Chapter Twenty Razor #2
It was me.
I hit him.
Open hand. Across his mouth and cheek. Hard enough to whip his head sideways, hard enough to split skin. The sound cracked through the space. Wet. Ugly. Blood arched and spattered over concrete. Tyler cried out, the noise torn from him as the air left his lungs all at once.
Cormac chuckled indulgently. “Keep going. I don’t think he’s listening.”
I drew a breath. Stepped back in.
Then I drove my fist under Tyler’s ribs, angled up.
Short. Brutal. A blow leaving little to see but taking everything away.
Tyler folded forward with a strangled sound, body jerking against the restraints as his chest seized.
He gagged, coughing, eyes blown wide, trying and failing to drag air back in.
Cormac didn’t look at him. He watched me. “Again.”
I hesitated. A fraction too long.
Cormac’s grit his teeth. “Don’t go soft on me now, lad.”
“Ain’t soft.” I struck Tyler again. “Never been soft.”
I hit him again. A solid fist to his jaw. Composed. Precise. I knew exactly where to land it. I wasn’t trying to break him; I was marking him. Burning the lesson into flesh and memory. His head snapped sideways. The cry leaving him broke halfway through, turning raw and animal.
“Again.” Cormac’s voice had gone flat. Dead.
Behind me, Doyle shifted. One step. His warning.
He’d take over if they thought I wasn’t doing this properly.
So I drove my fist into Tyler’s gut again, lower this time.
Too low. Too hard. The impact knocked the breath clean out of him, and he folded forward, gagging violently, restraints biting deep as his body convulsed around pain it couldn’t escape.
“Who runs this line?” Cormac asked calmly. “Is it him?”
“No.”
Another blow. Same place. Measured. Wrong.
“Is it you?”
“Yes.”
The word tasted like blood.
I hit him again. And again. And with every strike, I emptied. Rich retreated, folding in on himself somewhere dark and unreachable, and Razor slid fully into place. Heavy. Familiar. Unforgiving.
This was what he was for.
Why he existed.
When I stopped, Tyler hung slack in the chair, head lolling forward, breath coming in thin, broken pulls that didn’t sound right. Blood dripped from his mouth, spotting the floor beneath him.
Cormac nodded once. Satisfied. “That’ll do.” He stepped in close and gripped my shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Good to see you haven’t forgotten who you belong to.”
I didn’t look at him.
I kept my eyes on Tyler’s chest, counting breaths, knowing I’d gone too far, and that whatever came next would be on me.
“Now, I want my product out today. By you.” Cormac pointed at me. “Only you.” Then he turned away, grimacing at Tyler. “Clean this up. And make sure he understands that next time, I won’t let you do it.”
Doyle followed without a word. The door slammed shut behind them, the echo ringing through the warehouse long after they were gone.
Silence rushed in.
I stood there, staring at the blood slicked across my hands, the reality of what I’d done settling heavy and sick in my gut. My jaw clenched as I looked at Tyler, slumped in the chair, head hanging forward. Half of me hated him for whatever choice had put us here. The other half knew better.
This was on me. Every bit.
I crossed the space and tilted his chin up. “Jesus.”
His eyes were unfocused, glassy. Breath coming in short, wheezing pulls. I’d been careful. Done just enough, kept it controlled. But that didn’t account for what Cormac and Doyle might have done before I arrived. Anything could be going on inside him. And those cuts needed proper looking at.
“Tyler.” I tapped his cheek. “Look at me.”
He groaned, then spat blood onto the concrete.
Good. Conscious.
“Can you move?”
“Fuck… you,” he rasped.
I huffed out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “If you can insult me, you’re not dead yet.”
I reached into my boot, pulled the blade free, and sliced through the zip ties at his wrists. As soon as they snapped, he pitched forward, catching himself on his knees.
“Easy.” I hauled him up.
He tried to straighten but folded in half instead, a strangled gasp tearing out of him as he clutched his side.
Shit.
That wasn’t shock. That was damage.
I didn’t think anymore after that. Thinking was hesitation.
I got him to his fee and half-dragged, half-carried him out into the boiling heat, shoving him into the passenger seat of the Audi.
He sagged into the door, pressing his forehead on the glass, breath rattling.
I slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
Normally, we’d handle this with no need for a hospital.
But looking at him, I didn’t know what internal damage there was.
And I wasn’t about to let the man die on my watch.
