Chapter Twelve Razor
CHapter twelve
Razor
I’d crashed on Mum’s sofa again after the clusterfuck of last night.
Hadn’t sleep worth a shit, though.
I would have preferred that my tossing and turning had been down to replaying that alley scene in my head.
Pretty little thing with the soft eyes and split lip.
But nah. That weren’t all of it. He took up space, sure.
More than I wanted him to. But what currently took up way more room than him and the Bethnal Green shit, was that stupid double buggy Layton had brought round for Keeley and the baby.
Double. Meaning twin.
When I’d said “double,” I meant one of them jobbies that’s a car seat and buggy in one.
Not some side-by-side monstrosity barely fitting in the lift.
Thing looked as if it belonged on a motorway.
Keeley was fuming, obviously. So now I had to shift that heap of junk, find another one, and deal with the rest of the day’s crap before noon.
No time to sit about thinking of some posh bloke who’d got too far under my skin.
House rule’s simple. Never the same bloke twice. Not unless he’s paid for, properly vetted, knows the score. Paid means silence. Paid means control. And what happened in that alley? That was neither.
So I started early, head down, mind working. First thing was Tyler. He was meant to be overseeing stash for my line, not leaving the Bethnal Green place wide open. And definitely not leaving a seventeen-year-old on it alone. That kid was still missing.
That sat wrong in my chest, heavy and cold.
I didn’t run kids. Never had. They still had a chance.
A real one. They could do anything else rather than end up bleeding on concrete or rotting inside for someone else’s profit.
This life eats what it can, and the younger you are, the faster it chews.
And yeah, gangs liked to talk about loyalty.
Family. All that bullshit. But when things went loud, when doors came off and sirens cut the air, it was always the kids who got dropped first. Forgotten. Written off as collateral.
I only hired men who knew exactly what they were stepping into. Men who’d already burnt their exits. Who weren’t pretending this was temporary or clever or fixable.
Men like me.
Problem was, that code didn’t mean shit to Cormac.
All he saw was his gear gone. Stash stripped bare.
Scales smashed, baggies everywhere, cash box lifted.
Tiny vanished. No cameras. No witnesses.
Just a single glove left on the floor. And Ghost’s boys signing their work. A quiet fuck-you, aimed straight at me.
My mess, my debt.
So that’s what I needed to sort.
I didn’t bother giving him a heads up.
I went round the back of his place with the duffel Cormac’s lot had passed down yesterday.
His door’s never locked as the police had kicked it in too many times to bother fixing it.
Meaning I walked straight into the usual circus.
Tyler, trousers half mast, getting his dick sucked by some bird who weren’t his girlfriend.
Another one kneeling close, waiting her turn.
Obvious junkies. All bones and bad choices.
“Jesus fuck, Tyler.” I dropped the bag.
He jumped as if I’d pushed him. The girl in his lap scrambled off, fingers at her mouth, eyes hollow and wide; she wiped her lips as if tasting nothing but regret. Tyler’s trousers hung open, wet dick out, and nowhere near as nice as the one I’d had in my gob last night.
“What the fuck, Razor!” He scrambled to tuck himself in.
I looked at the two girls pressed into the wall, shivering in too-thin clothes. “Courtney know you’re playing away?”
Tyler tried to paste on that stupid half-grin he thought made him look charming instead of thick. “They’re paying off a bit they owe. Nothing big. You want one?” He nodded towards the girls. “Take your pick.”
That was the last thing he managed before I crossed the room in two strides and cracked him with an open hand. Loud. Palm to cheek. He reeled back, catching himself on the sofa arm as though he’d nearly gone over a cliff. The shock on his face was almost funny. He should’ve known better.
I didn’t waste slaps on things I forgave.
“Paying off how?” I snapped. “You taking your cut in blowjobs now? Since when did we take scraps instead of cash?”
He lifted both hands, all defensive. “Bruv, calm—”
I hit him again. Harder. Not fists. Open-handed. A lesson, not a hospital trip.
“You don’t take payment in kind, you thick fuck. That’s stealing from the pot. Stealing from me. From Cormac.” Another slap, sharp enough to sting my own hand. “You wanna explain that to him when he asks where the cash went?”
The girls were pressed against the wall, wide-eyed, shaking. One of them couldn’t have been more than sixteen, Keeley’s age. My stomach twisted.
