Chapter Eighteen Razor #2
I’d played this scenario out a dozen different ways in my head on the drive over.
I knew how Cormac worked. Worse—I knew how Doyle worked.
They didn’t innovate. They repeated. Same methods, same rhythms. That was how their empire stayed standing.
Familiarity. Efficiency. And I’d been part of it often enough.
Planted outside whatever derelict building they’d picked that day so they could issue the threat and warnings.
My job had been simple. Watch the door. Learn the lesson.
Doyle handled the rest. I could’ve been him if I’d wanted to.
I’d watched closely enough. Learnt enough.
I’d never wanted to be that.
But it meant I knew the sounds. The way pain changed a man’s voice.
The moment begging tipped into primal fear.
I’d listened to screams echo off concrete walls because someone was late with a payment, or skimmed a percentage, or got careless.
I’d seen men dragged out afterward, shaking and bleeding, swearing it would never happen again.
Then Doyle would wash his hands, make himself a cup of tea, grab a copy of the Metro, and the world would keep turning.
I’d hated those days. There weren’t many of them, but they’d stuck. Embedded.
I thought I was prepared.
I wasn’t.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for walking into that room and seeing him like that.
My Tricky.
Tied to a chair in the middle of the space, still in his court gown, head slumped forwards. Blood slicked his chin, dark against white, his breathing shallow and wrong. Blindfolded. He was lined up for the same treatment I’d watched hard men break under. The same blow. The same lesson.
And behind him stood Doyle.
Calm. Unhurried. Rifling through a toolbox laid out on a trestle table, weighing his options as if choosing which condiment to slather over his fish and chips.
My insides tore loose.
“Lay one fucking finger on him,” I pointed right at Doyle, “and I’ll gut you alive.”
It was a stupid threat. I knew it even as it left my mouth. Me in a borrowed brown suit, ankle tag biting into my skin, with only a snapped toothbrush as if it was anything more than a joke. Almost funny, really. Cause that joke was definitely on me.
But I meant it.
“Razor…” Cormac’s singsong voice drifted in from my left.
He was as calm as anything. There in his farmer’s get-up of flat cap, tartan coat and wellington boots, reminding me of his other hobby. Not farming. No. Feeding pigs. “Nice of you to join us.”
“Let him go.”
Cormac laughed. Doyle joined him.
Then Tristan lifted his head and my heart slammed so hard it knocked the breath clean out of me.
Alive. He was alive. Bruised to fuck. Blood split across his lip.
But conscious. Though he couldn’t see me through the blindfold, my voice must’ve cut through whatever they’d done to him and shock flared across his face, sharp enough to break through the pain.
His breathing hitched, as if he’d been crying.
Or was about to. And fuck…I wanted to give him everything in one look.
Tell him I’d get him out. That I’d burn the whole fucking world down if that’s what it took.
But he couldn’t see me.
So just like that night when it’d been me covering silk over his eyes, and me taking everything while he trusted what he couldn’t see, all I had was my voice.
“You alright, Tricky?”
His throat worked as he swallowed.
And fuck—yeah, that nearly broke me.
Cormac tilted his head, amused. “Listen to him, Niall. Our boy thinks he can make orders.” He rolled his eyes, dismissive, as if I were some mouthy kid turning up late and pretending I didn’t stink of smoke and bad decisions.
“Ain’t an order.” I held his gaze. “It’s a promise.”
Doyle snorted and picked up a pair of pliers from the table, wiping them on his jeans as if drying cutlery.
“One fucking finger.” I jabbed mine towards him, my voice cracking off the beams overhead. “Touch him, and I will come for you.”
Doyle cocked his head, curious. Almost amused.
Then he lifted the pliers, raising his eyebrows as if to say these aren’t fingers.
I could have killed him for that. That fucking dare.
But he took a step closer to Tristan, sliding a single fingertip onto Tricky’s shoulder.
He flinched, and Doyle left his rotten digit there on my man to test me.
I wanted to gut him.
Split him open and watch the realisation hit.
But I didn’t move.
I knew the room. The angles. Cormac would be armed.
He always was, some neat, forgettable piece tucked where I couldn’t see, but I knew the signs of it.
And Tyler would be outside, listening, waiting for the smallest sign so he could come crashing in, the way I’d had to before.
If I lunged now, Doyle wouldn’t even have to try.
Those pliers would swing and Tristan would go down before I got halfway across the room.
