by Lewis, R. J.
I’m sorry, Kate.
He’d spent so long trying to keep her memory alive in him. Buying his place over the river was his first mistake. It had tormented him, that fucking river, every single night, and he’d depended on that pain to drive him forward.
Mulligan’s trying to fuck with you, and it’s working. You’re thinking of her and you’re hurting. You’re letting him win.
Borden exhaled and shook his head again. Instead of Kate, he thought of Emma. Sweet, feisty Emma with that saucy little mouth. He imagined those lips wrapped around his thick cock, and he chuckled in spite of everything. Only she could get him hard while he was tied to a chair and frozen solid.
We’ll move. He promised himself, like getting out of this cesspool was a given. I’ll take her somewhere else. Somewhere nice. Away from that river. Away from the past. She’ll take my name and it’ll just be us.
He took deep breaths, and rested easy with these promises, and then he continued to imagine her lips around his cock with a tired smile on his face.
*
Another bucket of ice cold water splashed over his head, and this time he opened his mouth and took gulps of it. The same five men were in the room, and one by one they struck his face and upper body, and he laughed at them, telling them how much of a weak pussy they each were. They’d usually sneak a few strikes in, pissed at his mockery, then they’d leave the room and he’d face more lonely hours before they did it again… and again.
Ice water.
Punch.
Laugh.
Repeat.
Borden knew they were trying to weaken him, and with the hunger gnawing within him, they were succeeding. He just didn’t want to make it easy. After the fourth round, they returned and stripped him of his clothes until he was in nothing but his briefs. They splashed four buckets of ice cold water over his bare body, chilling him in place and then they brought two other buckets half filled with water in. They lit a lamp in one corner of the room and dumped bags of ice in each bucket. They dragged the two buckets over to where he was and forced his foot in each. The jolt he felt was sharp and acute, traveling up his legs and through his body like lightning bolts.
“We won’t punch you anymore, Borden,” one of the men said. “We’ll just fuck with you in different ways.”
“F-fuck with me in different ways?” Borden repeated, fighting the clatter of his teeth. “Didn’t know you loved the dick so much, gentleman. But then again, you’re fucking pussies, so –”
Another punch landed across his face and Borden just laughed, spitting out a glob of blood in the process. Unprofessional little fucks couldn’t even stick to their word the second they got angry. It was going to make killing them that much easier.
They left him alone with the lamp still lit in the corner of the small cellar. He stared around the stone walls, trying to get his mind off the excruciating chill radiating up his legs. His toes were quickly becoming numb, and he found himself breathing faster, harder. His lips formed an o as he sucked the air in and out. The cold water was fucking with him physically, making every muscle in his body tense and then grow tired.
This was bad. This was very fucking bad.
He was so exposed, his skin slick with cold water in an already chilly room. Was he going to freeze to death? No, that wouldn’t be a fit ending that a sadist like Mulligan would have in store. However, it was a step in that direction.
“Fuck,” he cursed angrily under his breath, panting through the icy feeling. He tried to move his legs around, but they were too pinned in place. This was torture. Absolutely fucking torture, and it was almost too much.
He thought of Emma again. He had to be strong for her. He couldn’t die. No other dick would fulfil his little alley cat. Poor fuck would have a lifetime of work cut out for him, living in Borden’s shadow. And just the thought of another man touching her gave him that anger he needed to push through.
He would survive, just for her.
Twenty One
Borden
The next time they returned, Mulligan was present. Borden was half-conscious, every part of him so strained and sore, he couldn’t think straight. His skin was pale, his lips blue, and his giant body shook like an earthquake. He pressed his lips together at the sight of Mulligan observing the state of him. He raised his head and straightened his neck, unwilling to allow the bastard to see his pain, but Mulligan smirked knowingly.
Two men moved to Borden and removed his legs from the buckets. Borden hissed at the spasm of muscle pain in the back of his legs as they pushed away the buckets and dropped his legs back to the ground. As for his feet, he didn’t feel a thing. He couldn’t even wriggle his toes, they were that unresponsive.
“Leave me with him,” Mulligan told his men.
All five of the same bastards marched out of the room, shutting the door behind them. Mulligan moved to the wall and leaned his back against it. He placed both hands in the pockets of his black trousers and tilted his head to the side. Just as he was studying Borden, Borden was doing the same. The man was large, capable looking, and had a fierce, aged face. This man once owned a good portion of the city and had a huge following, and just being watched by those dark eyes, Borden understood why. He was an unfeeling lunatic.
They didn’t say anything for a while, but their gazes never shifted away for a second. Mulligan appeared triumphant, his entire body relaxed like he wasn’t standing in front of a threat. “You’ll break after I leave,” he remarked with certainty. “You’ll be begging for death sometime tomorrow or the next.”
