Chapter Twenty-Three Razor #2
I leant back against the railing. “What is it?”
“Final tidy-up. We’ve got a buyer who wants reassurance. Face to face. Last of the Shoreditch stock.”
“You’ve got managers for that.” I’d made sure of it.
“Mm.” He pause. For effect. “I want you. I only trust you with this, Razor. You know that.
Trust. The word men like him used when they meant leverage.
“And you handle it clean,” he went on, “you can take a break. Proper one. Full pay. No oversight. I’ll give you the Spanish place.
Pool. Sea view. You can disappear for a bit.
Fuck your worries away. Come back lighter.
Then I’ll move you higher. Never have your hands on anything again.
Or… there’s a nice exit. Always has been for loyalty. ”
Sun. Distance. Clean hands.
Everything I’d told Tristan I wanted, laid out like a menu item I hadn’t realised I’d ordered years ago.
“You’d like that, right?”
Would I?
At what cost?
Because if I said no, he’d hear it. Not the word.
The shift. The hesitation. The half-breath men like him were trained to sniff out.
And once he smelt it, he wouldn’t let it settle.
He’d lean in. Start watching. Start pulling threads.
And the closer he looked, the more likely he was to see exactly where I’d been when I wasn’t in his pocket.
Who I’d been with. What I suddenly had to lose.
And what I’d been doing to my line since Tristan had set foot back in my life.
I glanced back through the glass into the flat. Tristan’s laptop was on the table. Files stacked neatly beside it. The quiet order of his life. Then I gazed further. Past the hallway, to the bedroom door, ajar enough for me to see him asleep. Curled in on himself. Safe. Unaware.
“One last thing.” Cormac said. “For me. For the house I gave your sister. And that little baby of hers might grow up right, eh?”
And there it was again. Not the offer. The reminder.
The invisible line around my throat, tightening and making breathing feel optional. Making choice redundant. He wasn’t dangling something new, he was pulling on what I’d already taken. What I already owed. Who would pay if I decided to grow principles overnight.
I pushed off the railing. “Where?”
“Docklands. Unit by the river. You know the one. Bring the product. Cash gets handed over on site.”
That was new.
“I don’t move stock personally.” I’d bled to get past that.
“You do today. It’s yours, remember? What I gave you. Quick drop, done.”
Quick. Done.
Like it ever was.
I closed my eyes. Long enough to feel the trap settle. To understand that this wasn’t the moment to fight. This was the moment to survive.
I pushed off the railing. “Send me the details.”
The line went dead.
So I went back into the bedroom. Tristan stirred as I pulled on my clothes, and he blinked up at me, hair a mess, eyes still soft with sleep. “You leaving?”
“Yeah.” I bent and kissed his forehead. Kept it light. Normal. “Got called out. Nothing major. Might see you later, yeah?”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “Can’t you stay a little longer?”
“It’ll be done quick. Then…who knows, eh? Keep your window open.”
“Be careful.”
“Always am.”
Another lie. Slid on easily.
I didn’t look back when I shut the door.
I got in the car and pulled away from the kerb without looking back.
West London fell away too easily. Wide streets still damp from the night, townhouses waking up polite and quiet, cafés setting out chairs as if nothing bad had ever happened on that pavement.
It smelt of bread and early coffee and money that didn’t need guarding.
I drove through it on autopilot, past places that didn’t clock me, that asked nothing of me.
Then, the road narrowed.
The buildings changed. Brick crept back in. Steel. Graffiti bleeding through fresh paint. The city’s tone altered as if someone had turned the bass back up, and I felt it in my chest. That familiar tightening. As if stepping into a jacket I’d worn too long but never quite shrugged off.
By the time I hit the lock-up, the sky had gone flat and colourless.
I parked, let myself in, and pulled the bag from where it had been waiting.
Black. Anonymous. The sort of thing that disappeared into a room unless you were looking for it.
Light enough to lift easily, heavy enough to mean something.
I tested the weight out of habit, adjusted the strap, felt it settle against my palm.
This was the line.
My line.
I shoved it into the boot and shut it hard, then stood there with my hands braced on the metal, breathing through my nose. Told myself I’d thought this through. That this was how I did it clean. How I moved without tipping my hand. That I was heading towards my exit.
I got back in the car and headed east again, further this time.
Past the places trying too hard to look new.
Past the ones that hadn’t bothered. Warehouses hunched against the river, with glass towers rising behind.
Docklands came into view, all sharp edges and cold water and space swallowing sound.
When I reached the unit, it was open. Two cars I didn’t recognise sat inside, engines off, windows dark, the river slapping quietly against the concrete outside.
I killed the engine and stayed where I was.
Paranoia had me checking the mirrors. The doors.
The angles. Counting exits the way I always did, the way I’d been trained to.
Everything looked clean. Still, a feeling pressed low in my gut.
Not panic. Nor fear, as such. It was colder than that.
Resignation. Like the moment before stepping into a punch you know is coming.
I got out. Opened the boot. Lifted the bag.
For a moment, my head went where I wanted it.
To sun instead of sodium lights. White stone under bare feet.
Heat soaking into bone. A place where no one knew my name or what it was worth.
Somewhere I didn’t have to keep score or keep watch.
Somewhere the air didn’t smell of oil and fear.
Where my sister could be a kid again, where Maisie could grow up untainted.
Tristan could be there too. Sprawled on a sunbed, laughing at something stupid I’d said, eyes half-closed, skin warm and unguarded.
Frolicking in the sea this time, not a grimy lake.
And the world pared back to salt and skin and nothing sharp enough to cut any of us.
Not this city. Not his. Not mine.
That was the thing Cormac had dangled. Not the villa. Not the money.
Escape.
The same way he’d dangled a roll of notes all those years ago when I was skimming milk from the Co-op fridge. Something bright and impossible held just out of reach. A thing I wanted so badly it hurt. That I told myself I deserved.
And for a second, I let myself believe it might be real.
So I tightened my grip on the bag and walked inside.
The shutter clanged down behind me. The unit swallowed the sound, the light, the lie. And by the time I realised there was no way back out, I was inside the trap.
The men were waiting. Suits. Calm. Polished. Pretending this wasn’t exactly what it was. One of them smiled as if we were about to close on a flat overlooking the river.
“You Razor?” the one reeking of a bath load of cologne said.
I didn’t answer.
He smiled anyway. “Let’s have a look, then.”
I set the bag on the table. Didn’t push it towards him.
At this level, you didn’t invite scrutiny.
And I tried to keep calm while my heart pounded in my skull.
Then a heavy thud broke through the quiet and I flinched.
Then another. A bang travelling through concrete and bone rather than air. I turned.
And I understood then.
Not in a flash of panic. Not with fear. But with a cold, settling certainty. Like when a balance sheet finally adds up.
Some doors, once they closed, didn’t reopen.
I’d known that walking in.
Known there was always a reckoning waiting at the end of things like this.
I hadn’t expected it to arrive so quietly.