Chapter Three Razor
Chapter three
Razor
Well, that sure as fuck wasn’t what I’d expected.
Yeah, okay, the second I saw him in my restaurant I knew I’d end up inside him again.
But not like this. Not in a supply closet with cleaning fluid under our feet and my pulse still hammering from how hard I took him.
And definitely not kissing him after, his arms slung around my neck, strawberry-shaped lips softening the roughness I’d carved into him.
But here I was.
Sliding my hands down his bare back, his shirt in ruins, fabric hanging off him in strips, kissing him as if it meant something.
Stupid.
Really fucking stupid.
Eventually, he slipped out of my hold and stepped back, as if he needed distance to prove I was real. His spine met the wall. Hands tucked behind him. Lip caught between his teeth. Breath stuttering, not from what we’d done, but as if he was trying to pull himself back together around it.
Then he said, “You’re alive.”
Not a question.
A fact.
Fucking obvious, from where I was standing.
“Yeah.” I reached for my jeans, buttoned them. “You thought otherwise?”
A small shrug. One shoulder. Careless-looking. Not careless at all. “For a while. But I checked.”
I stilled. “You checked?”
He met my eyes then. Properly. And whatever he saw there made his throat work before he spoke again.
“I didn’t know where you’d gone. You vanished. So… I made a few enquiries. Old news reports. Hospital records. A couple of names I shouldn’t have had access to. I needed to know if I was mourning someone who was already buried.”
My chest went tight and sore. “And when you knew I weren’t dead?”
“I assumed you were staying away from me for a reason.”
“Yeah.” I huffed. “A big fuck-off reason.” I tilted my head, studying him, seeing him differently. The eight months. The silence. The fact he hadn’t just forgotten. “So what’re you doing in my place, Tricky?”
He widened his eyes. “Your place?”
“Yeah.”
“You… own this?” He gestured around at the dingy cupboard full of mops and disinfectant as if that was the whole picture.
“Not just this bit.” I scrubbed a hand over my head, trying to get my breathing steady. “The restaurant. The club.”
He widened his eyes. “You own the Velvet Lounge?”
“Half of it, yeah.”
“Which half?”
“The half you don’t see.” I held his gaze.
He understood.
He always had.
I’d never pretended with him. Never softened a truth.
And the fucked-up part wasn’t that he knew what I did because everyone knew pieces of that, even the coppers who hadn’t yet pinned anything on me.
But what threw me for a fruit loop was that he knew more of me than the people I called blood.
Somehow, Tristan Hale-Fitzroy had seen every dark, twisted part of me and never flinched.
Dangerous, that.
More dangerous than any blade pressed to my ribs.
“Gone up in the world, huh?” He tilted his head.
“Ain’t that what you rich boys like?” I walked my fingers. “Men who climb all them big metaphorical ladders so they can look down on everyone else?”
He glanced down at his shiny, polished dress shoe scraping through the grime on my floor, adding to the irony of me making out this was better than the gutter I’d owned eight months ago.
“To be fair, us rich boys don’t manually climb anything. We’re given a lift. Elevator route.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” I sniffed. “Like that fella you’re with, eh? He born at the top like you?” I cocked my head. “Don’t like him, by the way. Didn’t like him in my place.”
Tristan narrowed his eyes, working it out. “You… removed him?”
“I did.”
A breathy laugh escaped him. “And are you aware of who you removed?”
“Couldn’t give a fuck.”
“You probably should. In your line of work.”
“My line of work?”
I didn’t like being blindsided. Not knowing shit I should have. And the truth hit harder than I wanted to admit: I’d made a mistake tonight. Because of him. And him pointing that out, him knowing something I didn’t, lit me up.
“He’s a nobody in my line of work.” I ruffled down my jacket, smoothing out the leather as if it were armour.
“They all are. He’s just another slick bastard who thought he could stroll into my place and sit across from you as if he owned the fucking table.
When that’s my table.” I stepped into him, sliding my boot between his legs and leant in, brushing his ear with my mouth.
“And he was halfway to fucking you while I watched. Another thing he thought he could have that didn’t belong to him. ”
The air between us pulsed. Hot, sharp, electric.
Anger.
Want.
Possession.
All the things I shouldn’t feel for him.
The things I felt anyway.
Things I shouldn’t…no, couldn’t shake off.
