I looked at her. Her eyes were misted over. She looked nothing like the bitch I’d known her to be. “Thanks, Linda. I hated you too. I kept asking myself why Borden would even hire you, but seeing what you do to the club, and how hard you work, I understand. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

She smiled sadly. “When he comes back, we’ll start new. I’ll pretend you haven’t taken the man of my dreams and burned my future into the ground. It’ll be like nothing ever happened between us. A fresh start.”

I blinked. “That’s…very sweet of you.”

She watched with me for several more minutes and then she slid out of the stool and wandered off. Of course, because she wasn’t interested in the bikers, the bikers flocked to her like she was a piece of forbidden fruit, completely neglecting their two dozen other women in the same room.

Typical.

“Emma!” I heard a shout just as the bar door slammed shut. I spun around and watched Hawke, Hector, and a young guy I’d never seen before, stride through the room quickly, their eyes set on me.

Every part of me tensed at the look Hawke was shooting me. “What’s going on?” I asked, my heart already picking up. Was it bad? Shit, it looked bad.

“It’s Borden,” Hawke said, grabbing me by the arm. “We know where he is, and he’s alive.”

Borden

A rusty butcher knife. That was the only weapon Jem could get to him before he left. Not a gun, not a machete, not anything remotely useful in a matter of life and death situation against five other men, but a fucking rusted butcher knife with the dullest edge Borden had ever touched. Fuck!

He sighed as he rested his back against the wall. It took serious effort just to get up. He hissed at the pain every now and then, but keeping himself upright was like a step forward to Emma, and knowing she hadn’t died in that hole gave him that last spark of life he needed to do this. And let’s be real here. The man was feared by all. If he died now, it would be a serious fucking embarrassment to his name. No, Borden needed to push through. If not for Emma, then for New Raven. A city needed its villain, and he owned the role like it was made for him.

He didn’t know how long he sat there. Maybe it was hours. Maybe it was a whole bloody day. All he knew was it was about the right amount of time before the fucks came bustling through the door. They’d gotten a bit lazy lately. And cocky. Letting their guard down at the state of Borden. He appeared so weak, they’d go in two at a time each go and beat on him. But like Jem had said, Mulligan was expected to join. Which meant they were going to finish Borden off. That was fine. He wouldn’t go down easy.

He heard a sound of one pair of footsteps descending the staircase into the cellar. He went still, waiting on the sound of others. Relief temporarily overcame him when there weren’t any more, and then all at once, he got ready as the lone person unlocked the door and shoved it open. Borden stood up as the door swung in front of him, and the man stepped inside. Borden immediately swung the door closed just as the man turned around with a gun in his hand.

Mulligan’s surprised eyes met his, and just as he raised his gun, Borden knocked his body into him, knocking him on his back. The gun flung from his hand. Borden dug his arm across Mulligan’s throat, keeping it there with the weight of his upper body. Mulligan flailed beneath him so hard, he knocked Borden off. He turned to grab his gun a few feet from where they lay, and Borden grabbed at Mulligan’s leg, halting him. They grunted, and it took everything inside of Borden to keep his hold while keeping the knife in his hand.

“You won’t fucking win this,” Mulligan seethed, stretching his arms out just shy of the gun.

“I already have,” Borden grunted back. “The first fucking rule when you’re torturing someone: never give them the use of their hands.”

This was risky. If Borden went to stab him, he’d be giving him the opportunity to grab the gun. But what choice did he have? His energy was depleting itself by the second. He inhaled sharply and let Mulligan go. Mulligan grabbed the gun and turned just as Borden drove the blade into the man’s chest. The gun went off past his head, the sound leaving Borden with ringing ears. Mulligan shot again, flailing his body around to fight the weight of Borden over him. With his body flushed against his, Borden pulled the knife out of him and stabbed him again, right in the heart this time.

“And rule number two,” Borden gritted out as Mulligan’s mouth spurted with blood, “never torture a badass motherfucker alone.”

He pulled the knife out of Mulligan’s chest and quickly grabbed the gun from his loose grip. Then he leaned his back against the dying, gurgling piece of shit and stared at the door. The other fucks would have heard the gunshots. They would be coming, and armed with a knife and a loaded gun, Borden was ready.

He had to be.

Twenty Three

Emma

The sun had only just come up when the car pulled onto a dirt trail. I was alarmed at how close we were to where I’d been buried. The young man, Jem, pointed ahead, and Hawke drove down the zigzagged road. I glanced over my shoulder and at the dozen other cars following behind us, every single one filled with armed bikers and Borden’s men. We were prepared for a war, even though Jem assured us we wouldn’t get one. He said there were only a handful of men in the cabin, excluding Mulligan. That while Mulligan had a decent following, he was still in his infancy and still without the sworn loyalty of men he’d counted on when he left prison. In other words, there hadn’t been as many followers as he’d alluded.

I wasn’t thinking of all that as the car stopped in front of the nice looking cabin and next to three other parked cars. I was thinking about the man I loved, and hoping he was still clinging on to life.

“Stay here,” Hawke told me.

As if.

I climbed out just as all the others did around us. We were a large crowd, forty plus armed people, moving toward the cabin cautiously but confidently. If the bastards inside were smart enough, they’d surrender.

But we didn’t get that far. Everybody stopped dead in their tracks and stared ahead. They stared at the bloody looking man seated on the steps of the cabin, nothing but his briefs on. He held a gun in one hand and a sad looking butcher knife in the other.

My heart climbed up my throat as I continued to walk to him. I was pretty sure I was the only one moving. No, not moving, running.

“Marcus!” I shouted, tears pricking my eyes.