So I waited. Bided my time.
But there was no doubt about it.
He would pay for touching what’s mine.
I held Doyle’s gaze, let the promise sit there between us. “You’ll regret that.”
Cormac stepped closer to me, hands clasped behind his back, strolling as if inspecting crops.
“This is all very unfortunate, Razor. None of this had to happen. If you’d only walked in with that bag properly, eh?
If you’d taken the time. It would’ve given you space to think.
To understand the mistake you were making.
” He stopped a few feet from me, looked me up and down.
“For what? What makes a lad turn on the family that raised him, eh? Gave him everything? Did we not give you enough?”
“I didn’t turn on you.” I tried to keep this civil. “If I had you’d be in box. Ain’t that enough for you?”
Cormac slid his gaze to Tristan. Stayed there. Leered at him. “Not when I discovered you’d developed expensive tastes.”
Then he spat.
Right at Tristan’s feet.
And I went very, very still.
“Take that off him.” Cormac waved at Tristan.
Doyle seized two handfuls of Tristan’s gown from behind and ripped.
Fabric tore free from his shoulders and Tristan jolted in the chair, breath punched out of him, as the cloth gave way and left him exposed in his suit.
And beneath it, dark blotches bloomed along his shirt, fingerprints of violence where they’d worked him over in the van.
My heart lurched.
I’d known it walking in. I was out of my depth. Trapped.
Cormac had always been good at that.
“Better.” Cormac wandered over to Tristan on the chair then grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up. “You don’t deserve to wear that, do you?” He tutted. “Naughty boy.”
Tristan grunted.
I clenched my hands so tight my nails burnt crescents into my skin.
Cormac looked at me, holding Tristan’s head back so all I saw was throat. “This one didn’t follow orders. And you know what we do to people who don’t follow orders.”
“He ain’t yours to order.”
“Is he not?” Cormac cocked his head.
“No.” I gritted my teeth.
“You sure about that, son?” Cormac shoved Tristan’s head forwards then smiled at me, all yellow teeth and ugly menace. “But you are, though.”
Doyle lifted a length of metal from the toolbox behind Tristan, a solid pole, testing its weight in his hands.
“What was your weapon of choice, Razor?” Cormac studied me. “When I asked you to deliver these messages.” He took the metal pole from Doyle and held it up. “This?”
I clenched my jaw. Kept my eyes forwards. Wouldn’t look at Tristan. Wouldn’t give them that. Let them drag me back into a version of myself I was trying to bury. Tristan wasn’t meant to know that man.
Cormac didn’t wait for an answer.
He brought the pole down hard on Tristan’s leg.
The sound cracked through the warehouse. Tristan screamed, jerking forward as far as the ropes would allow, chair skidding across the concrete. The noise tore straight through me, and I surged forward, but Doyle was there, lifting a rusted cleaver, hovering it inches from Tristan’s throat.
“You wait your turn,” Cormac sneered. “Like a good little soldier.”
Rage locked my body solid. Every muscle screaming to move, to tear them apart, while Tristan gasped and trembled in the chair. I hated myself in that moment. How every choice had led him here. Led us here.
“You were never much for tools.” Cormac leant in close to Tristan, invading his space, but his eyes never left me.
“He preferred his hands,” he said into Tristan’s ear, pitching his voice low, intimate, the words meant to travel.
Meant to land. “Said it was more honest. More… personal. Now I know he just liked touching men.”
Tristan’s throat worked around a swallow.
Cormac straightened and tapped Tristan’s shoulder.
“He was good at it, too. Those hands.” He pointed to my balled fists.
“Those same hands that have touched you,” he jerked Tristan’s chin, “have crushed throats, snapped jaws, opened men up and left them ruined.” He smiled, maliciously. “Though he had his favourites.”
He reached into his pocket and drew out a cutthroat razor. My nostrils flared, heat flooding my veins as he placed it in Doyle’s hand. Then Doyle stepped in and pressed the blade to Tristan’s throat. Enough to kiss skin. A whisper of steel. A promise.
“That’s where the name came from.” Cormac looked at me. “Ain’t it, lad?”
The blade nicked Tristan’s neck and a thin line of red bloomed on his skin. I shook my head. Refusing to play along. Refusing to let them rewrite me in front of him.
“Get away from him,” I said, small, quiet but filled with a promise. “Move away and I’ll do what you want.”