Chapter Seven Razor
Chapter seven
Razor
Days passed.
Again.
Stacked up like they always did in here. Featureless, interchangeable, measured not in dates but in doors opening and slamming shut. I limped through them, body stiff from the fight, ribs catching on every breath, reminding me I’d lost something important.
Since the altercation, the screws cut our free time back. Less movement. Less air. An hour in the yard if we were lucky. Long enough to feel the cold bite into my lungs before someone drifted too close. Long enough for a shoulder check. A muttered word. Spit hitting the concrete near my feet.
In the showers, I got the looks. The ones they thought would crawl under my skin. Long. Appraising. Measuring what I had left to take. At lunch, my tray went over more than once. Food sliding, splattering, gone before I’d even sat down. No one said a word. No one had to.
I was fair game.
The panic burnt itself out first. Then the fear. They took too much energy to keep alive. What replaced them was flatter. Heavier. Acceptance. No one was coming. Not Cormac. Not a defence team. Not the cavalry. Not even the miracle I hadn’t admitted I’d been waiting for.
There would be no intervention.
I was in here.
And this was it.
Ignoring what was happening around me didn’t buy safety. It only bought time for someone else to decide how I’d be broken. Ghost was shifting the hierarchy piece by piece. He didn’t want me gone quickly. He wanted me to unravel. To be reduced to a shell of a man who begged.
Well.
Fuck that noise.
When the doors finally slammed shut for the night, the wing fell into its usual uneasy quiet. Men coughing. Metal settling. Someone crying two cells down and trying not to be heard. I waited until Colin’s breathing evened out, until the small, hopeful sounds of sleep took him.
Then I reached under my mattress.
The toothbrush wasn’t mine. I’d taken it from another cell earlier, when no one was looking. I wouldn’t use my own for this. Cheap plastic. Half-soft from use. I bent it slowly, listening to the faint stress-whine as it resisted. When it snapped, it did so cleanly.
I set it aside.
The cutlery came next. A plastic knife. Thin.
Laughable, really. But I dragged its edge along the concrete wall in slow strokes, again and again.
Pressure built in my fingers and the acrid smell of melting plastic rose in the air.
I didn’t rush it. This wasn’t about speed.
It was about certainty. So I tested the edge against my thumb and when it wasn’t enough, I went back to the wall.
Put more pressure on it this time. Then when it finally bit, just a sting, causing a thin line of red on my pad, I nodded.
Good enough.
Then I tore a strip from my sheet, wrapped the handle tightly, then tighter. I didn’t want it slipping if my hands were wet. If they were shaking. If…
I stopped that thought dead.
This wasn’t about what might happen. It was about what would.
Colin stirred under me. “What’re you doing?”
“Go back to sleep.”
He didn’t. He got up, feet hitting the floor, and glanced up at me on the top bunk, watching me sharpen my tools. He widened his eyes. “Don’t.”
That word carried more weight than it had any right to.
“I mean it,” he hissed. “Don’t do this.”
I finished wrapping the grip. Checked it. Balanced it in my palm. It felt right. Wrong, too. But right enough.
“They’re not gonna stop.” My voice sounded flat, distant. As if it belonged to someone else. Razor. It was the old Razor. “You know that.”
“There are other ways. You can keep your head down. Keep away from him. Wait it out.”
I laughed. It scraped. “That’s not how this works.”
He swallowed. “You’ll make it worse.”
“It’s already worse.” I slapped my hand down and looked at him.
“If they see me as weak in here, then I’m weak everywhere.
Word travels. Always has. Always will.” I turned the weapon once in my hand, feeling the balance, then slid it back under the mattress.
“And that word don’t stop at the gates. It filters out.
Visits. Phones. Mouths that can’t help themselves.
And it reaches the people I still have breathing because of me. ”
I dragged both hands through my hair.
“You think I ain’t run it through?” I was mostly speaking to myself now.
“Pack up my sister and the baby, shove them somewhere new and hope no one follows?” I shook my head.
“That only works if you’re small. Anonymous.
I ain’t either. You don’t vanish from men like Cormac.
You leave a trail wherever you go. And protective custody?
” I snorted. “That’s not protection. That’s a receipt.
You only get it if you give something back.
Names. Routes. Proof. And the second I open my mouth, I’m dead.
If not in here, then by what lands on my family out there. ”
I looked at him again, made sure he understood.
“Cormac doesn’t need me talking to hurt them.