Borden just smirked. “You’re a fucking fool, Mulligan.”
“Don’t believe me?”
“There’s only one way this is going to end, and it’s me standing over your dead body.”
Mulligan chuckled. “With what army?”
“I’m my own army, motherfucker,” Borden retorted. “And you’re just a pussy, like the men you hire. There’s no real loyalty to a man that’s been sitting in a jail cell for all those years, and you can’t fucking take bragging rights for killing the most feared man in New Raven when you’ve beaten him to an inch of his life and then sent him out into the wild to hunt him down. I know all about your fucking sadistic, unequal games, and men like you don’t stay at the top.”
Borden saw a flash of anger in the man’s eyes. He forced the smirk on his face, but it wasn’t as real as it had been seconds ago. Borden was getting to him. Good.
“You killed my boys,” Mulligan responded calmly. “You never gave them a fair fight either. I’m not interested in being equal to you.”
“Your boys were uneducated thugs trying to be hard, and in the process they fucked with me by killing a woman I cared for. Your revenge is misguided. You’re just too much of a lunatic to see the truth in that.”
“They killed her for a reason, Borden. It was my call. You could have made it easy. You could have forfeited a percentage of money for the businesses you owned, and my boys would never have touched your whore.”
“I’ve already come to terms with her death, dickhead, by tearing your boys apart. I’d say we’re fucking even.”
Mulligan pulled a phone out of his pocket and muttered, “You killed two people that meant something to me, and I took only one person from you. And, as of yesterday night, I took your other whore and the men that protected her as well.”
Borden didn’t flinch, but inside his heart tensed in panic. There was no way. He clenched his jaw, thinking of Graeme, Hawke, and all the other men he’d had. No fucking way this dickhead got to her. He was full of shit. He swallowed hard, determined not to waver to this man’s mind games. But…there was something eerily cold in the man’s expression, something that hinted at a deep pride behind his words.
“Are you doubting me?” Mulligan asked. “Because your face says so. You think I’m talking shit, don’t you?”
Borden didn’t respond. He felt his body quake, and he held an uneven breath to try and calm down. It was a lie. Please, let i
t be a fucking lie. Not his Emma. Anything but his Emma.
Mulligan took a few steps closer, his eyes flickering from his phone and to Borden. That smile came alive again. Borden eyed the phone, and with every step Mulligan moved closer, the panic within him rose to unbearable heights.
“She’s in the ground,” Mulligan said, turning the screen to him. “Literally.”
The screen showed a picture of his terrified Emma, hands bound above her head and placed into a wooden box. Her face cut Borden open. In a split second, he died on the inside.
“Now,” Mulligan said coldly, “we’re even.”
*
It was a blur of events after that. Borden had shut down, and just like Mulligan had predicted, he had been broken. The men returned and removed him from the chair. He couldn’t feel movement in his legs and he crashed to the ground in a heap. They kept the cuffs on behind his back and left him, removing even the one piece of light he had – the lamp.
He was in complete blackness, and it was maddening. He barely moved, he didn’t even think. All he saw before his eyes was the memory of that picture, of a woman he loved buried in the ground. They’d gotten to her.
Borden choked on a sob. Had they touched her? Had they hurt her? Had they forced themselves on her? Had she suffered?
He couldn’t imagine the horror she felt; the abandonment. And he hadn’t been there to rescue her when she needed him the most. She was dead. Suffocated like Kate was, but in a slowly gruelling manner. What was the point of keeping himself alive when she was gone too? He’d loved her so fucking much. He’d been ready to give her his name. An entire future was robbed from them. She would never wear his ring, never fall pregnant with his child. He’d given her his soul, and she’d taken it to the ground with her.
It was his fault.
He should never have chased her.
Maybe death wasn’t so bad.
*
They beat him, threw more water over him, and never fed him. All the while, he just lay there, his will destroyed. He never cried, never screamed, never begged for mercy. Mercy was for pussies, and with all feeling gone, his old self returned. The colours in his world disappeared, replaced by blacks and greys. They didn’t fucking like it, and Mulligan thirsted for a response in him, for a grovelling Marcus Borden to crumble before them and ask for permission to die.
But no. Even with his will destroyed, Borden wouldn’t dare let the bastard have his victory. It gnawed on Mulligan.
Then they barged in one day, and Borden had been sleeping. They removed the cuffs off him and spread his tired arms out, pinning them to the cold ground. He heard something mechanical – a drill – in the background, but he was barely conscious, barely even caring of whatever horrors awaited him. Something hard and cool rested in the palm of his right hand, and then it spun, and spun, and dug into his flesh.