“You didn’t walk away then?” Tristan asked quietly, eyes wide and, Christ, hopeful. “Sort of thought that would be why I hadn’t seen you.”
There it was. The thing I’d been ducking for eight months.
That look. That fucking hope. I could take a knife to the ribs better than that expression.
At least a knife made sense. This…him wanting something from me never did.
Never would. Cause no one should want anything from me other than my gear or my protection.
“We both knew that weren’t possible.”
He probably thought he’d saved me that night. Body and soul. Thought I was one of those hard-luck cases he collects on his moral conscience. People who got chewed up by poverty and bad choices and needed rescuing.
Truth was, most of us who ended up here?
We got ourselves here. Maybe not at first. But at some point, we stayed.
We played along. We took the easy money, the protection, the reputation.
I did. I wasn’t some tragedy for him to fix.
I was a man who made his bed in blood and cocaine and then lay in it ’cause it was warmer than the cold I’d come from.
Yeah, I was stuck. No, I couldn’t walk without a fight.
But there wasn’t fuck all else for me outside the Firm to risk the thought of it.
What did I offer the world? A fist, a temper, and a smart mouth.
That was it. And what was waiting for me if I got out?
Nothing. And looking at Tricky now, at that fragile hope that his world made sense, made me hate myself for exactly that.
Made me question why I hadn’t followed Lennon after Levi passed.
Why I didn’t graft legit somewhere instead of sliding back into the life waiting for me.
Why every choice I made dragged me further from him.
He dropped his gaze with a small nod, as if bracing for impact.
I hooked my finger under his chin and forced his eyes back to mine. “Never got to thank you, though.”
And, fuck me, the way he looked at me then almost made me wish I’d been someone worth thanking.
“Probably best you don’t.”
I dropped my hand. “Fair enough.”
I should’ve walked. Should’ve turned and left right then. Should’ve made this the clean break. But everything about him—his eyes, his heat, his fucking existence—pulled me in like gravity. I knew this would ruin me. I knew touching him again was a death sentence in my world.
Somehow, I didn’t care.
So I kissed him. Lazy. Consuming. Wrecked. And my hands went to his hips as his slid under my shirt, making me want things I had no business wanting. Until voices in the corridor broke us apart, along with boxes scraping, then a hand on the doorknob, pulling it down.
“Shit.” I grabbed the handle before it could crack open, then shoved Tristan behind the door with one arm, out of sight and plastered on a calm I didn’t feel as I yanked it open.
“Razor?” Tyler flinched, serving girl half-hidden behind him. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
I filled the doorway with my body, blocking the view, keeping Tristan concealed behind me where neither of them could see a shadow of him.
I looked Tyler dead on. “Checking no cunt’s sneaking off in work time.”
He jolted. “Oh. Right. Yeah.” He tugged the girl’s hand awkwardly. “We were just…uh—”
“She should be serving my customers. Not you.”
Tyler stiffened, nodding fast. “Course. Won’t happen again.”
He backed off, pulling the girl with him.
But he didn’t break eye contact. And something passed over his face.
Confusion, calculation, the hint of a question he didn’t know how to ask.
Because he’d never seen me this… off. Hiding someone.
Too defensive of a space. He didn’t know why.
Wouldn’t have seen who. And had no reason yet to suspect.
Something in him clocked difference though.
Causing a hairline crack in the blind trust he’d always had.
I shut the door and looked at Tristan. His shirt ripped open, hanging off one shoulder, biting his tongue as if he somehow understood the danger without knowing the half of it.
So I reached out, grabbed the torn fabric, and ripped the rest clean off him.
I folded it once, screwed it into a ball, and tossed it into a pile of mops and bleach-stained rags.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I realise it’s summer and we’re in a heatwave, but walking home shirtless still might attract some attention. Especially in an establishment such as yours.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
“My blazer is still on my chair.”
“Right.”
I scanned the cupboard. There wasn’t anything useful.
It was filled with the usual industrial bleach, paper rolls, cleaning shit.
Couldn’t exactly wrap him in kitchen towels.
There were branded T-shirts in the club supply cupboard, but getting there meant walking through at least a dozen cameras and twice that many eyes.
Another reminder of how stupid I’d been tonight.
So I slipped off my leather jacket, draped it over a bucket, undid my shirt, and shrugged out of it.
“Here.” I handed it over. “Wear that.”