Nor could I call an ambulance and take myself out of the equation.
Not with a dead man inside that warehouse.
But walking into A&E with Tyler like this…that would alert the feds.
What choice did I have?
I pulled out hard, tyres squealing as I headed north. Tyler shook, sweat breaking out across his forehead.
“You’re fine.” I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince. “Just keep breathing.”
Tyler said nothing.
By the time I screeched into St Thomas’ car park, he was barely upright.
I didn’t bother waiting for a space. I slung the car anywhere, got him out, threw his arm around my shoulders and limped him through to A&E. Everything was noise and light and organised chaos. I kept my arm locked around Tyler’s shoulders, steering him to the desk.
“What happened?” the triage nurse asked.
“Found him,” I said without missing a beat. “Been beaten. Didn’t see what happened.”
The nurse’s eyes dragged over him. Blood. Swelling. The way he couldn’t quite stand straight. Then she clocked my hands. But she just tapped at the keyboard.
“Take a seat. Someone will see you.”
I dumped him into a chair and stood in front of him like a wall, daring anyone to stare too long.
My hands were still sticky. I shoved them into my pockets and tried to steady my breathing.
Time went strange in A&E. Tyler slumped deeper into the chair, sweat slicking his hairline, breath shallow and wrong.
Every so often he shifted with a sharp sound that hooked under my ribs.
Eventually, after triage and a nurse giving me a look that said don’t even try it, we were taken to a cubicle.
Curtain drawn. Plastic chair scraping on lino. Antiseptic and stale coffee.
We stuck to the story.
At least, I did.
The less Tyler said the better. Short answers. Nods. A mumbled “men” when prompted. I stayed close enough to feel him shaking. Then the curtain snapped back and a doctor stepped in, flipping a stethoscope around his neck.
“Tyler, is it?” the doctor said.
And my world tilted.
Fuck.
That man had patched me up before. Not here, though.
No, he’d done it somewhere else. Knelt on Tristan’s floor with blood on his hands and panic in his eyes.
He’d patched me up with shaking fingers and sworn under his breath while Tristan held me as if I might break in half.
This doctor had seen me stripped bare in ways no man ever should.
The doc blinked.
Once.
Twice.
And I stared at him hard, silently begging him—don’t say it, don’t react, don’t fucking acknowledge me. Pretend I’m another body leaning against a cubicle wall. Pretend you’ve never seen me bleeding out on your friend’s bedroom floor.
But I saw it the second his jaw tightened.
He remembered.
“I’m Dr Redmayne.” He turned his attention on Tyler, professional instinct snapping into place. “What’s happened?”
“Was jumped,” I said for him.
“Right.” Henry nodded. Then assessed him, pulling on gloves, checked the obs clipped to Tyler’s finger, watched the numbers for a second too long. “Any loss of consciousness?”
“No.”
“Chest pain?”
Tyler didn’t respond. I felt it like a held breath.
Henry’s eyes lifted to my face. “And you’re…?”
“No one.”
Henry nodded. Then went back to Tyler.
“Okay. I’m going to have a look, all right?” His tone was calm, steady, the kind that made people do what they were told without thinking. “I need you to tell me if anything hurts when I press.”
He palpated Tyler’s abdomen carefully. Tyler flinched.
“There?” Henry asked.
Tyler gasped.
“And here?”
Another sharp intake of breath.
Henry straightened, scribbling on the notes. “We’ll get you some pain relief. And I want a chest X-ray. Possibly bloods. You’re breathing too fast.”
He paused. Looked at me again. Not as a doctor.
As someone who knew exactly what sort of trouble had walked into his cubicle.
“Right.” Henry snapped the notes shut. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He stepped out and pulled the curtain closed behind him.
The second he was gone, my legs went weak.
As if whatever had been holding me upright finally realised it could stop pretending.
Whatever story I was feeding the rest of the department, Doctor Redmayne wouldn’t buy a single fucking word of it.
“You got your phone on you?” I asked Tyler, low.
He shook his head, eyes glassy, unfocused.
“Fuck.”
I should go. Right now. Walk out while I still could. Tyler was in the system. Band on his wrist. Monitors clipped. He was safe.
Me?
Not so much.
“I’ll tell Courtney where you are,” I muttered, more to myself than him.
Then I was out of the cubicle, the curtain swinging back into place behind me.
I stopped dead.
