by Lewis, R. J.
He stood back up. “How about I grab you something to eat?”
“No.”
He sighed. “Emma –”
“I can’t eat when he could be starving somewhere. I’m not even hungry.”
“He wouldn’t want you to be like this.”
I didn’t reply. He was right. If Borden knew I was this down, he’d be pissed. I imagined his pissed face, and I stifled another cry. I didn’t want to break down in front of him yet again.
“You don’t have to babysit me every time you get back,” I said.
“I promised you I wouldn’t leave you alone with the guys.”
“I’m in your room, and Tyler kept me company.”
He rolled his eyes at the mention of her. “Of course she did. Look, I’m going to get the boys to pick up some pizza. I’m bringing one up for you, and we’re going to sit and eat. Even if you don’t feel up to it, it’s important to try.”
“I don’t want –”
“I don’t care what you want. You’re under my roof now, Emma. You’re eating.”
He walked out before I said another word. As stubborn as I was, so was Hawke. I got off the bed and it took every bit of my willpower. I didn’t want to move at all. If were my choosing, I’d have been in a ball of pain, but I knew I had to be strong. I needed to clean myself up properly. I went into the bathroom and had a proper shower this time, washing my hair and brushing my teeth using toothpaste on the tip of my finger. And once again, I crumbled under the burning water. Just yesterday Borden was wrapped around me, kissing me. He’d made love to me. For goodness’ sake, my vagina still felt used! In a strange move, I cupped it and closed my eyes. I pushed my fingers inside myself just to feel how sore I was. I didn’t want to forget the ache he left behind in me, but the ache at the moment faded in the company of all the bruises down my back. Goddammit! Not even my body could cling to his touch, and that feeling of despair burned a hole through my chest.
“Please be okay,” I whispered out loud. “Please, Borden. I need you. I fucking need you so much.”
Feeling a wave of nausea at standing for so long, I sat back down on the tile floor and brought my knees to my chest. I used every bit of hot water.
I dressed in a loose fitted shirt and track pants I found in Tyler’s drawer. No bra, though, because mine was filthy and hers were too small. By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, nearly an hour later, Hawke was back in the room with a box of pizza and a litre of soda. He glimpsed at me before getting to work, putting a slice on a paper plate and filling up a plastic cup with the fizzy drink. He handed it to me just as I sat back on the bed.
“We’ll eat,” he said, “and then I’ll go back out there and keep looking.”
“Let me go with you.”
“No. You stay.”
“I’m already going stir crazy. I want to go out there and do something, Hawke. I feel stagnant.”
He grabbed a slice and collapsed on the opposite end of the bed with his back against the wall. Taking a massive bite, he repeated, “No. You stay. That’s the purpose of taking you in. And stop looking at me like that. We’re over our issues, let’s keep moving forward with our relationship.”
“You mean, you’re over hating me.”
“I already apologized to you,” he said, looking directly at me. I thought I saw heat there in his eyes, but they vanished in a blink of an eye and I was certain I was seeing things. At least, I hoped I was.
I looked down at my plate and my stomach rumbled as the smell of pepperoni wafted to my nose. He told me to quit staring at it and just eat it. I picked it up and nibbled on the tip. It was disgustingly good. The cheese practically melted on my tongue.
“Good girl,” he told me, smiling faintly at me.
I forced a few bites down, avoiding his eyes.
“They did a real number on you, didn’t they?” he remarked. “Your fucking eye looks killer. Does it hurt?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But it’s fine.”
He stepped off the bed and moved to the bathroom. I heard him rummaging in the cabinets before coming out. He moved to me and set two pills next to my pizza. “For the pain.”
I didn’t look at him once as he lingered there for seconds at a time, his woodsy scent conquering the smell of pepperoni. Then he moved back to his seat on the bed and smashed through his pizza. I took the pills without question and then gobbled up the pizza. It was on my last bite I felt that warmth sitting in my stomach, and I stopped chewing, blinking back yet more tears at the thought of Borden out there somewhere with an empty stomach.
I needed a distraction and grasped for a topic – anything I could think of at the top of my head.
“That Tyler girl,” I started, forcing the bite down my throat, “is she in love with your brother?”
Hawke’s shoulders tensed, his surprise evident. “She better not be. Hector doesn’t do love, we know that. He’d rip her heart out of her chest, and I would probably kill him if she cried over that dick. I looked after her since she was thirteen, and all my hard work isn’t going to end with her jumping in bed with him. Figures she’d like him after I leave. Another fucking issue to have to deal with.”
“Why’d you leave in the first place?”
“Because I had to.”
I levelled him with an annoyed look. “God, Hawke, stop with the vague answers. Tell me the truth. You work for Borden for who knows how long when you could be the president of a notorious club that bends to your will the second you show up. Give me some insight. I’m losing my mind over here.”
