Chapter Fourteen Razor
chapter fourteen
Razor
The Velvet Lounge looked wrong in daylight. Lights up, no bodies, the smell of bleach fighting the ghosts of last night’s sweat and spilt cocktails. A couple of cleaners were mopping. Finch was fixing a wobbly bar stool. Security uniforms hung on hooks like empty skins waiting to be filled.
Tyler met me at the office door, hair damp as if he’d bolted out of the shower the second I texted. “Didn’t think you’d be back yet.”
“Didn’t ask you to predict my movements.” I shouldered past him.
He followed me in, shutting the door with that cautious little click he did when he sensed trouble.
“What’s up?” He folded his arms. “This about that bloke from last night? You knew him, yeah? Same one from when we booted that older geezer?”
I ignored the question and pulled the stool to the CCTV rack, fingers flying across the controls. “I want every angle from last night wiped.”
Tyler blinked. “What?”
I looked up. “Everything that shows him. Everything that shows me with him. Gone.”
He hesitated a fraction too long.
“This doesn’t go back to Cormac,” I added, voice low. “And staff stick to the line: I removed a threat.”
Tyler nodded stiffly. “Alright. Say no more.”
“Good.” I waved at the door. “Now fuck off. And tell the crew if they open their mouths, they’re out. No warnings.”
His jaw worked, uncertainty there, but he didn’t push it.
He backed out and shut the door behind him.
I worked quick. Scrubbing through the feeds, watching myself reappear in flickers, static warping my outline, dropped frames swallowing Tristan whole.
Tyler had already done half the job without being told. Good instincts. Bad timing.
I isolated each angle: dance floor, hallway, stairwell.
Rear exit. And there I was, shoulder-checking bodies aside, hauling Tristan half-conscious into my chest, fury written across every frame.
And there, his head lolling against my neck.
His hands slipping. My arm tightening around his waist like a reflex.
I dug into the coding panel, corrupting timestamps, running the loop-back, layering a false equipment-damage file over the raw edits.
Incoming static bled through the recordings, chewing whole seconds, dissolving shapes.
I destroyed everything recognisable until the footage looked like a dying camera screaming for replacement, not a deliberate erasure.
When the last file blinked out, the door creaked open and Tyler slipped inside. “All sorted,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans.
“Good.”
“You gonna tell me—”
I pushed the stool back and stood so fast his question died in his throat.
“Blond was a plant,” I said flatly. “Sent to test our entry points. See how fast we react. That’s all you need to know.”
Tyler’s eyebrows twitched. He didn’t buy it. He also wasn’t suicidal.
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “Tonight runs smooth. You handle it. I won’t be in.”
He blinked. “Saturday? You always—”
“Not today.”
And that was that.
He shut his mouth, nodded once, and backed out of the office before his curiosity talked him into an early grave.
I left the Lounge before anything else could follow me out.
Drove back towards the Wick with the windows down, the air thick with the smell of fried food and petrol.
My head was a noise I didn’t want to listen to.
I parked, ducked into the Greek deli on the corner, bought two hot boxes of whatever the old woman behind the counter insisted I “needed,” and grabbed a full-fat Coke for him.
Because he’d want it. He’d need it. And some pathetic part of me liked the idea of him drinking it in my shirt.
I didn’t like that thought though, so I shoved it down and took the metal stairs two at a time, the stupid flutter in my chest waiting to detonate.
I unlocked the door.
Tristan glanced up from the sofa.
He’d found pieces of himself from the night before. Suit trousers back on, his white shirt loose and open at the throat, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the coffee table.
I smiled, lifting the takeaway bags. “Hope you like Greek food.”
Tristan gave me a small, odd smile. And I saw why.
On the coffee table, right in front of him, lying atop the glass and pretending to be innocent, was a foil packet.
Pretty Poison.
My stomach dropped. Sharp, ugly, immediate.
Right. Of course. I’d meant to stash it in the duffel.
Didn’t. Because apparently, I was a piss-poor drug dealer who left designer MDMA in plain sight of the one man who absolutely shouldn’t see it.
More than that, it was a reminder. A mirror.
This was why Tristan Hale-Fitzroy shouldn’t be in my space.
I dropped the food onto the kitchen counter and went to him. He sat back on the sofa, watching me as if trying to read my face. I sighed, moved around the coffee table, and dropped beside him.
“You know what I do,” I said.
“Yep.” Tristan nodded once. “I do.”
“So this can’t be a shock.”
