Chapter Thirteen Tristan #4
I inhaled so hard the air felt sharp, then reeled off the conversation between my housemate and my then boyfriend from a couple of weeks ago. The words scraped the inside of my throat.
“‘Are we hitting that dive in Hackney again?’” My voice sounded too loud in the narrow yard. “‘Absolutely. Thick idiots. Cheap way to score some party sweets. Don’t know us, so we’ll take and sell. Split between us. Don’t tell Tris, he’ll kill the vibe.’”
I stopped, glanced up. Ollie shook his head. Laughed. Ran a finger over his eyebrow. He didn’t give a shit.
So I read the rest. “‘He’s so bloody uptight he’s got a rod up his arse. But that Hackney hellhole lot are just as dumb. We’ll take it all, no payback. Let’s party, baby.’”
“Enough.” Razor took the phone back, eyes flat. “Those ‘party sweets’ and that ‘Hackney hellhole’? That’s my patch. My people. You don’t take from me. Not unless you’re ready to pay for it.”
Ollie reached into his back pocket, fumbling for his wallet. “Do you take card?”
Razor’s laugh was loud and joyless. Then his fist landed square in Ollie’s face. The sound cracked through the yard. Bone. Metal. Skin. And Ollie hit the bins hard, clutching his nose as blood streamed down.
“Jesus—” I stepped forward before my brain caught up. “He’ll pay. We’ll get the cash. With interest.”
Why was I defending him? Two years of habit.
Of stepping in and making excuses. Old loyalties are impossible to kill.
Plus, I didn’t want this to end badly for either of them.
Strangely, though, Razor took a step back as if allowing Ollie space.
As if adhering to my plea. Ollie’s card lay on the concrete, damp from spilt beer and blood.
I crouched, picked it up, the edges slick against my fingers and held it out.
“Pay him what’s owed, Ollie.”
Ollie spat red onto the ground, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Go fuck yourself, Tris.” His voice cracked around the bitterness.
“Bringing this here to me? Finally got what you wanted, eh? A thug you can parade around to prove the world’s not as clean as your postcode?
” He spat again. “What did you do? Track him down? Hire him to teach me a lesson? Trying on the gutter for size? God, it’s pathetic.
You’re fucking pathetic.” He straightened; blood slick at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re a fucking Harrownian, Tristan. Stop pretending you’re not.
You’ll never scrub off the pedigree, no matter how much filth you roll in. ” He sneered at Razor.
Razor moved before I could. He hit him again, then slammed a palm onto Ollie’s chest and pinned him to the bin. “You better watch your mouth. And no, I don’t take card. I deal in cash or blood. Which do you have more of?”
A thrill went through me. Wrong, hot, humiliating.
I couldn’t smother it.
This was violence. Real violence. Not the intellectual kind we debated in seminars.
I should have walked. Should have run. This wasn’t who I was supposed to be.
Not the son my father raised. Not the man I kept pretending I was becoming.
But something in me wanted to understand Razor instead of judge him.
God help me, I wanted him too. But wanting him meant wanting everything that came with him, and I wasn’t sure I could live with that.
But some awful, fragile part of me liked being defended.
Liked seeing someone step between me and the mess I’d tried so hard to pretend wasn’t mine.
It was childish. Shameful. And it turned me on.
Heat crawled up my throat and died there, trapped.
Even if Razor wasn’t doing this for me, even if this was about debt, business, territory, it still felt like protection. Like I mattered.
And that feeling…
God, it felt good.
“Leave him,” I said, the words flat and useless. “I’ll get you the cash. Leave him.”
Razor peered over his shoulder at me and that still, assessing look said I’d just disappointed him in some small, unspoken way. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out Benji’s phone again, thumbed on the screen.
“Watch that.” He held out the phone to me. “Then tell me if you still want to take his debt.”
I took the phone and the little play icon blinked on the screen like a dare.
I told myself I didn’t have to press it.
I did anyway. My chest constricted until breathing felt like theft.
There, on the screen, I watched an orgy in three brutal beats, nothing cinematic, all humiliating clarity.
Laughter, flesh, the slap of bodies. Two weeks ago.
Ollie. Benji. More men than I could count.
Bile rose. Everything inside me splitting along clean, ugly lines.
Razor kept his eyes on me as I watched. Then when I’d finished, he dropped his voice.
“Still want him paying in cash?” He looked at me far too softly for what he meant.
I glanced at Ollie. At the blood. The way he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
My hands went cold.
I dropped the phone on the concrete and walked away.