A&E was bedlam.
I didn’t know which way led out and which would drag me deeper into it.
Trolleys jammed nose to nose. Nurses weaving through with clipped voices and sharper looks.
A kid screamed somewhere behind me, high and panicked.
A man shouting about needing a fag, swearing at no one in particular.
Monitors beeped in uneven rhythms. The smell of antiseptic layered over sweat, blood, fear.
But if I stayed, there’d be questions. Security.
Police. Someone who’d recognise me from somewhere I didn’t want remembered.
I was boxed in.
I picked a direction and walked.
Fast.
“Excuse me!” someone called behind me. “Sir—hey!”
I didn’t stop. Didn’t look. And I clipped the corner of a trolley being rushed in by paramedics, the wheels juddering as it veered. A man lay strapped down on it, collar on, eyes rolled back. I stumbled, caught myself just in time.
“Move!” a paramedic barked.
A hand clamped hard around my shoulder.
I spun to face Henry.
“You need to come with me.”
“Nah.” I tried to twist free. “I need to get out of here. Look after him, yeah?”
“Stop.” Henry tightened his grip. “Seriously. Come with me.”
He angled his head just enough to say don’t do this here.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
There was nowhere to run without making it worse.
So I let him guide me back through the tide of bodies, down a side corridor where the noise dulled but didn’t disappear.
Somewhere between storage and nowhere important where a crash trolley was parked against the wall, monitors stacked on top of it like forgotten luggage.
Henry stopped, glanced left, then right.
Then he held out a phone.
I frowned, heart slamming against my ribs. “What’s this?”
“I know nothing,” he said under his breath. “Not a fucking thing. And I am exceptionally cross that I’m doing this.”
I took it. Confused. Then lifted it to my ear. “Yeah?”
“Are you in A&E?”
Shit.
“Tricky…” My stomach did some stupid, twisty, flippy thing. Like it cared. I dragged a hand over my head as Henry stepped back, giving me the illusion of privacy. I knew better. “Yeah.”
“Why? What happened?”
“It’s not me.” I kept my voice low, tight. “And I can’t tell you.”
A beat. “But you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” A lie, but not the one he meant. “I’ve got some shit I need to handle. So you…” I peered over to Henry, then put my side to him, talking to the wall and lowering my voice. “You might not see me for a bit, yeah?”
“What? Why?”
“Listen.” Panic clawed up my spine. This was the dangerous part. The part where I stayed on too long. “Don’t come by. Don’t try to find me. Keep away.”
“Rich—”
“Fuck, baby, don’t—” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
I froze.
Closed my eyes.
I’d never said that in my life. Not once. Never even thought it. And here it was, loose in the air between us, said in a hospital corridor with blood still drying on my hands and my world caving in around me.
Or had I said it before?
If I had, it belonged to another version of us. Another place. Another time I couldn’t afford to remember. And that was dangerous. I couldn’t have that now. Not after what I’d done. After what this had cost.
“I can’t talk right now.” I opened my eyes and glanced at Henry, who was very deliberately studying a laminated evacuation map. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.” I took a breath, not wanting to end it there. Not after saying that. “Just…keep your window closed. Til I say.”
“Rich—”
I ended the call.
Henry turned to face me, and I handed back the mobile. Swallowed.
“He’s my best friend.” Henry pocketed the phone in his scrubs. “He’s been there for me since the day I pissed the bed on our first day sharing a room at Harrow. He never said anything. Not a thing. He helped me clean it up and gave me his spare pyjamas.”
“I…no idea why you’re telling me this.”
“Because it’s not like I can threaten you.
” A ghost of bitterness crossed his face before he gestured vaguely back to the cubicle where the man I’d pummelled to the ground waited to be seen.
“Though I could get my hands on some very nasty substances.” A weak attempt at humour.
It didn’t land. Then he shook his head. “But maybe I can appeal to some better nature you might have and he obviously sees in you. So please…whatever this is, whatever it means to you…please.” The word broke.
“Don’t hurt him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
I said nothing.
Because that was a promise I couldn’t keep.
“You should get your hands seen to.” Henry stepped back. “I’ll assume that was… fighting off his assailants?”
He turned away before I could answer.
And as I stood there, swallowed by noise and light and everything I couldn’t outrun, one thing settled cold and clear in my chest:
Tristan had a friend whose loyalty outstripped anything in my world.