“What’s your fucking address?” Hawke roughly asked me.

“2514 Maple Street,” I answered through numb lips.

I had my arms wrapped around my queasy stomach the entire way there. When we reached the tall apartment building, Hawke walked me past the group of men that usually loitered around the complex during the night. He didn’t say a word. He stayed put behind me, watching me carefully unlock the glass door with the key hanging on my necklace.

When I opened it, he continued to watch me walk hesitantly to the elevator. I looked back at him several times; his long hair and thick beard stood out in my memory the most. When the elevator closed and I could see him no more, I immediately hunched over and threw up in the corner of the elevator. Nothing came out because I’d hardly eaten anything that day, but I couldn’t stop heaving. Acid burned my throat, tears and black hair blurred my vision, and my stomach clenched painfully until the feeling passed.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and almost crawled to my small one bedroom apartment, using the walls for support on my way there. It was three doors down from the fourth floor elevator and it felt like the walk of my life. I could hear the normal television noise next door and the screaming of a couple across from me. Usually I’d be annoyed at this, but I welcomed it for the first time. It brought me back to the familiarity of my world instead of what I’d just walked out of.

I didn’t change, or wash my hands, or even make it to the bedroom door. I collapsed into my three seater couch and shook violently. It would have been just after midnight when I’d come in because I watched every hour from one to six tick on by.

I’m not sure what I was thinking about the most: Marcus Borden, or the man that was being strangled in the alleyway.

Seven

BORDEN

With his forehead pressed against the glass, Borden stared out of the floor to ceiling window of his penthouse, overlooking the New Raven River. He tapped his gun against the glass as he watched the water sway. If he stared hard enough, he’d begin to feel the motion of it too. Pain skyrocketed through him as he tried to imagine a body in the darkness of the waters, floating with the current, swaying just as he was.

He put himself through this torture often. It was the only thing that really gave him any feeling at all. His world had turned black and grey, but the pain was like a shade of red every now and then. It gave him pain, and with pain there was the feeling of being human.

And that was the last thing he felt anymore. Human, that is. His life now operated on power, control, and business that had long lost its appeal. The adrenaline that had energized him before had now weaned into nonexistence. He was a void, playing a part he was no longer interested to play. He was suffering in the way a man who couldn’t feel anything positive could suffer. The emptiness was a curse. Karma had struck five years ago and the bitch remained since. And because Borden had nothing to lose, he didn’t give a fuck if the bitch won in the end.

He turned away from the window and set the gun back down on the coffee table in the lounge. It sat next to the opened briefcase, and Borden unaffectedly stared down at its contents, at the hundred dollar bills that took up every inch of its interior.

Money did nothing for him.

Numb.

Numb.

Numb.

That’s all he was.

And yet despite all that, his mind went back to one thing.

Emma Warne.

How was it possible that this had been the very same girl he’d rescued in that alleyway nine years ago? She looked exactly like her. No, she was her. The little alley cat with the switchblade. He remembered that girl like a picture inside his mind, and from time to time he’d revisited that memory, thinking of her jet black hair and haunted eyes.

She didn’t recognize him, and why would she? It’d been dark, and he was night and day the man he was back then, both physically and mentally. Death did that, though. When it struck, it changed parts of you forever.

“Emma Warne,” he whispered out loud, tasting the name on his tongue.

Hawke had passed along her address to him, so he knew the poor girl had no business being on this side of the city. She’d barely looked the part, anyway.

“Since when do we make sure these people make it home safely?” Hawke had asked him after he’d returned. “The bitch could have went back herself.”

“She could hardly walk,” Borden had replied in return. “She wouldn’t have made it far. Anyone would have taken advantage of her on her own, especially after we stripped her knife off her.”

“Who the fuck cares? Would actually serve us good if someone took care of her before we do. There’s no way she’s going to be silent about this, Borden. And we’ve got enough heat as it is with the fucking bikers on our case about the goddamn port. One mouth opening and the police are going to fuck our place up all over again. Hell, maybe I should go back and take care of her –”

“No,” Borden interrupted, feeling an irrational spike of anger flood through his system. “Don’t touch her.”

Hawke just stared at him questionably. “I don’t understand.”

“No questions.”

Hawke exhaled and left after that, no doubt confused as hell.

And now Borden was here, almost smiling as he remembered the look on her face when he’d interrogated her. There was an edge there beneath the surface, a hardness in her eyes, and he knew she had fought with every fibre of her being to suppress it.

Wise girl.

A knock sounded out, stirring him from his thoughts. He shut the briefcase and wandered to the front door. Opening it, he came face to face with a beautiful brunette wearing a white mini-dress. He looked her up and down, displeasure clear as day on his face. Another escort.

“The fuck you want?” he barked at her, though he already knew.

“The boys said you needed some relief,” responded the plaything, batting her eyelashes at him in what he assumed was her best attempt at being seductive.

Fuck, the girl was scrawny. He tilted his head and checked out her nonexistent hips, wondering how someone could think it was appropriate to gift him a Popsicle stick. He was used to escorts showing up like this. The boys were relentless in their endeavour to have him balls deep in a girl. But Borden was bored of them. Bored of the false look of need in their eyes, of the way they screamed in ecstasy when he fucked them – or tried to long ago – knowing for certain it was all a fucking façade to have their drug needs met after they were done.