Free Borden (Borden #1) by R. J. Lewis Page B

the police are going to fuck our place up all over again. Hell, maybe I should go back and take care of her –”
    “No,” Borden interrupted, feeling an irrational spike of anger flood through his system. “Don’t touch her.”
    Hawke just stared at him questionably. “I don’t understand.”
    “No questions.”
    Hawke exhaled and left after that, no doubt confused as hell.
    And now Borden was here, almost smiling as he remembered the look on her face when he’d interrogated her. There was an edge there beneath the surface, a hardness in her eyes, and he knew she had fought with every fibre of her being to suppress it.
    Wise girl.
    A knock sounded out, stirring him from his thoughts. He shut the briefcase and wandered to the front door. Opening it, he came face to face with a beautiful brunette wearing a white mini-dress. He looked her up and down, displeasure clear as day on his face. Another escort.
    “The fuck you want?” he barked at her, though he already knew.
    “The boys said you needed some relief,” responded the plaything, batting her eyelashes at him in what he assumed was her best attempt at being seductive.
    Fuck, the girl was scrawny. He tilted his head and checked out her nonexistent hips, wondering how someone could think it was appropriate to gift him a Popsicle stick. He was used to escorts showing up like this. The boys were relentless in their endeavour to have him balls deep in a girl. But Borden was bored of them. Bored of the false look of need in their eyes, of the way they screamed in ecstasy when he fucked them – or tried to long ago – knowing for certain it was all a fucking façade to have their drug needs met after they were done.
    Just fake. Everything about it was fake.
    Fake, fucking fake, fake, fake .
    “Let me give you a good time,” she continued, trying to convince him with another bat of her eyelashes.
    He rolled his eyes and kicked open the door.
    “You can try,” he replied, as she walked through the door.
    She could try, but he knew already she’d fail.
    Like all the others.
    *
    Always he dreamed of wading into that river, but in his nightmares, the water was red and tasted like blood.
    Kate was always floating a distance away, her blonde hair swaying in all directions.
    And always, no matter how hard and fast he swam, he never reached her. She kept drifting away into the red waters, in a river that never seemed to end, and he would exhaust himself, swimming until he couldn’t move at all, until his limbs ached and his vision spotted.
    And always he felt that knife-like pain, a sadness that coiled itself around his heart and squeezed until there was nothing there. It was debilitating, this sadness, and it swallowed him whole.
    Waking up was usually the hardest part, because he woke up feeling absolutely nothing at all.
     

Eight
    Emma
    I stayed on the couch most of the next day sleeping. Sundays were usually spent grocery shopping and having a catch up at my grandmother’s house. Not today. In hindsight, I must have looked quite pathetic cradling myself in the corner of the sofa, eyes wide open, wondering whether I was in a dream or whether I too had been strangled on the way home.
    Why let me go, I wondered. Sure, I didn’t see anything, but he never asked me what I heard. And had he asked, would I have answered? I’m not sure what would have happened to me if I’d told him that bit of information.
    These were criminals, very dangerous criminals. Not the kind you want to mess with or even sit next to at a charity event. You couldn’t smile at them. You couldn’t look at them. You couldn’t do a damn thing without risking being a target, and yet somehow I’d managed to escape them. And not just them per say, but the king of them.
    Marcus Borden, aka the bloody king of New Raven, aka the one you couldn’t escape hearing about, was everywhere, in every corner of the city, out the lips of every resident, taking up space in some way or another. He owned