by Lewis, R. J.
But they did love their women.
Females were everywhere, ranging between the ages of twenty to thirty five. I didn’t see many over that age, and it disturbed me just a little bit. They hung off any biker they could get their hands on. Their need for attention was a little sickening; their desperation for the club life meant they would obey any order from any man with a cut, no matter how disgraceful or humiliating that order was.
If Hawke wasn’t around, I was left to my own devices most of the time. That usually consisted of sitting down on one far end of the bar and blankly watching the television screen while waiting for Hawke to return for some news. He never did have anything concrete, just loose ends and name dropping from men him and his brother had visited.
By the fifth day, I was a void. I stared but didn’t look. I listened but didn’t hear. I spoke but didn’t talk. I was just…there.
I was currently sitting on my usual stool, forcing a few pistachios down my throat – and just thinking about pistachios reminded me of Borden’s stash under his desk he used to pick at when he was angry. A figure slid into the stool next to me, and I glanced that way for a second and then frowned.
Linda.
Of course.
She idly watched the same television as me and didn’t say a word for a few minutes. It was the first time I’d seen her since everything went down, and I wasn’t in the mood for her smartass remarks. She lit a cigarette next to me and smoked, uncaring about the second hand smoke clouding around me. Unfortunately, I didn’t care for it either.
“I’m just as scared as you, Emma,” she finally spoke, turning to look at me. “I care for him too, and I want him back.”
“Present tense,” I remarked. “You’re talking like he’s still alive.”
“He is. I know it. He’s a tough man.”
“Means nothing when you’re outnumbered.”
“Means everything when you’re Marcus Borden.”
I didn’t respond straight away. Truthfully, it felt nice to hear another person talk about him like he was still around. Everyone else was using past tenses to describe what a tough man he “used” to be.
“I hated you for so long,” she suddenly said, turning her body to me. “I kept asking myself what you have that I don’t. I’ve been with Borden since he opened Owls, and he’s never looked at me the way he does to you, and you’ve only been on the scene for a fraction of the time I have.”
I shrugged. “What do you want me to say, Linda? Sorry?”
“No, but him being gone makes me realize how much you’re hurting, and I don’t want to be that horrible woman that puts you down when you need to be carried more than anything. Hawke told me what you’ve been through. The men are hurting for you, and I’m…I’m hurting for you.”
I looked at her. Her eyes were misted over. She looked nothing like the bitch I’d known her to be. “Thanks, Linda. I hated you too. I kept asking myself why Borden would even hire you, but seeing what you do to the club, and how hard you work, I understand. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
She smiled sadly. “When he comes back, we’ll start new. I’ll pretend you haven’t taken the man of my dreams and burned my future into the ground. It’ll be like nothing ever happened between us. A fresh start.”
I blinked. “That’s…very sweet of you.”
She watched with me for several more minutes and then she slid out of the stool and wandered off. Of course, because she wasn’t interested in the bikers, the bikers flocked to her like she was a piece of forbidden fruit, completely neglecting their two dozen other women in the same room.
Typical.
“Emma!” I heard a shout just as the bar door slammed shut. I spun around and watched Hawke, Hector, and a young guy I’d never seen before, stride through the room quickly, their eyes set on me.
Every part of me tensed at the look Hawke was shooting me. “What’s going on?” I asked, my heart already picking up. Was it bad? Shit, it looked bad.
“It’s Borden,” Hawke said, grabbing me by the arm. “We know where he is, and he’s alive.”
Borden
A rusty butcher knife. That was the only weapon Jem could get to him before he left. Not a gun, not a machete, not anything remotely useful in a matter of life and death situation against five other men, but a fucking rusted butcher knife with the dullest edge Borden had ever touched. Fuck!
He sighed as he rested his back against the wall. It took serious effort just to get up. He hissed at the pain every now and then, but keeping himself upright was like a step forward to Emma, and knowing she hadn’t died in that hole gave him that last spark of life he needed to do this. And let’s be real here. The man was feared by all. If he died now, it would be a serious fucking embarrassment to his name. No, Borden needed to push through. If not for Emma, then for New Raven. A city needed its villain, and he owned the role like it was made for him.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Maybe it was hours. Maybe it was a whole bloody day. All he knew was it was about the right amount of time before the fucks came bustling through the door. They’d gotten a bit lazy lately. And cocky. Letting their guard down at the state of Borden. He appeared so weak, they’d go in two at a time each go and beat on him. But like Jem had said, Mulligan was expected to join. Which meant they were going to finish Borden off. That was fine. He wouldn’t go down easy.
