Chapter Ten Razor
chapter ten
Razor
Monday. Laundry day.
And while, yeah, I shoved my jeans, shirt and boxers in the washing machine in the Wick apartment before I dressed down, that wasn’t what I was talking about.
Cash. Favours. Problems.
But before I did that though, I had a fucking duffel full of Pretty Poison breathing in my boot that needed sorting.
So about ten, I got in the Audi. Drove up the high street and parked a couple rows over from the phone repair shop, on the same cracked white lines where I’d parked a hundred times before.
I walked the rest of the way, and Hackney had that baked-in smell of petrol, bin bags, and someone grilling chicken too early that had become a familiar backdrop to my day-to-day.
But the phone repair shop I needed was right there, open and sat wedged between a bookie’s and a chicken shop, its QUICK FIX REPAIRS neon sign missing half its letters.
I pushed open the door.
Tariq, as usual, was behind the counter, screwdriver in hand, gutting a half-dead iPhone. Same Nike tech fleece. Same turban. Same sharp eyes clocking every detail in under a second.
“Razor.” He gave me a once-over. “You look like shit.”
“Need something checked.”
“Straight to it today?”
“No time for pussyfooting. And I need it quiet.”
His eyebrows twitched. Interest, caution, curiosity all tightening in the same breath. “Another phone?”
“Something else. For your back room.”
Tariq’s brows shot up. So I took a sliver of foil from my jeans, no bigger than a fingernail, and placed it on the counter. Barely visible. Tariq swept it up as if it were a dropped SIM card.
His face tightened. “Pretty.”
A look from me shut him right up.
He jerked his chin towards the door. “Turn the sign.”
I walked back to the door, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and locked it.
Tariq lifted the counter flap to let me through, and I passed over, through a beaded curtain, into the cramped back room.
Same soldering irons. Same bench lamps. Same cracked-paint walls.
But the far corner looked newer. As if it were some makeshift lab cobbled together from a chemistry starter kit and a prayer.
Reagent bottles. TLC plates taped to the wall.
A scale with the label peeled off. UV torch. Chemical wipes. Nitrile gloves.
And someone sitting at the workbench.
Tariq dealt in phones. Repairs, trade-ins, stolen handsets passed on for a tidy sum.
But his cousin? His cousin was my asset.
Sami. Young. Wiry. Hoodie up. Glasses slipping down his nose.
Couldn’t have been older than twenty-one.
Some university chemistry student. Fuck knew where, didn’t care.
Quiet as sin. And he did this kind of thing on the sly.
My type of man.
He looked up. “Oh. Hey.”
His voice cracked on the ‘hey’. Poor sod. He knew who I was.
Tariq jerked his chin towards him. “He can do a prelim. Then a deeper check later, if you want.”
Sami swallowed. “What you got?”
I tried not to let my shoulders tighten as Tariq opened the scrap of foil, tapped out a few rose-tinted granules onto a glass slide and clicked on the UV lamp for Sami to check.
The crystals glowed faintly. Pink-gold, almost luminescent, and Levi’s face flashed through my head again.
Pale, still, the ambulance lights flashing blue over his skin.
I shoved the memory down to do this. Save face. Y’know, be Razor.
“Mad colour,” Sami said. “Aesthetics’ on point, at least.” He dripped reagent onto one granule. It fizzed, bloomed colour. “MD. At least partly. No PMA reaction so far.”
My jaw unclenched a fraction.
Sami leant close, watching the colour shift with a scientist’s hunger.
“I’ll need a bigger fragment.” He peered up at me all big eyes, as if he’d asked me for a semen sample. “Like… half a point.”
Tariq looked to me for permission. I hesitated. Because I knew the cost of this stuff. But Levi tilted somewhere behind my ribs, and I nodded. So Tariq scraped a little more into a labelled tube and handed it to Sami.
“Can you do a full check today?” I asked.
Sami nodded. “Yeah. Can do. I’ve got lab access. After-hours. No one checks the TLC plates in the postgrad room.”
Smart kid.
Dead kid, if he ever crossed the wrong person.
But smart.
“It looks… good so far.” Sami glanced up. “Just weirdly uniform. Like…like someone engineered the crystal structure on purpose.”
My stomach dipped. Engineered? Not kitchen-cooked? Not local?
Cormac. What the fuck are you involved in now?
“I’ll be back later.” I stepped back, needing air. Space. Distance from the pink shimmer on the table.