He just needs to know I might. So the only thing keeping them safe is certainty.
Certainty that I won’t flip. That I won’t beg.
And I won’t fucking break. Because the moment I look like I might, they’ll act.
My sister’s already lost me being there.
That’s done. But she doesn’t have to lose my shadow.
As long as I’m still hard in here, still dangerous, I’m still useful to fear.
And fear is the only currency I’ve got left to keep her safe. ”
Colin must have understood there was nothing left to reach for, because eventually he lay back down. Turned his face to the wall. Let the cell go quiet. And I went back to preparing the only thing I had left to give.
When the lights snapped on in the morning, I was already awake.
And I dropped from my bunk, slid the shank into the waistband of my grey joggers, adjusting it until it sat flat, hidden by my hip.
It was automatic. Instinctive. My body remembered this.
How to carry a weapon. How to conceal it whilst also letting those I wanted to know it’s there that it was ready and waiting.
Some instincts don’t rot.
Colin sat on his bunk. “You’ll lose any chance you’ve got.”
I didn’t look at him. “I already have.” I tugged my jumper down, covering the weapon. “Only thing left to gain is respect.”
The wing doors slammed open.
That sound locked everything into place.
Men spilt out, noise swelling fast. Boots on concrete, voices lifting, plastic chairs scraping.
The air filled with the stink of cheap coffee and sweat and bodies too close together.
I stepped out with them, squaring my shoulders and keeping my gaze forward.
Breakfast first. I ate fast, mechanically, barely tasting it.
Then the gym. Iron in my hands. Strain in my arms. I lifted until my thoughts narrowed, until there was nothing left but breath and burn and the steady hum of readiness.
Yeah, it fucking hurt. My ribs still ached.
My face throbbed. But that pain told me I was still alive.
By the time free flow started, I was calm.
Too calm.
Men clustered by the tables near the cells, doors open, laughter sharp and ugly. I scanned once. Found him. Ghost stood by his door, easy, careless. Undisturbed.
I set off.
Jaw clenched. Eyes down. I curled my hand around the shape at my hip and stayed there.
Not drawing it. Acknowledging it. No, I wasn’t gonna kill him.
That wasn’t the point. It never was. Never had to be.
This was a threat. That was who I’d always been.
I never needed to do the damage I claimed I could inflict.
I needed them to believe I could. That belief had kept me breathing on the streets. I needed it back now.
Whispers rippled as I passed. Heads turned. No one stepped in.
Men don’t stop men in here.
This was entertainment.
So I had a clear run.
Every step closed off any rationality behind me. Every step made turning back less possible. And when I reached his door, my hand shook, adrenaline punching through the calm. Ghost turned, and his eyes widened.
I could do it.
Right now. A slice. A warning cut. Somewhere that would bleed and be remembered. I could fucking do it.
“Slade!” Dent’s voice cracked across the wing.
I froze.
An inch from Ghost. Close enough to smell him.
“You,” Dent barked, marching closer. “Move.”
For a second, the world balanced on a snapped toothbrush and a chiselled plastic knife.
I could still do it.
Still choose blood.
Instead, I slipped the weapon back into hiding, turned slowly, and stepped away.
Dent reached me. “Hands.”
I brought my wrists together in front of me.
The cuffs clicked shut, cold and familiar.
Dent didn’t look at me as he turned me back around, and that left me facing Ghost again.
I held his stare. Let him see it. Understand exactly how close he’d come.
He’d clocked the shank. He knew what was waiting for him.
That was enough.
For now.
“Move.” Dent shoved me forward.
I didn’t break eye contact with Ghost until the angle of the corridor made it impossible.
“Thought I told you to learn when to walk away,” Dent muttered as we moved.
“I learnt.” I sniffed. “That time ain’t now.”
“You’ve been in here less than three months. Thought it’d take you longer to fall into those traps.”
I glanced back at him. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know men like you.”
He kept me walking.
The wing gave way to corridors smelling differently. Cleaner. Sharper. Fewer bodies, more bleach. Doors buzzed open and slammed shut behind us, each one sealing me further away from where I’d been. I wasn’t going back to my cell. That much was clear.
Segregation, then.
Just me. A concrete box. Time to let my head eat itself. I wasn’t sure which scared me more. Ghost, or what I became when there was nothing left but me and my thoughts.
“You sure you don’t want me to let your sister in?” Dent said.
“No.”