“It’s not…” He picked up the packet between two fingers, careful, curious. “It’s… not cocaine.”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“How are you with your drug lingo?”
He huffed a soft laugh. “I’m a criminal barrister, Razor. Not a nun.”
“Mandy.” I waited. “Top shelf. MDMA if you want the lab coat version.”
He looked down at the label. “Pretty Poison.”
“A new brand.”
“Is it… legitimate?”
“To take? It’s clean. Pure.” I rubbed my hand over my jaw. “Not half-baked, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He swallowed. Looked away. “To be fair, I’m not even sure what I’m asking.”
“Least it ain’t that you wanna take it.”
Silence stretched between us. Then he looked at me. And there was something behind those blue eyes I couldn’t name. Not fear, not confusion. It was sharper. Hungrier.
“It’s… for sex, right?”
“Don’t call it the Love Buzz for no reason.”
“So…this was what Ollie took. With Benji.”
I furrowed my brow. “Who?”
He rolled his eyes, as if I should know that one. “My ex, Oliver? My housemate Benji? The video you made me watch of their orgy before you pummelled him into the ground and robbed him.”
“Ah.” I winced. “Yeah…well, no. They had a shit batch cooked up by Ghost himself. Why the man’s in prison. Probably didn’t even hit the sides. All that orgy bollocks he probably did sober.” I glanced at him. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“And I didn’t pummel him or rob him, by the way. He bruised like a peach and shit himself the moment you walked away. I followed him to the cash machine, and he gave me the max he could get out. A grand. Then I told him if he ever came near you again, I’d rip out his throat.”
“That’s…oddly kind of you.”
“I can be nice.” I smiled.
“Though he’d have deserved it. For cheating.”
I didn’t respond to that. Couldn’t trust myself to.
That line of conversation was heading somewhere I wasn’t ready to go.
Somewhere sounding a lot like relationships and expectations.
He might ask if we were exclusive. And even though I hadn’t touched anyone else since him, I sure as fuck didn’t want to hear if he had.
Or face the sharp little twist inside me that didn’t want him to.
Luckily, Tristan steered the conversation back. “So this… it’s safe?”
“To take?” I nodded. “Safest out there. Best hit, too.”
Another stretch of quiet. Thick. Loaded.
Then Tristan stood up.
For a second, I thought he was leaving. Walking out of my flat, out of this moment, out of the last twenty-four hours. Instead, he turned to me and sank onto my lap as if made for the shape of me. And there we were, chest to chest, with his knees bracketing my thighs. Warm. Barefaced. Intent.
He kissed me.
And I grabbed him without thinking, sliding my hands up his back, under his shirt, finding skin to make every nerve in me jump.
Soft. Warm. Familiar in a way it shouldn’t be.
Too fucking good. And yeah, if this was a goodbye fuck, I could take it.
Lose myself in him for a minute. Pretend it wouldn’t follow me after.
But he didn’t kiss me as if saying goodbye.
Then he pulled back to kiss down my cheek, along my jaw to my throat, and his lips brushed my ear when he whispered, filled with pure seduction,
“What if I said I did want to take it?” He leant back, met my eyes dead-on. “With you.”
I swallowed. Hard. “I don’t take my own stash.”
“Why not? You said it’s safe.”
“It is. I had it tested. Tested again. And again. It’s clean. Pure. Brand-new line Cormac wants moved.”
“So why not test it yourself?”
I dragged a hand over my face. “Fuck, Tricky. What are you doing?”
He reached for his shirt buttons, undid them all, then slipped it off, tossing it aside, and grabbed my face in both hands.
He kissed me again. Deep, hungry, certain.
And Christ, I felt it. The spark. The heat.
The way he fit me too well. But I also knew what Mandy did to people.
How it loosened everything. Muscles, fears, tongues.
And Pretty Poison? Stronger. Cleaner. Sharper.
I didn’t know what it could do to me if I was already halfway gone for him sober.
Tristan pulled back, breath warm against my cheek, and reached for the foil packet on the table, sliding a finger under the seal.
I grabbed his wrist and the packet in the same motion. “You’re not taking it.”
He froze, eyes wide, chest rising and falling against mine.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew what this meant to me.
He wasn’t being dismissed. I was saving his life.
And I flipped the foil over in my hand, brushing my thumb across the embossing.
The logo gleamed. Two mirrored Ps, twisting like a snake eating its tail.
Whoever designed this shit knew exactly what they were doing.
Tristan swallowed. “What if I begged?”
“Fuck’s sake.” I scraped my hand back through my hair. “You realise what you’re asking to do?”