“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 it 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.”