Tariq held up a hand. “Wait for the call. Don’t come back in person unless you have to. Don’t bring anything through here again, yeah?”
Smart advice.
Scary advice.
I left the back, went out into the shop, shut the counter and unlocked the front door.
Then I stepped back into Hackney’s harsh daylight, street noise hitting me.
Kids shouting, a bus screeching, someone blasting drill from a car parked on double yellows.
And my phone buzzing, scaring me half to shit.
Joe’s text: u coming 2day? need the books
Right.
Laundry day.
I headed back towards the car; the packet burning a hole in my pocket like a secret I hadn’t asked for. I didn’t know what was worse; the drug being dirty and dangerous…or the drug being clean. Too clean. Perfect.
Perfect meant it was safe enough to take at least. No one would drop dead on my dance floor. And that kind of perfect would give someone the biggest high of their life, the best fucking time, especially if doing it as a twosome.
Lucky sods who tried that.
But perfect also meant it wasn’t just a product.
Perfect meant someone had engineered this.
Designed it. Built it for a purpose. And that purpose sure as fuck wasn’t small time.
Cormac wasn’t just expanding; he was evolving.
And I’d just agreed to be his frontman. I needed to get my head around it. Fast.
Luckily, there was only one place I could think straight, and I was heading there anyway.
So I hauled the duffel from the boot, then walked the rest of the way to Joe’s café with every nerve wired tight.
I should’ve been used to carrying bricks of cash by now, but I was spooked.
Waiting for someone to jump me, or worse, for blue lights to wash over the pavement.
Not even I could talk my way out of a duffel full of drug money when I had lab-grade MDMA burning a hole in my pocket too.
Slack.
Fucking slack, Richie.
I reached Joe’s and pushed through the door. The bell rattled overhead, the same as always. I headed straight to the back table and slid the duffel under it. Joe didn’t need a summons. He came over with a mug of tea before I’d even sat down.
“Got some washing?”
I nudged the bag with my boot. He crouched, unzipped to see the bundles, bands, and an entire weekend’s worth of cash needing to be turned invisible before sunrise.
He whistled. “Good week.”
“Mm.”
He zipped the bag shut and looked at me properly. “Not very chatty.”
I took a sip of tea, letting the sweetness settle in my throat.
“Alright.” Joe patted my shoulder once, a solid, old-man gesture hitting deeper than any shove. “I’ll run it through the drawer. Full English coming up. You look like you need feeding.”
I nodded. I couldn’t trust my mouth to open without everything breaking loose.
Joe took the bag and disappeared into the back.
It didn’t matter how he did it, the envelopes, the fake receipts, the bulk orders that never existed.
As long as the money came out clean on the other side, Cormac stayed happy.
And when Cormac was happy, he forgot about me long enough for me to breathe.
By the time Joe came back, my tea was stone cold and my head felt hollow. He swapped the mug for a fresh one and slid a plate in front of me. Fried bread, eggs leaking gold, sausages looking older than the café. Exactly what I needed.
“How’s the view out the Wick?” Joe pulled up a chair opposite me while I salted the food as if I was trying to cure meat, then dug in. At least he filled the plate.
“Decent.”
“Yeah? Those dizzy heights not getting to you yet?”
I looked up, chewing. “Not so far.”
“Careful, Razor.” Joe leant back, arms folded over his gut. “People think going up in the world means you’re flying. Truth is, sometimes it’s just a taller place to fall from. Ivory towers make you lightheaded.”
“Yeah.” I stabbed at the egg, wiped yolk through beans. “So I hear. But I’m used to being high up. Came from towers, remember?”
He’d know. He’d lived street level, then climbed to whatever rung in the Firm I was now trying not to slide off too.
Tristan had called it Organised Criminal Networks.
Joe had done ten years for it. Didn’t flip.
Didn’t bend. Came out with a prison stare and a café no one asked questions in.
Didn’t touch drugs anymore, didn’t swing fists, but still laundered money through a till drawer that stuck when it closed too hard.
He wasn’t innocent. Couldn’t ever be.
And suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to be him in twenty years if I ever lived that long. Sitting in a greasy spoon he owned, watching dogs eat better than he did, pretending the world made any sense after having spent ten years inside for someone else’s game.
Joe drummed his nails on the table, eyes shifting to the old woman feeding her spaniel sausages. “Went to Levi’s memorial yesterday.”
