Page 84 of Razors & Ruin

I am now Mrs. Todd, and every time I pass beneath the banner, I’ll remember what he and I went through to get here.

I’m not opening the shop tonight, so I’m surprised when Mr. T opens the rear door that leads into the storeroom. He closes it again and turns to speak to me.

“I got you a present,” he says. “You know when you went to the seamstress earlier to collect your veil?”

I nod.

“Well, while you were out, you had a caller. A bloke.”

My blood chills.

Shit. I don’t have any admirers that I know of, but he might not believe me, and then what the fuck will he do?

“Mr. T?—”

He kicks the door hard, and it slams into the wall, sending up a choking cloud of dust.

Then I hear it; a muffled whine mixed with snorts and sobs.

“He’s been out of town for a while. Recognized you from that newspaper article about the shop and saw you’re doing well for yourself.”

I start to shake as I approach. There’s only one person itcanbe, but when I see him, it’s still a shock.

My father hangs upside down from the meathook, as Marianne did, but he’s not as lucky as she was.

He is alive, for now, his mouth and body wrapped in rope and bandages, and he writhes like a bait-worm, his eyes darting.

He looks smaller now, more pathetic than I remember. Once, he loomed over me, a monster in the night, but now?

He’s just a lump of meat, shaking and trembling.

“Damn,” I say, bending to look at him. His face is pulped, the nose at an unnatural angle, and blood congeals on the floor. “You kicked the shit out of him.”

“This cunt is fortunate to be alive,” Sweeney says, his voice dripping with the menace I so enjoy.

“Is he? Because I get the feeling that his immediate future will not be particularly comfortable. And why is he still breathing? So you could show him to me?”

“This bastard here,” he kicks my father, making him swing, “isyourquarry, not mine. The fates continue to work for you, my pet; do you think I’d deny my wife her chance at revenge?”

My man trussed up my cunt of a father like a prize-winning ham and presented him to me, knowing I would revel in proving that I’m no longer a scared little girl.

Sweeney could have killed him—it would have been far easier—but he wanted to take back my power.

The little girl I once was wants to recoil, wants to scream, but her fear is smothered by the burning satisfaction that rushes through my veins.

My husband gave me a gift. A perfect wedding present.

My father always said I was crazy, a psycho, a bitch. It’s as though he genuinely thought touching me up at night in exchange for toffees should have created a well-adjusted young woman.

Rarely are consequences so satisfyingly clear-cut. This man I called father put his filthy hands on me when I was a child, snuffing out my innocence and leaving me to fend for myself.

That kind of hardship teaches a girl a thing or two, and if he hadn’t brutalized me in the first place, I wouldn’t be able to do this.

“And they said the fuckingmeekwill inherit the Earth?” I exclaim. “Fuck that. Who wants it anyway?”

There’s a gleam in Sweeney’s eyes, an invitation. He knows what this means to me. He wants me to own this moment, to savor every ounce of retribution.

“That’s my Mrs. T,” Sweeney says.

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