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.