I jerked my chin at them, voice still hard. “Get your gear and go. Now.”
They stared at me, not understanding the words.
And Christ… maybe I should’ve expected it. My line wasn’t clean. I wasn’t clean. Bad men doing bad shit, that was the business. And I wasn’t some bleeding-heart saint. Most days I looked the other way because caring would get me killed, and Cormac didn’t tolerate soft spots in his ranks.
But right then?
Two girls, barely out of childhood, probably trafficked in from somewhere no one cared about. Tyler using them as currency. That hit something in me I couldn’t bury. If that had been my sister in some foreign flat, begging in a language no one listened to…I’d have burnt the world down for her.
And I’d have killed the men who touched her.
So I reached into the duffel, pulled out a roll of notes, shrugged off my coat and hoodie, and handed them over.
I pointed to the door, made a short running gesture with my fingers.
They bolted. One tugged my hoodie over her head; the other wrapped herself in my coat.
Watching them go felt like a kick, mostly because it left me with nothing but that shitty leather jacket I hated.
But whether they ran for good or straight back to whoever owned them…
I couldn’t carry it. Not now. Not today.
Tyler spat blood into his hand, glaring. Blood I’d once again shed. This time, though, I had no care about it and no desire to kiss it better.
“I was gonna take it from my cut, weren’t I?” Tyler wiped under his nose. “That ain’t stealing. And if you weren’t such a miserable cunt, you could have got your end away an’ all.”
I leant in close, till he could smell the truth on my breath. “I don’t give a fuck about getting my end away on a scared little junkie. I give a fuck about the rules. You break them, we both burn.”
I turned my back before he could see what really got to me.
Shame stuck under my skin. Yeah, I know.
Hypocrite. I paid for it, too. I know what that makes me.
But there’s a difference, or at least I tell myself there is.
I pay because it’s the only way it feels safe.
To get the type of thing I want, I need it quiet.
And when I do, I choose who’s there. Blokes who choose it too.
Not ones who trade their bodies for a hit or a meal.
Not ones who flinch when you touch them.
But ones who call it a lifestyle choice.
I never wanted someone on their knees unless they wanted to be there.
And now… now I weren’t sure what I wanted anymore.
Tyler dropped onto the sofa, dust rising round him like the ghosts of every bad choice he’d ever made. He rubbed the back of his head, pouting. Hurt ego or just pissed I’d cut short his fun. Didn’t matter. I had bigger shit to deal with.
“What happened in Bethnal?” Tyler asked through a sulk. “Heard it down the vine.”
“Someone hit the stash flat.” I sparked up, smoke hitting the back of my throat. “Door weren’t forced. Whoever it was, they knew what they were walking into.”
“Inside job, you reckon?”
“Could be. Tiny’s missing.”
He frowned. “Kid wouldn’t cross us. That’s why I left him there. He’s solid.”
“Kid don’t get a say if someone’s got a blade to him. Reason why I tell you to put a fucking man on it.” I took another drag. “Now Cormac wants it quiet. No noise, no headlines. But I ain’t sitting on my arse while Ghost’s lot think they can walk through my door.”
Tyler’s jaw ticked, waiting for the part that mattered.
“Kyan give you a food sample?”
He slapped his hand on that battered leather sofa, picking at the split seam. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“Crap. Weak cut. Wouldn’t sell it to a blind punter.”
“So Ghost’s shifting rubbish now.”
“Looks that way.”
That got me thinking. Ghost never moved weak product. Not unless he was stretched thin or planning a switch-up. I pulled the folded map from my jacket pocket, the one I’d lifted off Ghost’s runner last week when the kid tried to muscle onto our patch.
Tyler clocked it. “What’s that?”
“Map of drops. Routes. Some of ’em line up with ours, some don’t.
” I flattened it on the table, tracing the lines with the two fingers clutching my cigarette.
“I wanna see where Ghost’s been shifting stock that ain’t his.
If he’s cutting it thin, he’s desperate.
Means there’s a hole somewhere in his chain.
Probably why he’s raiding us. Find it, and we take the gap before he does. ”
Tyler frowned, massaging his cheek. “You thinking of moving in?”
I shrugged, eyes on the ink and pencil scrawl. “Not thinking. Making sure I ain’t next.”