Page 109 of Claim

“You wait your turn,” Cormac sneered. “Like a good little soldier.”

Rage locked my body solid. Every muscle screaming to move, to tear them apart, while Tristan gasped and trembled in the chair. I hated myself in that moment. How every choice had led him here. Led us here.

“You were never much for tools.” Cormac leant in close to Tristan, invading his space, but his eyes never left me. “He preferred his hands,” he said into Tristan’s ear, pitching his voice low, intimate, the words meant to travel. Meant to land. “Said it was more honest. More… personal. Now I know he just liked touching men.”

Tristan’s throat worked around a swallow.

Cormac straightened and tapped Tristan’s shoulder. “He was good at it, too. Those hands.” He pointed to my balled fists. “Those same hands that have touched you,” he jerked Tristan’s chin, “have crushed throats, snapped jaws, opened men up and left them ruined.” He smiled, maliciously. “Though he had his favourites.”

He reached into his pocket and drew out a cutthroat razor. My nostrils flared, heat flooding my veins as he placed it in Doyle’s hand. Then Doyle stepped in and pressed the blade to Tristan’s throat. Enough to kiss skin. A whisper of steel. A promise.

“That’s where the name came from.” Cormac looked at me. “Ain’t it, lad?”

The blade nicked Tristan’s neck and a thin line of red bloomed on his skin. I shook my head. Refusing to play along. Refusing to let them rewrite me in front of him.

“Get away from him,” I said, small, quiet but filled with a promise. “Move away and I’ll do what you want.”

“I know you will, lad.” Cormac smiled. “And what I want is for you to deliver a message. To him.” He gripped Tristan’s chin in his dirty hand and angled his head as if positioning a prop. “What you’re good at. What we taught you. We don’t let people wander out of their lane, do we, Razor? He was given an order. He didn’t follow it.”

“What order?”

Cormac laughed. “You thought he was separate from all this, didn’t ya?” He tutted as if disappointed in me. “That’s where you got careless. You got ideas, Razor. Thought you were clever. Thought you could make the rules. Thought you could take my generosity then play me for a cunt. But you made a stupid mistake. A really fucking silly one. You forgot how this business actually works.”

He turned to Tristan again, studying him.

“You know, don’t ya? Course you do with all those friends of yours in very high places. Conveniently high and perfectly positioned.” He turned back to me. “Product don’t move on muscle alone, Razor. It needs doors opened. Files lost. Decisions delayed. Men in uniforms and men in suits who understand the value of looking the other way. Bent coppers. Polite ministers. Clever lawyers. And you thought you could cut that loop. So did he. For you. That’s not rebellion, that’s bad education. And I can understand that level of stupid in you, Razor. You learnt your lessons on the street. Survival-level schooling.”

He then grabbed the back of Tristan’s hair and yanked his head back again, Tristan gasping in pain. “But you.” He spoke directly to him. “You had the golden ticket. The gold-plated education. A career laid out for you step by fucking step. There’s no excuse for stupidity for you. No excuse to bite the hand that feeds you. To not take direction. You should have taken the guidance offered to make this all go the way it was meant to.”

Doyle shifted behind Tristan, metal clinking as he picked a tool up.

“So here’s the thing.” Cormac let go of Tristan’s hair and stepped around him to me, deliberately blocking my view. “This doesn’t have to get messy. Doesn’t have to spiral.” He slapped my cheek, hard enough to sting. “You deliver the correction, do what’s required, and I’ll make sure the rest of your life is… manageable.”

I laughed. Short. Empty. “Manageable?”

“Course.” Cormac straightened to his full height. “For my loyal foot soldiers, I make sure they get what they need. And let’s not lie to ourselves. You can’t avoid prison. That was always coming. It’s where you’re meant to be.” He locked his gaze onto mine. “You upset someone very important to us. That has to be corrected. The customer is always right, Razor. So things need to be put back the way they’re meant to be. But I can make it easier for you.”

It all slid into place then.

Between Cormac and Wolfe, I’d never stood a chance inside.

Cormac grinned. “I see you’re getting there. And you’re right. Every door that closed. Every cell they walked you into. Every lad who decided you were worth testing.” He shrugged. “All of it managed. And that cellmate you trusted? The one who fed us what we needed to know about where your loyalties were? He got a phone call to his wife that same night. Funny how quickly men belong to you when you dangle the right thing in front of them. Same way it happened for you, eh, Razor?”

Cormac turned away, and in that sliver of space, Doyle stroked a gloved hand down Tristan’s cheek. Possessive. Intimate. Then he brushed his finger over Tristan’s lips, and I watched Tristan resist. Grit his teeth. Move his head. But Doyle grabbed his chin and coaxed his mouth open. Then he slid that disgusting finger between Tristan’s lips, easing it past his teeth and, with his eyes on me, drew it out then back in. Perverse. Deliberate.

I stared him straight down, the same four words on repeat in my head: I will kill you.

“So tell me, Razor.” Cormac spun back to me. “What did he dangle in front of you? What was worth turning on us for? That warm mouth?” He glanced back at Doyle adding another finger between Tristan’s lips. “You think he’s ever going to stand up in one of his fancy rooms and say your name? Tell his family what you are to him? Look at him. Where he comes from. You’re just the filth he got off on. Nothing more than something he let crawl over him in the dark, but the second he got back in the light, he scrubbed you right off.” He sneered at me. “You were his gutter scum.”

I hated how much that hit. How it slid under my skin and lodged there. Because part of me believed him. Part of me already knew. Tristan would never be mine.

Not for good.

“So I’m willing to forgive your lapse in judgement. Because you’re weak.” Cormac clapped his hands, briskly dusting off crumbs. “I’m offering you a way back.” He gestured to Tristan. “You hurt him. Enough to remind him what he touched and who he disobeyed doing it. To remind you of who you are and how you don’t bend yourself into something you’re not for a posh little cunt who came slumming in your dirt for nothing more than a thrill, to taste a bit of rough then run off back to his penthouse and clean life and pretend you never existed.” Cormac stepped back, opening the space like a stage. “Then when you go back inside for it, you’ll have protection. Space. Time. No surprises. You’ll be the fucking king of that place. Rule it like you did Hackney. Remember how good that felt? Men bowing to you. You’ll get it again, my lad. Do this and you’ll be top boy again. Someone people do talk about. Want to talk about. With pride, not shame for having touched you.”

I drifted my gaze to Tristan without meaning to. A reflex. Instinctive. Stupid. Human.

“Don’t get sentimental, Razor. And don’t pretend you ain’t done worse.” Cormac laughed. Loud and obnoxious. “Gave your pretty little piece of arse that dodgy batch of my cocaine, didn’t you? Put him flat on his back.”