“I’m a wanted man, Emma,” he replied slowly. “It’s why Hector is in charge.”
“What are you wanted for?”
“Murder.”
“You can’t fight it?” I was surprised by my immediate question. I was totally unfazed by this murder charge. Was I just numb from Borden’s disappearance and Graeme’s death, or was I really that desensitized?
He laughed scornfully. “I already did.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was sentenced to thirty years without parole. Thanks to Borden, I served one year and escaped. I had to commit to some…painful things in the process.” He idly stared down at his mangled hand. “My escape had to look like it wasn’t successful. When Borden came to pick me up, he blew my finger off and cut up parts of my hand. He scattered them around the place to make it look like I’d been ravaged by animals. He made me bleed out all over my jumpsuit before I took it off and left it behind. He tore that apart too. I almost bled to death. Hector paid him a fucking fortune for it, and then Borden offered me a job with him until the heat died down and I could come back, though I couldn’t fucking see how I ever could. I’m supposed to be dead.”
I stared at Hawke in disbelief, and like a slap in the face, I recalled the words of creepy prison fetish Joel during our disastrous date forever ago. He’d spoken of the New Raven Prison, and how a man had escaped four years ago.
They found him ten kilometers out. He died of dehydration, and the only reason they found him was because of all the crows circling overhead. They’d eaten almost all of him up and could only identify him with a few body parts, like fingers and such.
“That was you,” I said quietly. “You’re that escapee that everyone thought died.”
He just shrugged and took another massive bite out of his pizza.
“And it was all Borden.” My brain went haywire with this information. “I don’t get it, though. Why would Borden even want to do that? He returned with so much money.”
Hawke paused, appearing conflicted as he replied, “No, he didn’t.”
“What?”
Hawke chucked his crust down on the box. “Borden…He didn’t come back as rich as everyone thought he was. Did he even tell you what he did?”
“He was a smuggler.”
“Yeah, and he worked his way up fast for some very rich buyers. He smuggled artefacts in.”
“What kind of artefacts?”
> “Anything he could get his hands on. Jewellery, paintings, pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down in fucking Baghdad and other places they sent him to, and they sent to some seriously fucked up areas. Places he had to blend in.”
“How did he do it?”
“Any way he could. Sometimes he trucked it to a shipping yard, and they transported it through logistic contractor containers. Other times he went directly to the buyer if he was within the country. But it was these shipping yards he realized the power behind owning a port. He meddled with the black market the entire time he was gone and he made a lot of connections. Connections he uses even today to bring shit over.
“Anyway, he came back richer, but he still needed way more cash injection. He bought up a couple businesses the Warlords were selling on the side for some hard cash, and once Hector learned about his travels and skills, he asked to help out with my situation. There was too much heat on the club around that time and he needed an outside source as soon as possible. They didn’t know how long I had left. I killed a very bad man, and I was in a prison filled with his men. I was going to die some way or another, so I needed out. Borden did that, got paid, and then offered me a job alongside him. We made our money any way we could in the beginning, though most of it came from cash loans, debt collecting, and shady shipments. Once the other businesses around the city were bought and bringing in the money, we no longer needed to do the dirty on the side.”
“He stopped?”
“For most of it, yeah. There are still jobs here and there we take, some shipments that come through under the table. It’s a great way earning money without a paper trail. But ultimately, Borden wanted us to be more legit than we were criminal. It’s why the cops can’t fucking touch us.”
“But he’s made it so that everybody’s terrified of him. He’s always put a target on himself.”
“Because he wanted to be the one at the top. You have to remember with Kate gone he didn’t care about anything but power. He wanted to destroy every gang in New Raven because they reminded him of the scums that killed her.” He paused, recollecting something before adding, “Sometimes the idea of a bad man will scare even those worse than him into obedience. He was right. Fuck, Borden was a capable man.”
Was.
I swallowed hard. “He’s still alive, Hawke.”
Hawke didn’t respond. His face went clear, expertly hiding his emotions, but his eyes were distant. He was hurting. I knew he was.
“He told me what Mulligan is like,” I continued. “How sick he is. That he’ll most likely torture a person first. Don’t you think with Borden, somebody that’s killed this guy’s stepsons, he’d stretch it out and take his time?”
Though the thought terrified me, it also relieved me too. Because if Mulligan had him and he was doing that, it meant Borden was still breathing with me right now.
“Yeah,” Hawke mumbled, faintly. “I just honestly don’t know, Emma.”
I set my plate down. I was shaking everywhere. “I can’t live without him, Hawke. If he’s gone…I’m gone too.”
“If he’s gone, I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure nobody ever touches you again, and I’ll bury Mulligan. I’ll fucking destroy that man until there’s nothing left of him, and you’ll be the one to put the last bullet in his head.”