Borden growled out from the pain, his saliva oozing out of his opened mouth. Tears pricked his eyes as they spread his other palm open and drilled another hole in it to match the other. When they finished, they left him in a puddle of blood. He held his hands to his bare chest, shaking from the agony and passed out.
*
He heard the door open again, and he shook. They weren’t due to come back, goddammit. What the fuck were they going to do to him now? He felt nauseous. So much blood had passed since they’d drilled holes in him. He’d thrown up bile relentlessly, quivering from the harsh cold surface and the pain.
“Borden,” he heard a voice whisper.
He opened his eyes and stared up at the kid from the car. That time had felt like an eternity ago. Every hour in this hellhole had felt like a year. In any case, he hadn’t seen this kid around at all for the beatings. Maybe they were training him. It made sense.
He warily watched the kid approach him with something in his hand. Borden was so fucking weak, he might not even be able to fight the puny shit off with whatever he was going to use on him. The kid kneeled down to his level and pressed whatever he held to Borden’s mouth. It smelled citrusy. Borden didn’t part his lips to let it in. Instead, he pursed them and glared at the boy.
“Please,” the kid said, his voice sad. “You haven’t eaten. You’ve been without food for almost five days, Mr Borden.”
Borden didn’t open his mouth.
The boy dropped the fruit to the ground by his head. “Please eat it. If my father finds it in here, I’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
Father. Another pig offspring of Mulligan. Borden snarled at him, and the boy buckled away, fear in his eyes. Shame Borden was too weak to move. He’d have beaten the fucker.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Borden rasped out. “Don’t you fucking show your face this close to me again, or I will chew through your fucking throat.”
The boy quivered but stayed. “She’s not dead, Mr Borden,” he suddenly said. “Emma isn’t dead.”
Borden’s heart thudded harder. “Don’t you fucking play with me, kid.”
“I’m not! I swear.” The boy looked over his shoulder and peered out the door of the cellar. Then he turned back to Borden and leaned in closer, whispering, “They went back to the gravesite when the men that were supposed to kill her never returned. They found the men dead and the grave had been dug out. She was gone. They don’t know where she went.”
Borden shut his eyes, fighting the tears that surfaced from spilling. He swallowed hard, and it felt like all the tension he’d been coiling within him had immediately unfurled. After several moments, he opened his eyes back and murmured, “I know where she is.”
“Where is she?”
Borden focused back on the boy. “Why the fuck are you doing this?”
“Because he killed my mother,” the boy replied, his voice pained. “He came out of prison, murdered her and forced me here because he didn’t like how soft I was. Said I was going to be like him, and…I’m scared of him. I’m scared of all the fucking evil he’s done. I want to get away. I didn’t want to point the gun in your face, Mr Borden. I didn’t want to do any of it, I swear.”
Borden had no time to doubt the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Jem.”
“Where are the rest?”
“There’s only three in the cabin outside. Nobody knows I’m here. I heard them talking about Mulligan coming back. Said he’s going to finish you off.”
“They’ll find out if I’m gone, won’t they?”
“Mulligan has his hunting dogs tied outside. They don’t find me a threat so they don’t bark, but they will with you. Then they’ll know what I just did and we’ll both be dead.”
Borden rested his head on the ground and thought hard about what needed to be done. His body was in ruins. They had done a number on him, and he wasn’t sure how far he could go if he escaped, but he did know that he wasn’t capable of surviving another beating. His ribs were broken, his body was sore, and his blood had pumped out of him in a scarily fast pace – another wound to him and he’d die. There was no way he could take them down with his bare hands.
“Can you do something for me kid?” he asked, staring at the boy.
“Like what?”
“If you help me out, I’ll set you up good. You hear?”
Jem nodded. “Yeah, I hear.”
“You’re going to leave and I’m going to tell you where you’re going to go, and what you’re going to do when you get there.”
The boy nodded again. “Okay.”
“Good, now listen up.”
Twenty Two
Emma
I was in hell. There were no other words to describe it. Just…hell. It felt like my life had completely halted and suspended in limbo. If Borden was dead, I was going to crash and burn. If he was alive...my God, if he was alive! Just the thought of it pricked my eyes with tears, but I’d cried too much. I had shut down around the third day of his disappearance. Hawke had pressed me to get out of the room, and I only conceded because Tyler needed some things from there in peace. I almost forgot how
many secrets a girl her age has until I looked under that mattress. Oh boy. Condoms and love notes, but to whom they were addressed, I didn’t dare check. I didn’t care.
The bikers were everywhere in the pub. I got used to them after a few hours. They were surprisingly tolerable. Some even stopped by to give me a comforting pat on the back. Any other day and I would have questioned their motives, but there was genuine sympathy in their gazes, and I accepted their light touches because I was desperate for reassurance. Go figure. The fuckers weren’t as sleazy and awful as I’d initially thought.