He heard a sound of one pair of footsteps descending the staircase into the cellar. He went still, waiting on the sound of others. Relief temporarily overcame him when there weren’t any more, and then all at once, he got ready as the lone person unlocked the door and shoved it open. Borden stood up as the door swung in front of him, and the man stepped inside. Borden immediately swung the door closed just as the man turned around with a gun in his hand.
Mulligan’s surprised eyes met his, and just as he raised his gun, Borden knocked his body into him, knocking him on his back. The gun flung from his hand. Borden dug his arm across Mulligan’s throat, keeping it there with the weight of his upper body. Mulligan flailed beneath him so hard, he knocked Borden off. He turned to grab his gun a few feet from where they lay, and Borden grabbed at Mulligan’s leg, halting him. They grunted, and it took everything inside of Borden to keep his hold while keeping the knife in his hand.
“You won’t fucking win this,” Mulligan seethed, stretching his arms out just shy of the gun.
“I already have,” Borden grunted back. “The first fucking rule when you’re torturing someone: never give them the use of their hands.”
This was risky. If Borden went to stab him, he’d be giving him the opportunity to grab the gun. But what choice did he have? His energy was depleting itself by the second. He inhaled sharply and let Mulligan go. Mulligan grabbed the gun and turned just as Borden drove the blade into the man’s chest. The gun went off past his head, the sound leaving Borden with ringing ears. Mulligan shot again, flailing his body around to fight the weight of Borden over him. With his body flushed against his, Borden pulled the knife out of him and stabbed him again, right in the heart this time.
“And rule number two,” Borden gritted out as Mulligan’s mouth spurted with blood, “never torture a badass motherfucker alone.”
He pulled the knife out of Mulligan’s chest and quickly grabbed the gun from his loose grip. Then he leaned his back against the dying, gurgling piece of shit and stared at the door. The other fucks would have heard the gunshots. They would be coming, and armed with a knife and a loaded gun, Borden was ready.
He had to be.
Twenty Three
Emma
The sun had only just come up when the car pulled onto a dirt trail. I was alarmed at how close we were to where I’d been buried. The young man, Jem, pointed ahead, and Hawke drove down the zigzagged road. I glanced over my shoulder and at the dozen other cars following behind us, every single one filled with armed bikers and Borden’s men. We were prepared for a war, even though Jem assured us we wouldn’t get one. He
said there were only a handful of men in the cabin, excluding Mulligan. That while Mulligan had a decent following, he was still in his infancy and still without the sworn loyalty of men he’d counted on when he left prison. In other words, there hadn’t been as many followers as he’d alluded.
I wasn’t thinking of all that as the car stopped in front of the nice looking cabin and next to three other parked cars. I was thinking about the man I loved, and hoping he was still clinging on to life.
“Stay here,” Hawke told me.
As if.
I climbed out just as all the others did around us. We were a large crowd, forty plus armed people, moving toward the cabin cautiously but confidently. If the bastards inside were smart enough, they’d surrender.
But we didn’t get that far. Everybody stopped dead in their tracks and stared ahead. They stared at the bloody looking man seated on the steps of the cabin, nothing but his briefs on. He held a gun in one hand and a sad looking butcher knife in the other.
My heart climbed up my throat as I continued to walk to him. I was pretty sure I was the only one moving. No, not moving, running.
“Marcus!” I shouted, tears pricking my eyes.
He was looking right at me, his face completely covered in blood, the only feature familiar were those bright blue eyes. The only eyes I ever wanted to look into.
“What the fuck took you so long?” he asked slowly, his voice raspy and weak.
I heard the sound of laughter behind me, but I wasn’t laughing. I was sobbing and kneeling down before him. My arms wrapped around his neck, uncaring of the blood he was transferring to my clothes. He dropped the butcher knife from his hand and wrapped that arm around me, holding me tightly against his chest.
“I was so scared,” I sobbed, squeezing. He wheezed in pain, and I pulled back. “You’re hurt.”
He forced me back into his arms, muttering, “Nah, I’m fine. Just a few scratches. Keep holding me, doll. Don’t let go of me.”
I kissed him everywhere. Up his throat, over his jaw, on that sweet mouth of his. It was gross, but I didn’t care. He looked hideous, but I didn’t care. He was alive. He was okay, and nothing else mattered.
“You’re going to be my wife,” he whispered in my ear as I pulled away to look at him.
I took his hand and went to smile when it caught my attention. My body stilled, and horrified, I stared at the hole in the centre of his palm, caked with blood. It looked infected and raw.
“What did they do to you?” I asked hysterically.
He gritted his teeth, fighting the pain there and said, “They drilled holes in my hands.”
My jaw dropped.
“You badass motherfucker!” Hector shouted.