Twenty
Borden
They grabbed him just outside the customs office. One bike on either side of his car, tapping on his window, gun pointed in his face. Touché, motherfuckers. The one time he was alone, the one time they would have had the tiniest opportunity to take him, and they did it. They fucking did it. It was done swiftly. He stepped out of his car and slid straight into another black Mercedes where he was given a glass of water in the backseat by another man that had a gun to his face.
“Drink it,” the young man had told him. “All of it.”
Borden sighed and stared down at the glass of water. Fucking hell, this day was never going to end.
“Poison?” he asked. “Might as well tell me, right?”
The young man hesitated but didn’t respond, not that Borden needed one. Of course it wasn’t poison. Mulligan wouldn’t take him down that fast. Borden took his time studying his surroundings, at the wanna-be tough guy in the front seat with a wavering gun to his face, and at the men that slowly began surrounding the car, offering him absolutely zero chance of escape.
“Alright,” Borden said, calmly. “I’ll fucking drink your shit, but I want you fucks to look at me very carefully as I do it. Look at the man that’s going to fucking kill you after I kill your boss first.”
He took a giant gulp of the powdery tasting shit and didn’t wait very long for the effects to start kicking in. In just minutes, his mind clouded and his eyes were harder to keep open. He shook his head, fighting against the inevitable. He knew he was losing control and that any second he would black out. It was only near the end he thought of Emma and how exposed she was without all his men at the club with her. His chest constricted at the thought of something happening to her.
Blinking rapidly, he angrily grabbed the shirt of the man in the front seat and pulled him closer. He stared at the young eyes of a delinquent no older than eighteen, and he saw the pool of fear that suddenly surfaced. The gun shook in the kid’s grip and the tip smacked against Borden’s forehead. Borden knew straight away the coward wouldn’t pull the trigger.
“You’re just a fucking kid,” Borden slurred.
Losing control of his movements, the glass fell from his other hand, and he reluctantly closed his eyes. The last thing he saw was the boy’s trembling lips.
*
He awoke to a bucket of ice cold water poured over his head. His eyes shot open, and he could hardly breathe as another bucket immediately soaked through him again. His entire body shuddered. It felt like a thousand daggers plunged into every surface area of his body, and no amount of twisting offered him peace. Men laughed and mocked him, one of them punched him across the face, remarking, “Who is the tough guy now, Borden?”
Borden’s body roared to life and he zeroed in on the face before him. “Is that really what you call a punch, you pussy little bitch? Try harder next time.”
The man’s expression dropped and he punched Borden again, harder than before. Borden felt a mild pain, but he laughed anyway. If these fucks thought they could break him, they were wrong. What was some cold water and a weak little fist going to do?
“You fucking idiot,” he laughed, tasting blood in his mouth.
The guy shook in anger and raised his fist again, but he didn’t punch him. He refrained, like something was stopping him. Instead, he spat at Borden and stomped out of the room with all the other guys. The heavy door shut harshly, and Borden was all alone. He shook his head at the residual cloudiness slowly going away and looked around the room. It was pitch black. He couldn’t see anything and he couldn’t move. He was bound to a chair in a dark, damp room, and as he struggled to break free, he realized it was futile. The fucks had cuffed him well.
With a long sigh, he said out loud, “Why don’t you just fucking show yourself? Hiding in shadows and playing games is starting to get old, Mulligan.”
There was a moment of silence before he heard something shuffle behind him. It was eerily close. Small footsteps rounded his chair, and then it was quiet again. Borden stared in the direction it was coming from, waiting. He could feel the man’s presence feet away.
“You know where you are?” said a deep voice. “You’re in a cellar right now in the middle of nowhere. You’re going to become very acquainted with this room, and you might even feel connected to the whore my boys killed. After all, this is where she took her last breaths.”
Kate. Borden tensed and his heart picked up.
“Nobody will hear your screams, Borden, except me. I’m going to take my time with you.”
The footsteps moved to the door and it opened. Borden squinted his eyes, staring at the tall, thick frame of Terry Mulliga
n in the dim light of the hallway.
“And,” the sick bastard added, turning his red bearded face to him, “as you reflect on the loss of your first whore, you shall mourn the loss of your second.”
He stepped out and the door shut again, leaving Borden in complete darkness.
*
He was left alone for hours. He tried pulling apart the cuffs, but they dug sharply into his wrists like knives. He didn’t mind the pain, but he couldn’t keep wasting his energy on an impossible task. He was completely immobile, and all he could do was try and relax his body.
If he couldn’t move, he would need to rest. Staying awake and stressing himself out would leave him drained by the time the feral shits returned. He shut his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. His mind wandered, and he thought of Kate. She had been here, where he was. Had they tied her down too? But he didn’t remember seeing marks on her wrists. She’d been choked to death, the coroner had said.