Prologue

Borden

I thought we made it clear never to bring another person close to you again. We’ll get her, Mr Borden, and you will never find me. You will only think you have. But I’m smoke. I scatter and disappear. You cannot find me.

“So that’s how we’re going to play,” Borden murmured at the cell phone screen.

He slipped out of the bed and silently moved to the window. He peered through the blinds and scanned the deserted streets. At this point, all feeling associated with that text hadn’t hit him. He was calm and cool, not a single part of him threatened or afraid. This was the only way he could function with fucked up situations like this. The second he let it into his heart, he would be doomed, and with that god awful text threatening the life of Emma, he was working particularly hard not to let it get to him.

Fuck, if he let it get to him, he’d trash the room in a fit.

He stared out for some time, holding his breath, waiting for a sign of something – anything – suspicious. The world was still. The occasional car drove down the street, offering a bit of light before fading away. Sometime after that, a group of men drunkenly walked along the sidewalk, laughing through their slurred speech.

Then…silence again.

The silence was a bitch of a thing and Borden didn’t like it.

He moved away, glancing over his shoulder at Emma’s still frame, before leaving the bedroom. He went to the living room window and looked out again. With his mind firing out crazy possibilities, his gaze lingered on a dark alleyway between two apartment buildings.

Borden scoffed to himself just then. Was it possible somebody was there now? Was the fucker behind the message that stupidly brazen?

The piece of shit didn’t realize how far Borden had come, how hard he had worked and what he lost in the process. He didn’t know that Borden went through hell, tasted the flames, and burned himself inside and out just to be where he was. And now the fucker might be insulting his intelligence. No, he was insulting his intelligence by sending him a text to begin with.

He stared at the alleyway harder. It was the perfect spot for someone to be in if they wanted to catch a glimpse. Was there somebody there now? Thinking one step ahead was what Borden excelled at, and in his mind, logic told him there was.

Or was he paranoid?

His logic lately had been muddled. It’d been disrupted and torn apart piece by piece all thanks to the soft little body feet away from him.

Borden shook his head just then, trying to rationalize this. Whoever sent the text was just messing with him…and yet he couldn’t help but feel like there was a sliver of seriousness about it. That ignored paranoia was what killed Kate. With all his new wealth, he’d felt untouchable back then, and at the moment, with the city bending to his will, he was getting too comfortable.

He wasn’t untouchable. He would never be, and he would never disillusion himself by thinking he was again. Bad things always found a way in, no matter how many steps ahead you were, and it was that thought alone that gave him a twisted feeling from within. Shit, it felt like his insides seized. He tried to block it out. Feelings at a time like this weren’t going to solve the problem, but fuck, he pictured Emma hurt and afraid, and that twisted feeling grew hotter inside of him. He glanced down at his hands. Tremors ran down his arms and to the tips of his fingers.

Shit. Shit.

Borden returned to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. He shut his eyes and breathed.

Calm the fuck down.

Calm the fuck down.

He thirsted for the blood of the maggot that thought he could get away with this. Borden couldn’t disintegrate right now, although every inch of him was blazing with the need to turn this city apart for answers. He was being impulsive. He needed to think first and act later. Yeah, that was exactly what he needed to do. The violence would have to wait.

He turned his head to Emma and watched her for some time. Breathing lightly, her lips were parted, strands of her black hair over parts of her face. Fucking stunning, his little firecracker. Slowly the anger within him disappeared and his hands no longer shook. Always she had this affect on him. Always she managed to cool the burn within him with just one look at her. She did something to him he didn’t fully understand. She made everything bearable.

Staring at her sprawled out in a peaceful slumber, all perfect and sweet, Borden knew he had no right to want her. But he made no apologies for it either. He was being selfish on purpose. Any compassionate person could see it was wrong. A good man would have realized she deserved better. A good man would have let her go to live her life to the fullest.

Only Borden was, by definition, not a good man. He knew she deserved better. He just didn’t give a fuck. By having Emma, he was putting her in harm’s way and yet… the thought of doing the right thing – of letting her go just hours after she’d given herself to him – was unfathomable. There wasn’t a single part of his being that would allow that to happen.

He couldn’t do it.

He just…couldn’t.

The selfish prick that he was felt assured by that simple fact. Even if it meant locking her away just to have her, he would do it. His want for her ran dangerously deep; it would frighten people the extent he would go just to keep her. And that’s all he wanted to do. Keep her. She wasn’t going anywhere, and that text…well, it was full of shit. It had to be.

Pulling out his zippo lighter, he rested his back against the headboard of the bed and twirled it between his fingers. With his other hand, he grabbed one of Emma’s infinite switchblades off the night table and opened it. He stared at the cheap blade, running his thumb along the dull end of it. He suppressed a smile at her ridiculous attempt at arming herself. It was akin to arming a gorgeous butterfly with a machete.

Just… adorable.

So pathetically, indescribably adorable.

That prompted him to glimpse at her again. He couldn’t help it. Dropping the knife, he lightly ran his fingers down her body, over the soft curves of her warm skin. He felt a stir of desire. If he wasn’t thinking so much about that damned message, he might have hardened again. He might have forced her awake with his cock between her lips. Might have taken her again, this time nothing like tonight’s soft lovemaking. He would have fucked her, and she would have writhed beneath him wanting every second of it. She would have moaned in his ear, clawed at his scalp, hurt him ‘til his dick throbbed harder, and she would have loved every single second of it. Because that’s what Emma was: hungry and twisted like him, selfish and hard like him. It only took him fucking up her life to realize it.