Air caught tight in my chest. I stared at my plate. “Yeah? Didn’t see you.”
“Stayed out of the way. Let the family have their moment.”
I nodded.
“You didn’t go back to the house after?”
“No.”
“Where d’you go?”
I paused my fork mid-air. Then lowered it, pushed the plate aside, and looked him dead-on. “Why d’you never settle down, Joe? Never had a bird? Never shared this place with anyone?”
He barked a laugh, then spread his arms as if displaying the café and his own worn-out body.
“Who the fuck wants this? Grease, debt, and bullshit. That’s what I bring.
” He shook his head, rubbing a hand over his bald scalp.
“And when you’ve been inside ten years, you wake up every night thinking someone’s standing over you with a blade.
That’s no life to drag a woman into. No life to raise a kid in. No life at all, really.”
Looking at Joe, I shifted. His tired eyes. His callused hands from decades of graft. The café stinking of burnt oil, disinfectant, and quiet fucking regret. He was a man who’d once run with the same boys I did. Who’d survived long enough to be left behind. And it hit me heavy in my gut.
If I didn’t get out soon, properly out, this was waiting for me.
Ten years gone. No one to come home to. No softness. No warmth. No future. Just a prison sentence that never stopped, even once the walls disappeared.
Joe didn’t see me staring.
Or maybe he did.
Either way, his next words snagged somewhere raw in my chest.
“Eat, lad. Before it gets cold. And whatever’s chewing at you? Don’t let it make you stupid.”
So I did.
And after that plate was gone, I went straight into myself.
Into the quiet, the routines, the relentless list of things keeping me alive in this world: laundry.
Sorting the cash. Not just at Joe’s but at the other places scattered around who took our cash in for us and made it come out clean the other side.
And I updated the fake invoices Joe and the others would process later.
Then I checked the sellers’ tallies, stock levels, the bouncers’ shifts, the VIP bookings.
Then I went back to my apartment and stared at the duffel where Pretty Poison sat in its pristine little packets like a fucking threat. I tried not to touch it. Not to think about it. Or picture what it might do to the wrong person. Or the right one.
That night, my phone buzzed.
Sami.
I stepped out onto my balcony, lit a cigarette, and answered. “Yeah?”
“It’s… done.” Sami sounded nervous. Always was around me. It’s why I usually sent Tyler to do this, but I needed this one for myself.
“And?”
A rustle. Papers. “It’s MDMA, but not street grade.
” He cleared his throat. “It’s engineered.
Crystals are uniform. Purity’s higher than anything I’ve ever tested.
Whoever produced this had proper equipment—like, proper.
” A pause. “It’s clean. No adulterants. No PMA. No fentanyl. No cheap cuts… Pure.”
My jaw clenched. “Safe?”
“Yes. But…”
I waited.
“It’s potent. Too potent for casual use. One packet is… a lot. You’d need to dose it carefully. Really carefully. Otherwise, it’ll flatten someone.”
Flatten. Another ghost of Levi pressed at the back of my skull.
I exhaled. “Good work, kid.”
“Razor?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful with it, yeah? It feels… different.”
“I know.”
I hung up before he could get soft on me and went to bed.
Then Tuesday bled into Wednesday. Wednesday into Thursday. By Friday, I’d cycled through every emotion I wasn’t supposed to have: caution, fear, anger, relief, temptation, longing.
And all week, I’d caught myself wishing, or wondering, maybe imagining, something that had no place in my world.
Some alternate universe where Richie, not Razor, could spend a lazy weekend in bed.
Enjoy this scorching summer we were unexpectedly having, getting hot and sweaty.
Not alone. Nor with random men either. But with someone who’d give a fuck if I had nightmares.
Someone who’d stay. Who’d kiss me through them.
Hold me until the panic eased. Someone who looked at me the way Tristan did.
As if there was something left in me worth wanting.
The second the thought formed, I shut it down hard.
Gave myself a stern talking-to about being an utter prick.
About dreaming above my station. Thinking I got to have anything good.
Then I shoved the Pretty Poison bag closed, locked it, grabbed my keys, and went to work.
Razor Slade didn’t get softness. Or quiet mornings. And he didn’t get alternate universes.
He got the Velvet Lounge.
Cormac.
Danger.
And fire.
But sometimes, when my guard slipped, I wondered if I’d been built for something else.
Someone else.
And that thought scared me more than any drug in my pocket.