A chorus of laughter sounded from behind us. Typical fucking bikers, and judging by the smirk on Borden’s tired face… typical fucking Borden.
We covered him up with a thick blanket and drove him to the hospital.
*
“You keep staring at me like that and I’ll fuck you,” he told me as he lay in our bed at home. He’d been cleaned up, and it hadn’t been an easy task. Nor was it easy having to explain the situation with most of the blood not being Borden’s to a doctor. But, like Borden had said an infinite amount of times before, you could buy anyone’s silence off with the right dollar amount.
“You can barely move,” I replied, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You need rest. The nurse will come around tomorrow to change the bandages on your hands.”
“I can change them myself.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know, the doctors got real shitty you left the hospital, and they’ll get even shittier if you refuse treatment –”
“My hands are alright. I’m not dying. I don’t need to sit in a fucking hospital bed when I could be in our own bed, fucking you.”
I resisted smiling. “I should have known you were one of those people.”
“What people?”
“The ones that are too much denial to go to the hospital and get help.”
“I don’t want to be away from you,” Borden replied, solemnly.
I crawled into bed with him and he wrapped his arm around me. I’d cried so hard, my eyes were still sore. Even learning he was okay, the tears never stopped falling.
“I thought you were gone,” he whispered down to me. “He showed me a picture of you in that box…and I thought you were gone.”
I just shook my head, swallowing back the lump. “Hawke saved me.”
I’d already explained all this, but he seemed to want to hear it again.
“Then I owe him my life,” he replied.
“Don’t you mean I do?”
“Emma, you are my life.”
My heart thumped faster and a tear fell as I replied softly, “Graeme is gone.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it? If I’d just thought of what you’d do about Blythe’s call, I would never have left to try and get her –”
“Emma, you were thinking emotionally. You were trying to help. Graeme’s death isn’t your fault. It’s Mulligan’s. He was the one behind the trigger. Not you. If we blamed ourselves for every bad thing that happens, we’d never go forward in life.”
I just nodded. It would take some time to believe that. I continued to lay next to his bandaged body. His ribs were broken, the doctors had said, but other than that, he was just badly bruised. He really was a goddamn tank.
“Can I fuck you now?” he asked sometime later.
I smiled. “Once again, Borden, you can’t move.”
“Once again, Emma, you underestimate my ability.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere you know.”
He lifted my chin to him and kissed me. “I know.”
Twenty Four
Borden
It took three months to clean the streets up of Mulligan’s followers. Fuckers were everywhere. In that time they gave Graeme a hell of a funeral (Emma took it hard for a while after), the shipments for the Warlords came in swiftly and without issue, Hawke was splitting his time with Borden and his club, and the streets were calmer, especially when Borden was walking around with holes in his hands. His notoriety skyrocketed, and the fear remained strong, just the way he liked it.
But the best part of the three months that passed involved a ring with a rock for a diamond, a sexy raven haired minx in a silky cream gown, and a quiet white wedding.
Emma Lynne Warne became Emma Lynne Borden.
He’d given her his name. He’d given her half of everything. What was his was hers, and his possessiveness had officially reached capacity.
And now they were on their way back to that old battle axe’s house for even greater news. News that Borden wasn’t even sure how to process just yet because it meant everything in their lives would change. For the first time in a very long time, Borden wasn’t sure of what the future would bring, and it both thrilled him and terrified him.
“You’re quiet,” Emma remarked, studying him in the backseat of the car.
“Just…still trying to get my head wrapped around this,” Borden replied.
She frowned. “Are you unhappy? You haven’t really opened up since I told you.”
“Am I unhappy you’re carrying my child? Fuck no.”
She moved in closer to him, kissing his cheeks softly as he busily looked out the window. “Then talk to me, Marcus.”
He clenched his jaw and turned to her. “What makes you think I’ll be a good father if I’m a very bad man?”
“You’re not a very bad man. That’s just what the world sees. Wasn’t it you who said, ‘I have a reputation to maintain’ once upon a time?”
He sighed. “This is different. This involves another life, Emma. A tiny little human being with itty-bitty fingers and a heart the size of my thumbnail. Like I said, I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around this.”
She smiled and wrapped her hands around his arm. “And you’re scared. Marcus Borden, the scariest
man in New Raven, is scared.”
He frowned at her humour. “And you’re a little sadist.”
“The tables have reversed.”
He chuckled. She rested her hand on his face and stroked his cheek affectionately. “Borden, I’m going to be here with you the entire way. If you’re scared, we’ll face your fear together. Truth is, I’m scared too. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but I know we’ve both come from shit upbringings and we’ll never do wrong by this child.”
He nodded and kissed her softly. “Yeah,” he whispered. “You’re right.”