Chapter One Razor #3
I watched him lean in as a server whispered something in his ear, his hand brushing a stray strand of her hair behind her ear.
The oldest trick in his book. Then his gaze dipped, hungry and predictable, down to the gap of her blouse.
They’d fuck before the night was out. Probably down the L-bend corridor near the staff lockers where it was dark, quiet, the one stretch where the CCTV didn’t reach if he’d bothered to map the angles the way I had.
I almost envied it. The simplicity of it.
No thought, no ghosts, no aftermath. Just want. Met and spent.
Not that I was short on offers. Far from it.
But turning them down was getting trickier.
Too much refusal raised questions, and questions drew the wrong attention.
I hadn’t gone the paid route since… well, since then.
Lately, I’d been living in what I called forced celibacy, which sounded better than what it was, which was punishment dressed up as discipline.
So yeah, watching my second get his quick and dirty while he had nice and easy waiting at home grated more than I’d admit.
But the world must have heard me and come full circle, cause when Tyler shifted his body to turn and face his temporary bit for the evening, it created a gap through the glass, a clean line of sight to where a couple was being shown to a table in the VIP section.
Two men. The older one tapped the server on the back like old friends as he took his coat, the younger one had his back to me.
But when the blond turned to put his blazer over the chair, I got sight of the whole package. Lips and all.
My heart slammed against my ribs as if someone had kicked it.
I looked away, tried to steady my hands, then watched Trentham dunk a forkful of sirloin in peppercorn and chew with that slow, entitled pleasure that made my teeth ache.
I lifted my whisky in a tight shot and swallowed it in a rush. Then I looked back.
Fuck.
Even the back of his head hit me like an aftershock.
Recognition sharp enough to steal my breath.
How could I know someone that well, that deeply, from only a handful of nights?
Stupidity. That’s what it was. Stupid to let anyone under my skin when I was supposed to be sitting here making a deal, climbing higher, proving I’d left the gutter behind.
Not staring through glass at the ghost of everything I’d promised I’d outgrow.
Tricky.
Here. On what looked a fucking lot like a date.
Heat crawled up my neck, into my chest, my mouth.
My pulse hammered behind my teeth. The rage came dirty.
Not pure or righteous. No, it tangled up with fear.
Because when the older bloke with him — sugar daddy type, if Tricky weren’t already sitting on more money than sense — passed the wine list to the server and smiled a patronising, wallet-heavy smile, I saw it for something else.
A challenge. A warning. A threat aimed right at the only thing in my life that wasn’t already poisoned.
The one thing that still felt real. And there he was, sitting across from some rich bastard with wine and smiles while I sat here choking on the taste of everything I’d tried to clean out of myself.
Trentham was talking. I wasn’t listening.
I drank instead, eyes fixed on that table. I couldn’t function with that in my line of sight. Too much noise under my ribs. So I stood.
“One sec.” I cut Trentham off mid-sentence. He paused with a forkful of steak halfway to his mouth, watching as I walked off.
The serving girl flirting with Tyler straightened up the second she clocked me and vanished before I even reached them.
Tyler turned, read my face. “Razor.”
I leant in, keeping my voice low. “See that table?” I jerked my chin towards Tricky and his grey-haired date. “Get rid.”
“There a problem?”
“Yeah. So get it done.”
“You want it loud or quiet?”
“Don’t care how. Just gone.”
Tyler nodded and moved off towards the bar where the ma?tre d’ was chatting to Elliot Crane, the so-called owner and front man.
He handled menus and wine pairings and pretended this place wasn’t just a laundry with tablecloths.
I watched Tyler lean in and mutter something, obviously favouring the quiet method.
Elliot’s smile faltered. And he looked at the table Tyler pointed at, then back at me. A flicker of… was that fear?
Good.
I didn’t break eye contact as I slid back into the booth.
Trentham watched me settle, knife in hand. “Problem?”
“Not one that can’t be solved.” I poured a finger of whisky into both glasses, forcing calm into mine.
A moment later, a shadow loomed across the table.
“Apologies for intruding.” Elliot’s smile stretched thin. “But I’m told you’d like one of my regulars removed.”
Regulars.
He didn’t mean Tricky. I’d have noticed him. He meant the date. Which somehow made it worse. That this was a routine night for him. That my Tricky was another boy on the list.
“S’right.” I cut into my steak. Let the blood smear the plate and pictured it dripping from the bastard’s throat.
Elliot darted his gaze around the room before adding, “Lord Wolfe is… a very important client here.”
He said the name of the prick as if I was meant to know it.
Even Trentham’s eyebrow twitched. Probably the Lord part.
But I couldn’t give a fuck. A title didn’t mean shit to me.
I could cut a Lord like anyone else. And I didn’t give a flying fuck who or what he was, only that he was sitting opposite something of mine.
Even if I hadn’t claimed him in eight months.
Elliot cocked his head. “May I ask why you want him removed?”
I looked up, chewing, drawing it out. The steak bled on the plate. So did I.
Three reasons I was primed to snap: First, Tricky.
His heat was everywhere, humming under my skin, messing up my pulse.
Second, that smug prick across from him, swirling his wine like a performance and winking at Tricky as if he owned him.
And third, Elliot. Standing there, questioning me.
In front of Trentham, who I’d been working to impress, and Doyle, who’d just strolled back in with smoke curling off his jacket.
For a man who didn’t want to make a scene, I was doing a piss-poor job of it.
“I don’t like him,” I said. Flat. Final.
Doyle sat. Trentham leant back, whisky swirling, waiting to see if I could make good on the reputation he’d been promised.
Elliot tried for another smile. “I assure you, he has very deep pockets and enjoys your particular brand of dessert.”
Meaning: Wolfe bought my gear and used it when he fucked blokes like my Tricky.
My blood boiled up hot and fast.
I leant back, glare sharp. “He’s cut off from that too.”
Elliot breathed a laugh and glanced towards Wolfe again, frowning as if trying to puzzle out why this client rattled me so badly. “Is it… the gay thing?”
I laughed. Loud. Sharp.
Elliot blinked.
“Look.” I rubbed my thumb across my eyebrow. “We can do this quiet. Everyone goes back to their tiny, overpriced amuse-bouches. Or I stroll over there, carve him with a steak knife, and you can mop up the entrails. Put them in a soup or what’s that fucking stuff that’s mostly froth?”
Elliot inhaled sharply. “I’ll ask them to leave.”
He turned, but I stopped him. “Only the old bloke,” I called out. “No drama. Whisper something that’ll get him away from the table, then toss him out the back. In the bins, preferably. Make his pretty little thing think he bailed on him.”
“Particularly callous, sir.” Elliot straightened his jacket with a look that said he wasn’t as impressed with my cruelty as I might assume.
I grinned through a mouthful of steak and Elliot walked out like a man stepping into his own grave.
I turned back to Trentham. Business. Keep it business. “Thirty?”
He studied me, rolled the whisky on his tongue. Then smiled. “Deal.”
We shook. Two liars sealing a truth we’d both rewrite later.
I leant back, the glass cooling my fingers, and drifted my gaze past Trentham to the back of the head I couldn’t stop looking at.
To the man who made me think something I avoided at all costs.
I might’ve been building an empire, reeking of money instead of blood these days, but underneath, it was still rot.
Same rules, different wine glasses. You could scrub the crime off a postcode, polish the silver, pump the floral air freshener, but street stink always finds its way back through the cracks.
And he…
He made me want to lose it permanently.
Tristan was the cleanest thing I’d ever touched, and somehow, I dirtied him just by wanting him.
Can’t wash that kind of stain.