. It had a reputation, whispered in certain circles, that drew a particular kind of clientele.
Brendan took a long swig of the whisky the bartender placed before him. He winced as it burned its way down. “Running. Or maybe just looking. Can’t quite decide which.” He shrugged, the movement jerky . “Heard you ended up in London. Still at it, I suppose? The… old profession?”
Silas allowed a small, tight smile to play on his lips. “Something like that. This place… it serves its purpose. Keeps me out of trouble. Mostly.” He picked up his own tumbler. “And you? I heard you were making waves back in Cardiff. The courts beckoning.”
Brendan’s gaze flickered away, settling on the collection of antique maps adorning the wall behind Silas’s shoulder. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Circumstances change, Si. Sometimes you find yourself on a different path than the one you’d planned. Less… paved, shall we say.”
“Circumstances,” Silas echoed softly . He remembered Brendan’s father, a formidable man who’d spared no expense in securing his son’s future. The ambition that had burned so brightly in young Brendan’s eyes then. What had extinguished it?
“This ex of yours,” Silas ventured, recalling fragmented conversations from years past, snippets of regret and pain that Brendan had tried to bury under a veneer of bravado. “Evan, wasn’t it? He was… unpleasant.”
Brendan visibly flinched at the name. The rough chuckle returned, laced with a bitterness that hadn’t been there before. “Unpleasant is putting it mildly. He was a leech. Drained everything he could, then spat the husk out. And you know, for a while, I thought he’d gotten the last laugh.” He gestured vaguely at his current state, the cheap suit, the frayed nerves. “Thought he’d broken me good. But London. London fixes you. Or breaks you completely . One of the two.”
A slow ache began to spread in Silas’s chest, a familiar echo of past pains. He’d seen this before. Men who had been on the precipice of greatness, consumed by a darkness they couldn’t escape. The legal world, from what he gathered, could be as unforgiving as any battlefield.
“You were always the brightest of us, Brendan,” Silas said, his voice tinged with a genuine regret. “The one with the fire in his belly. The one who was going to make a difference.”
Brendan snorted, a harsh, disbelieving sound. He drained the last of his whisky, pushing the empty glass forward with a decisive thud. “Fire burns out, Si. Or else it turns to ash. I learned that the hard way. Evan wasn’t the end of it. There were… others. Bad choices. Worse company.” He leaned forward, his breath heavy with spirits and something else, something akin to desperation . “You still know people, Si? People who can make problems… disappear?”
Silas met his friend’s gaze, his own eyes unreadable . The question hung in the air , heavy and loaded. He saw not just the lost barrister, but the ghost of the young man they’d both once been, a ghost wrestling with a present that had become a tangled knot of regret and unanswered questions.
“It depends on the problem, Brendan,” Silas said, his voice low and steady . He reached for the ledger, his signet ring glinting . “And the price.”
Brendan’s eyes, once so full of youthful ambition, now held a desperate calculation. A flicker of that old fire, perhaps, but twisted, malevolent. He looked around the dim interior of The Raven’s Nest, at the shadowed corners, the quiet patrons nursing their drinks. He saw not a refuge, but a marketplace .
“I need something… permanent,” Brendan rasped, his voice dropping to a near whisper . He met Silas's gaze, and for a fleeting moment, Silas saw the raw fear beneath the bravado. “Someone who’s going to stop talking. Forever.”
A crash of shattering glass echoed from the back of the bar, followed by a string of angry shouts. Silas barely registered it. His focus was entirely on Brendan, on the man his friend had become. The old legal debates, the late-night philosophical arguments, the shared dreams of a brighter future, all seemed like faded photographs from another life.
Brendan’s hand trembled as he reached for his empty glass again. “You can do that, can’t you, Si? You always had a knack for finding solutions.”
Silas watched the raw hunger in Brendan’s eyes, a hunger born of desperation and a life that had veered wildly off course. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him, that this was not a request born of simple trouble. This was a man standing on the precipice, ready to leap.
“Some problems,” Silas said, his voice grave , “carry a weight that can crush even the strongest man. Are you sure, Brendan, that you’re ready to bear that weight ?”
Brendan met his gaze, his eyes hard as flint. “I’m beyond ready, Si. I’m past caring.” He then pushed his empty glass towards Silas, a silent, urgent demand. “So, what’s it going to be?”
Suddenly, the back door of the bar burst open, spilling harsh light and a flurry of urgent voices into the dim interior. Two figures, silhouetted against the sudden glare, stumbled in, one of them dragging a struggling, wailing youth who looked no older than twenty. The bar chatter cut off abruptly, replaced by a stunned silence . Brendan jolted, his hand instinctively going to the inside of his jacket. Silas felt his own muscles tighten, his senses sharpening instantly. The quiet Tuesday night had just taken a violent, unexpected turn.